66 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTOlSr. 



was the zoologist of both explorations. De Schweinitz worked 

 up the botanical material which he collected. 



The English expeditions sent to Arctic North America under 

 the command of Sir John Franklin were also out during these 

 yeai's, the first from 1819 to 1S22, the second from 1825 to 1S27, 

 and yielded many important results. To naturalists they have 

 an especial interest, because Sir John Richardson, who accom- 

 panied Franklin as surgeon and naturalist, Avas one of the most 

 eminent and successful zoological explorers of the century, and 

 had more to do with the development of our natural history than 

 any other man not an American. 



His natural history papers in Franklin's reports, 1823 and 

 1828, his '' Fauna Boreali Americana," published between 1827 

 and 1836, his report upon the ''Zoology of North America," are 

 all among the classics of our zoological literature.* 



The third decade was somewhat mai^ked by a renewal of in- 

 terest in zoology and botany, which had, during the few preced- 

 ing years, been rather overshadowed by geology and mineralogy. 



Rafinesque had retired to Kentucky, where, from his profes- 

 sor's chair in Transylvania University, he was issuing his An- 

 nals of Nature and his Western Minerva ; and his brilliancy 

 being dimmed by distance, other students of animals had a 

 chance to work. 



One of the most noteworthy of the workers was Thomas Say 

 [b. 1787' ^- ^834], who was a pioneer in several departments of 

 systematic zoology. A kinsman of the Bartrams, he spent many 

 of his boyhood days in the old botanic garden at Kingsessing, 

 in company with the old naturalist, William Bartram, and the 

 ornithologist Wilson. At the age of twenty-five, having been 

 unsuccessful as an apothecary, he gave his whole time to 

 zoology. He slept in the hall of the Academy of Natural 



* See Rev. John McIlwraith's Life of Sir John Richardson, C. B., 

 LL. D. London, 186S. Also Obituary in London Reader, 1865, p. 707. 



