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. 



* * * * * *** -jfr 



One characteristic, remarks his biographer, of w4iich 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 doubdess 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 pleased 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 are 

 copied from his own rough draught of both, in his earliest hand, af- 

 ter he had corrected the language of each with very great care, are 

 contained in the two following letters 5 both of which, as left in the 

 rough draught, are without the date and the name of the correspon- 

 dent, and the latter, though in the form of a letter, has not the cus- 

 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 



* No trace' o£ ffie name or residence of the jcorrespondent is preserved in the pa- 

 pers; but from the care taken by the son to irrform him that the sea lay on the east 

 of New England, he probably did not reside in this, but in the mother country. 



