THE BEGINNINGS OF NATURAL HISTORY IN AMERICA; 



By George Brown Goode, 

 President of the Biological Society of Washimjton. 



Is not science a growth? Has not science, too, its embryology? And must not the 

 neglect of its embryology lead to a misunderstanding of the principles of its evolution 

 and of its existing organization ? 



—Spencer : The Genesis of Science. 



ANALYSIS. 



Page. 



I. Thomas Harriot, the earliest English nattiralist in America 357 



II. Harriot's Spanish and French predecessors and contemporaries 363 



HI. Garcilasso de la Vega and the biological lore of the native Americans .... 367 



IV. Anglo-American naturalists of the seventeenth century 371 



V. European explorations in the New World, 1600-1800 379 



VI. The founders of American natural history 384 



VII. The debt which the naturalists of the present owe to those of the past .... 403 



Three centttries ago the only English settlement in America was the 

 little colony of one hundred and eight men which Raleigh had planted 

 five months before upon Roanoke Island, in North Carolina. 



The 17th of Augttst, 1885, was the anniversary of one of the most 

 noteworthy events in the history of America, for it marked the three 

 hundredth return of the date when Sir Richard Grenville l)rought to its 

 shores this sturdy company of pioneers, who, b}' their .sojotirn on this 

 side of the Atlantic, prepared the way for the great armies of immigrants 

 who were to follow. 



It was also the anniversarj^ of an important event in the history of 

 .science, for among the colonists was Thomas Harriot, the first English 

 man of science who cro.ssed the Atlantic. His name is familiar to few 

 save those who love the time-browned pages and quaint narrations of 

 Hakluyt, Purchas, and Pinkerton ; yet Harriot was foremost among the 



' Annual presidential address delivered at the sixth anniversary meeting of the 

 Biological Society of Washington, February 6. 1S86, in the lecture room of the 

 United States National Museum. 



357 



