Beginnings of Natural History in America. 363 



The science of North America, then, began with Thomas Harriot. 

 Let us review together to-night its progress for a period of two centu- 

 ries — a period coinciding ahnost exactly with the colonial portion of the 

 history of the United States. 



"The present generation," sa3's Whewell, "finds itself the heir of a 

 vast patrimony of science, and it must needs concern us to know the 

 steps by which these possessions were acquired and the documents by 

 which they are secured to us and our heirs forever. Our species from 

 the time of its creation has been traveling onward in pursuit of truth; 

 and now that we have reached a lofty and commanding position, with 

 the broad light of day around us, it must be grateful to look back on the 

 line of our past progress; to review the journey begun in early twilight 

 amid primeval wilds, for a long time continued with slow advance and 

 obscure prospects, and gradually and in later days followed along more 

 open and lightsome paths, in a wide and fertile region. The historian 

 of science, from early periods to the present time, may hope for favor on 

 the score of the mere subject of his narrative, and in virtue of the curi- 

 osit}' which the men of the present day may naturally feel respecting the 

 events and persons of his story." 



II. 



Although Harriot was the first who described the natural character- 

 istics of North America, it would not be proper to ignore the fact that 

 the first scientific exploration of the Western Continent was accomplished 

 by Spaniards and Frenchmen. 



Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, the first historian of the New 

 World [b. 1478, d. 1557], was an Asturian of noble birth, who began 

 life as a page in the palace of Ferdinand and Isabella. He saw Columbus 

 at Burgos on his second return from America in 1496. He came over in 

 15 14 to Santo Domingo, having been appointed inspector of gold smelting, 

 and was subsequently governor of that island and royal historiographer 

 of the Indies. In 1525 he transmitted to Charles V his Sumario de la 

 Natural Historia de las Indias, printed at Toledo two years later, and 

 in 1535 began the publication of his Historia Natural y General de las 

 Indias, a task which was finally completed only thirty years ago by the 

 Spanish Royal Academy of History. 



lyas Casas said that Oviedo' s books were "as full of lies almost as 

 pages," but whatever may have been his methods in the discussion of 

 histor}' and politics, he seems, in his descriptions, to have been both 

 minute and accurate. Among the American animals which he was first 

 to mention was the tapir or dant — "of the bignesse of a meane mule, 

 without homes, ash-coloured," and the dmrchia, evidently a species of 

 Didclphvs, allied to our possum. This was the first notice of any mem- 

 ber of the great group of marsupial mammals. I quote a portion of the 



