Beginnings of Natural History in America. 393 



His interest in American natural history was always very great, and 

 his descriptions of New World forms seem to have been drawn up with 

 especial care. Garden, Colden, Bartram, Mitchell, Clayton, and Ellis 

 were all, as we have seen, active in supplying him with materials, and 

 his pupils, Kalm, Alstroera, lyoefling, Kuhn, and Rolander (who col- 

 lected for many years in Surinam) sent him many notes and specimens. 



The progress of systematic zoology in the interval between Ray and 

 Linnaeus may perhaps best be illustrated by some brief statistical refer- 

 ences. The former, in 1690, made an estimate of the number of animals 

 and plants known at that time. 



The number of beasts, including serpents, he placed at 150, adding 

 that according to his belief not many that are of any considerable big- 

 ness in the known regions of the world have escaped the cognizance of 

 the curious. 



Linnceus in his twelfth edition (1766) described 210 species of beasts 

 or mammals, and 124 of reptiles, so called. Of the mannnals known to 

 lyinnseus, 78, or more than one-third, were American, and 88 of the 

 reptiles were attributed to this country. 



"The number of birds," said Ray, "may be near 500." Linnaeus 

 catalogued 790, of which about one-third were American. 



Although at this time the Middle and Southern States were the most 

 active in the prosecution of scientific researches, there were in New Eng- 

 land at least two diligent students of nature. Paul Dudley, F. R. S. 

 [b. 1675] , chief justice of the colony of Massachusetts, was the author of 

 several papers in the Philosophical Transactions. Among these were A 

 Description of the Moose Deer in America,' An Account of a Method 

 lately found out in New England for Discovering where the Bees Hive in 

 the Woods,- An Account of the Rattlesnake, ^ and An Essay upon the 

 Natural History of Whales, with a particular Account of the Ambergris 

 found in the Spermaceti Whale,'' which is often quoted. 



Others were An account of the Poyson Wood Tree in New England, => 

 and Observations on some Plants in New England, with remarkable 

 Instances of the Nature and Power of Vegetation.* He also appears to 

 have sent to Collinson a treatise upon the evergreens of New England.^ 



The Rev. Jared Eliot [b. 1685, d. 1763], minister at Killingworth, in 

 Connecticut, and one of the earliest graduates of Yale College, described 

 by his contemporaries as " the first physician of his day," and as " the 

 first botanist in New England," appears to have been a correspondent of 

 Franklin and a scientific agriculturist. 



■ Philosophical Transactions, XXXI, 1721, pp. 165-168. 



= Idem., XXXI, 1721, pp. 148-150. 



3 Idem., XXXII, 1723, pp. 292-295. 



"Idem., XXXIII, 1725, pp. 256-269. 



5 Idem., XXI, I72i,pp. 145, 146. 



*Idem., XXXIII, 1724, pp. 194-200 



7 See Tuckerman in Archaeologia Americana, IV, pp. 125, 126. 



