Beginnings of Natural His/ory in America. 361 



with prepossessed ideas concerniiii^ them, is thorouj^h and scholarly, and 

 one of the fullest and most reliable of the early treatises upon the inhabi- 

 tants of North America. 



The chief man of the Roanoke colony, Sir Ralph L,ane, usually spoken 

 of as the first governor of Virginia, was a man of great energy and 

 enterprise,' and with the help of Harriot planned and conducted expe- 

 ditions in ever}^ direction- — ^southward, 80 leagues toSecotan, "an Indian 

 town, lying between the rivers Pampticoe and Neus; " to the northwest, 

 up the Albemarle Sound and Chowan River to the forks of the Meherrin 

 and Nottaway; and north, 130 miles to the Klizabeth River, on the south 

 side of Chesapeake Bay. 



Besides his description of the Indians, Harriot wrote "a particular 

 narrative of all the beasts, birds, fishes, fowls, fruits, and roots, and how 

 they may be useful." A systematic report could hardly l)e expected 

 from one who lived a century and a half before lyinnaeus, luit if we keep 

 in mind the condition of zoology at that day we can but be pleased with 

 the fullness of his narrative. 



He collected the names of twenty-eight species of mammals, twelve of 

 these, including the black bear, the gray squirrel, the cony or hare, the 

 otto, and the possum and raccoon (^Saquenuckot and Maquoivoc) , he saw, 

 beside the civet cat or skunk, which he observed by means of another 

 sense. He was the first to distinguish the American from the European 

 deer, stating that the former have longer tails, and the snags of their 

 horns look backward — a brief diagnosis, but one which was not replaced 

 by a better one for nearl}' two centuries. 



Of birds he collected the names of eighty-six ' ' in the countrie lan- 

 guage," and had pictures drawn of twenty-five. He mentions turke3\s, 

 .stockdoves, partridges, crows, herons, and, in winter, great store of swans 

 and geese. 



With aquatic animals he .seems to have been well acquainted. He 

 refers to some by English nanies, and to many others which had no names 

 "but in the countrey language." In the plates accompanying the first 

 edition of his book are figured several familiar forms, then for the first 

 time made known in Europe, among them the gar pike {Lcpidosfcus),'' 

 and the horse shoe or king crab {Lijuulus},^ " Seekanauk, a kinde of 



' Edward Everett Hale's Life of Sir Ralph Lane. Arclioeologia Americana, IV, 

 PP- 317-344- 



= Snbseqnently referred to by Chaniplain in 1613, and Sajrard in 1636, under the 

 name chaoHsa}-OH, and figured bj' Chaniplain on his map of Nouvelle France. 

 Du Creiix, in his Historite Canadensis, 1664, also mentions it. 



^ It has been generally supposed that Chaniplain was the first to notice this char- 

 acteristic American animal, and Slafter, in his notes upon Champlain's works [Pub- 

 lications of the Prince vSociet3% Champlain's Voyages, II, p. 87], makes a statement 

 to that effect, and is followed by Higginson in his History of the United States. 

 Actually, the P^'rench explorer did not observe it until twenty years after Harriot, 

 and his account of it was not printed until 1613. 



