The Tradescants 261 



was the first who brought together any considerable collec- 

 tion of subjects of natural history. His name is immor- 

 talised in the genus Tradescantia, a spider-wort which he 

 had introduced from Virginia. Parkinson, in his " Paradisus 

 terrestris," speaks of the elder Tradescant as " a painful 

 industrial searcher and lover of all nature's varieties," and 

 having " wonderfully laboured to obtain all the rarest fruits 

 he can hear of in any place of Christendom, Turkey, yea, 

 or the whole world." 



His only child, John Tradescant (1608-1662), was born 

 at Meopham, Kent, and apparently succeeded his father as 

 gardener to Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1637, the younger 

 Tradescant was in Virginia gathering all varieties of ferns, 

 plants, and shells for the museum at Lambeth, and in 1656 

 he published his " Museum Tradescantianum : or collection 

 of rareties preserved in South Lambeth, near London." In 

 this task he was assisted by his friend Ashmole, and the 

 book, which runs into 179 pages, contains lists of birds, 

 mammals, fish, shells, insects, minerals, war instruments, 

 utensils, coins, and medals. It is interesting to note that 

 he had a complete " dodar " from the island of Mauritius. 

 This was the celebrated stuffed dodo of which the head and 

 foot are still preserved at Oxford. The complete body had 

 been studied by Willughby and Ray. On the 12th December 

 1659, Ashmole notes in his diary that " Mr. Tradescant and 

 his wife told me they had been long considering upon whom 

 to bestow their Closet of Curiosities when they died, and at 

 last had resolved to give it unto me." Ashmole had built 

 himself a large brick house near Lambeth adjoining that 

 which had been Tradescant's, and shortly after its comple- 

 tion removed the collection to his new house, and in 1677 

 he announced his intention of giving his collection to the 

 University of Oxford, on condition that a suitable building 

 be built to receive it. This was erected from the design of 

 Sir Christopher Wren, and the collections were transferred 

 to Oxford in 1683, when the name of Tradescant was rather 

 unjustly sunk in that of Ashmole. 



There was a lull in Zoological Science during the 

 eighteenth century in our islands, and only the names of 

 one or two outstanding zoologists appear. That of Thomas 



