Natural Hisfory, 127 



Professor of Natural History in the University of 

 Pennsylvania, has made very respectable additions 

 to the zoological science of our country, and dis- 

 played a degree of genius, diligence, learning, 

 and zeal, in this pursuit, which do honour to our 

 rising Republic, and which bid fair to place him 

 among the most accomplished and useful natu- 

 ralists of his time/ Besides the labours of these 

 and other scientific inquirers of America,' a large 

 amount of information respecting th-e animals of 

 our continent has been derived from intelligent 

 foreigners, who have either visited and explored 

 the interior of the country at different periods of 

 the century under review, or devoted themselves 

 to the acquisition of knowledge, from various 

 sources, respecting the new world. Among these, 

 Gronovius, Kalm, Schoepf, Buffon, and several 

 others, deserve to be mentioned with honour. 



BOTANY. 



In this branch of natural history the succession 

 of discoveries and improvements which the period 

 before us has displayed, is in the highest degree 

 honourable to modern science. At the opening 

 of the eighteenth century. Botanical Philosophy, 

 though it had been long cultivated, was still in a 



k See Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsyl-vamay Essay on the 

 Fascinating Poivtr ascribed to Serpents, &c. and several memoirs on particu- 

 lar articles in zoology in the American Philosophical Transactions. 



I It would be easy to mention the names of many respectable American 

 Gentlemen, who have done honour to themselves by giving new and va- 

 luable descriptions of particular animals which came under their observa- 

 tion. In such a list, Mr. Jefferson, Dr. Mitchill, Rev. Mr. Hecke- 

 WELDER, and a number of others, would be entitled to distinction. To these 

 might be added the names of the Rev. Drs. Belknap and Williams, 

 who, in their respective Histories of NeivHampshire and Ferrnont, after the 

 example of Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, have given valuable 

 catalogues of the native animals of those States. But it is impossibl'j for 

 the author, consistently with the limits which he has prescribed to himself, 

 *o indulge the disposition which he fech to enter into such details. 



