Beginnings of Natural History in America. 375 



setts in 1631. The Rev. Abraham Peirsoti, one of the founders of the 

 colony at Newark, durini;- his residence in New England made valua])le 

 investii^ations upon the lanj^uage of the Qiiiripi or Quinnipiac Indians of 

 the New Haven colony. The extensive l:)ibliography of which Mr. 

 Pilling has recently piil:)lished adN^ance sheets gives an excellent idea of 

 the attention which American linguistics have since received. 



That very eminent colonial statesman, John Winthrop the younger, 

 the first governor of Connecticut [1). 1587, d. 1649], stood high in the 

 esteem of English men of science, and was invited by the newly founded 

 Ro3-al Society, of which he was a fellow, "to take upon himself the 

 charge of being the chief correspondent in the West, as Sir Philiberto 

 Vernatti was in the P^a.st Indies. ' ' The secretary of the Royal Society 

 said of him: " His name, had he put it to his writings, would have been 

 IS universally known as the Boyles, the Wilkins's, and the Oldenburghs, 

 and been handed down to us with similar applause.'" 



Governor Winthrop' s name occurs from time to time in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, and it w^as to him tlia-t .science was indebted for its 

 first knowledge of the genus Astrophyton. 



John Winthrop, F. R. S. [b. 1606, d. 1676], son of the last, and also 

 governor of Connecticut in 1662, is .said to have been "famous for his 

 philosophical knowledge." He was a founder of the Royal Society, 

 being at the time of its origin in England as agent of the colony. And 

 the second governor's grandson, John Winthrop, F. R. S. [b. 16S1. d. 

 1747], who pas<5ed the latter part of his life in England, was declared to 

 have increased the Royal Society's repository "with more than six hun- 

 dred curious specimens, chiefly in the mineral kingdom," and since the 

 founder of the mu.seum of the Royal Society, "the benefactor who has 

 given the most numerous collections."" 



The Rev. John Clayton, rector of Crofton, at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, 

 made a journey to Virginia in 1685, and in 1688 communicated to the 

 Royal Society An Account of several observables in Virginia and in his 

 Voyage thither.^ Clayton seems to have been a man of scientific cul- 

 ture, and to have been the author, in company with Doctor Moulin, of a 

 treatise upon comparative anatomy. He was of the same school with 

 Harriot and Wood, though more philosophical. His essay was, however, 

 the most important which had yet been published upon the natural history 

 of the South, and his annotated catalogue of mammals, birds, and reptiles 

 is creditably full. 



Thomas Glover also published about this time An Account of Vir- 



' Doctor Cromwell Mortimer, in the dedication of Volume XL,, Philosophical 

 Transactions. 



= Tuckerman, in Arcliaeologia Americana, IV, pp. 123-124. See also The Win- 

 throp Papers. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5th ser., VIII, p. 571. 

 - 3 Philosophical Transactions, XVII, pp. 781-795, 978-999; XVIII, pp. 121-135, and 

 iu Miscellaneoua Curiosa, III; also reprinted in Force's Historical Tracts, III. 



