110 On North American Spiders. 
science, might have added another Newton to the extraordinary age 
in which he commenced his career; for his star was just rising as 
Newton’s was going down. ‘The paper on spiders, appears to have 
been written in 1715. 
*% * eageys ts We * * * % 
One characteristic, remarks his biographer, of which he has not 
generally been suspected, but which he possessed in an unusual de- 
gree, was a fondness, minutely and critically to investigate the works 
of nature. This propensity was not only discovered in youth and 
manhood, but was fully developed in childhood, and at that early pe- 
riod was encouraged and cherished by the fostering hand of paren- 
tal care. This will be obvious from the two subsequent productions 
of his pen, which were written on the following occasion. His fath- 
er had some correspondent of distinction, to whom in the course of 
his letters, he had given an account, of an interesting natural curiosi- 
ty. This gentleman, who probably resided in England,* in the post- 
script of his reply expressed a desire, that he would favor him with 
any other information that he might possess of a similar kind. The 
son had not long before been busily engaged in observing, with deep 
interest and with a philosophic eye, the wonderful movements and 
singular skill of. that species of Spider which inhabits the forest ; and 
having written down his own observations, had doubtless read them 
in the hearing of the family. The father, gratified with this discov- 
ery of his son’s talents and power of observation, and pleas d_ with 
this early effort of his pen, encouraged him to turn it into the form 
of a letter, and to send it to his correspondent, in his own name, with 
an apology of his own. The apology and the account, which a 
copied from his own rough draught of both, in his earliest hand, a 
ter he had corrected the language of each with very great care, a 
contained in the two following letters ; both of which, as left in the 
rough draught, are without the date and the name of the correspo? 
dent, and the latter, though in the form of a letter, has not the us 
tomary form of conclusion. 
“ May it please your Honor,—In the postscript of your letter to 
my father, you manifested a willingness to receive any thing else that 
he has observed worthy of remark, respecting the wonders of nature 
What there is an account of in the following lines, is by him thought 
Lge 
* No trace of the name or residence of the correspondent is preserved in the p® 
pers; but from the care taken by the son to inform him that the sea lay on the east 
of New England, he probably did not reside in this, but in the mother country: 
