BegiiiNuigs of Natural History in America. 397 



through the United States, proceeding from New York south to Florida 

 and the Bahamas. He was accompanied in his more southern excur- 

 sions by Professor Marter and Doctor Stupicz, who, with several assist- 

 ants, had been sent to America from Vienna to make botanical explora- 

 tions. Schoepf's Nord Amerikanische Reisen is full of interesting notes 

 upon natural history, and describes nearly all the scientific men at that 

 time resident in the United States. His Materia Medica Americana, 

 published in 1787 at Erlangen, was a standard in its day.' 



One of the most prominent names in American natural history is 

 that of John Reinhold Forster [b. 1729, d. 1798], who was a leader in 

 zoological studies in England during the last century. He was a native 

 of Germany, and at the time of his death professor of botany at Halle. 

 He spent many years in England, and was the naturalist of Cooke's 

 second voyage around the world (1772-1775). In 1771 he published in 

 London, in an appendix to his translation of Kalm's Travels, A Cata- 

 logue of the Animals of North America, compiled from the writings of Lin- 

 nseus, Pennant, Brisson, Edwards, and Catesby, and in the same year a 

 similar nominal catalogue of the plants of North America. His account 

 of the birds sent from Hudson Bay, published in 1772, was a valuable 

 contribution to American ornithology, "notable," says Coues, "as the 

 first formal treatise exclusively devoted to a collection of North Amer- 

 ican birds sent abroad." Fifty-eight species were described, among 

 which were several new to science. Other papers of equal value were 

 published upon the quadrupeds and fishes of the same region. Forster 

 was one of the earliest students of the geographical distribution of ani- 

 mals, and his Enchiridion of Natural History was in its day a standard. 

 His son, John George Forster, who was his companion in the voyage of 

 circumnavigation, owes his fame to his literary rather than to his scien- 

 tific labors. He published a paper on the Patella or Limpet Fish found 

 at Bermuda.'' 



The annals of Russian explorations upon the west coast of North 

 America have been so exhaustively recorded by Dall in his Alaska and 

 its Resources that only passing mention need be made of the two German 

 naturalists, Steller and Chamisso, whose names are identified with the 

 natural history work of the Russian explorer. 



Among the other naturalists whose names are associated with America 

 during this period may be mentioned Sonnini de Manoncour, an eminent 

 French zoologist, who traveled in Surinam from 1771 to 1775 and made 

 important contributions to its ornithology. Don Felix de Azara [b. 

 1746, d. after 1806] , who carried on researches in Spanish America from 

 1 78 1 to 180 1 ; Don Antonio Parra, who published a useful treatise on the 

 natural history of Cuba in Havana, in 1787; Don Joseph C. Mutis, a learned 

 Spanish ecclesiastic and physician, professor of natural history in the 



•Erlangen, 1788, 2 vols., octavo. 



* Philosophical Transactions, L, Pt. 2, 1758, p. 859. 



