PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 71 



American Plants," in his " Geological Sketch of the Valley of. 

 the Mississippi," in 1S21 ; his " Journal of Travels into the Ar- 

 kansas Territory," a work abounding in natural history obser- 

 vations ; in 1S32-4 his " Manual of the Ornithology of the United 

 States and Canada ;" and in iS43-9his " North American Sylva," 

 a continuation of the Sylva of Michaux. About 1S50 he retired 

 to a rural estate in England, where he died in 1S59. 



Nuttall was not great as a botanist, as a geologist, or a zoolo- 

 gist, but was a man useful, beloved, and respected. 



Richard Harlan, M. D. [b. 1796, d. 1S43]. who, with Mitchill, 

 Say, Rafinesque, and Gosse, was one of the earliest of our herpetolo- 

 gists, and who was one of Audubon's chief friends and supporters, 

 published in 1825 the first instalment of his " Fauna Americana," 

 which treated exclusively of mammals. This was followed, in 

 1826, by a rival work on mammals, by Godman. Harlan's book 

 was a compilation, based largely on translations of portions of 

 Desmarest's " Mammalogie," printed three years before in Paris. 

 It was so severely criticised that the second portion, which was 

 to have been devoted to reptiles, was never published, and its 

 author turned his attention to medical literature. Godman's 

 " North American Natural History, or Mastology," contained 

 much original matter, and, though his contemporaries received it 

 with faint praise, it is the only separate, compact, illustrated 

 treatise on the mammals of North America ever published, and is 

 useful to the present day. John D. Godman [b. in Annapolis, 

 Md., Dec. 20, 1794, d. in Germantown, Pa., Apl. 17, 1S30] died 

 an untimely death, but gave promise of a brilliant and useful 

 career as a teacher and investigator. His •' Rambles of a Nat- 

 uralist " is one of the best series of essays of the Selborne type 

 ever produced by an American, and his "American Natural His- 

 tory " is a work of much importance, even to the present day, 

 embodying as it does a large number of original observations. 

 Michaux's Sylva was, as we have seen, continued by Nuttall : 



