THE NATURAL HISTORY OP DISTANT LANDS 59 



of the sea-serpent a league and a half long, and of 

 swallows which pass the winter at the bottom of lakes 

 and rivers. Some of these fables long continued to 

 figure in natural history books. 



The interest with which Europe received the announce- 

 ment of a new continent across the Atlantic was 

 heightened by the report that it was peopled by strange 

 animals and plants, unknown to ancient or modern 

 naturalists. The species of North America, it has since 

 been discovered, for the most part belong to genera or 

 families which occur in Europe or temperate Asia, but 

 the West Indian islands, Brazil and Mexico (and it was 

 these of which the Spanish navigators brought intelli- 

 gence) possess a far more peculiar fauna and flora. 



On his return from his first voyage (1493) Columbus 

 exhibited to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, not 

 only six Indians waiting to be baptised, but live parrots 

 and a few stuflfed animals. In subsequent voyages he 

 paid such attention to natural history as his troubled 

 and wandering life permitted.^ The Decades of Peter 

 Martyr Anglerius^ were a chief source of information 

 to the readers of Europe during the early years of 

 the sixteenth century.* Anglerius had never crossed 

 the Atlantic, but his official position as chronicler of 

 Indian afiairs and member of council for the Indies 

 made him acquainted with every new exploration. He 



^Humboldt has remarked the closeness of Columbus' observation of all 

 natural phenomena. Among other things he noted the solitary seed of 

 Podooarpus, an aberrant South American conifer. Hardly any American 

 explorer before Joseph de Acosta, he adds, showed any power of generalising 

 the facts of observation, except Columbus (Examen Oritiqibe, Vol. Ill, 

 pp. 20 foil. ). The Letters of Columbus do not seem to me to bear out the 

 statement as to his frequent and close observation of natural objects. 



" So named from his birth-place, Anghiera on Lake Maggiore. 



' De Orbe Novo Decades, Alcala, 1516. There is a translation into Italian 

 in the third volume of Ramusio. 



