Beginnings of Natural History in America. 389 



the Society of Friends, accompanied William Penn to this coiintr}- in 

 1682 in the capacity' of secretary, and became a public man of promi- 

 nence, serving for two years as governor of the colon}- of Pennsylvania.. 

 He was a man of broad culture and was the author of a translation of 

 Cicero's De Senectute, printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1744. To L,ogan 

 belongs the honor of having carried on the first American investigations 

 in physiological botany, the results of which were published in L,eyden, 

 in 1739, in an essay entitled Experimenta et Meletemata de Plantarum 

 Generationis. This essay, which related to the fructification of the 

 Indian corn, was accepted in its day as a valuable contribution to 

 knowledge. 



Cadwallader Colden [b. 1688, d. 1776] was also a statesman and a 

 naturalist. A native of Scotland, he came to America in 1708, and, 

 after a short residence in Pennsylvania, settled in New York, where he 

 held the office of surveyor- general and member of the King's council, 

 and in later life was for many years lieutenant-governor, and frequently 

 acting governor of the province. His intellectual activity manifested 

 itself in various directions, and his History of the Five Indian Nations 

 of Canada, New York, 1727, was one of the earliest ethnological works 

 printed in America. He also was interested in meteorology and astron- 

 omy, and as a correspondent of lyinnaeus and Collinson did much to 

 advance the study of American botany. His daughter, Miss Jane Colden, 

 was the first lady in America to become proficient in the stud}- of plants. 

 She was the author of a Flora of New York, which was never published.' 

 Governor Colden's Plantce Coldenhamiae, the first part of a catalogue of 

 the plants growing in the neighborhood of his country residence, Colden- 

 ham, near Newburg, was the first treatise on the flora of New York. 

 It was published in 1744 in the acts of the Royal Society of Upsala.'' A 

 most interesting collection of papers from the scientific correspondence of 

 Colden was published many years ago by Doctor Asa Gray.^ 



Hans vSloane, a young Irish physician [b. 1660, d. 1753], who had 

 been a pupil of Tournefort and Magnol, visited the West Indies in 1684, 

 and after his return printed a Catalogue of Jamaica Plants in 1696, and 

 later a sumptuously illustrated work on the natural histor}- of Jamaica 

 (1707-1725). After his return he became an eminent physician, and in 

 1727 succeeded Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society. The 

 collection of animals and plants made by vSir Hans Sloane in America 

 was greatly increased by him during his long and active life, and, having 

 been bequeathed by him to the nation, became, upon his death in 1753, 

 the nucleus of the British Museum. 



Another naturalist of the same general character was Mark Catesby 

 [b. 1679, d. 1749], who lived in Virginia, 17 12 to 1721, collecting and 



' Brendel in American Naturalist, December, 1879, p. 756. 

 = John Torrey, Flora of New York, Albany. 1843. 

 3 American Journal of Science, XLIV, 1843, P- 85. 



