io (£arlg 33otantral Wxittxs. 



from me. I am now return'd into my Native Countrey; 

 and, by the providence of the Almighty and the bounty 

 of my Royal Soveraigness, am difpofed to a holy quiet of 

 ftudy and meditation for the good of my foul; and being 

 blefled with a tranfmentitation or change of mind, and 

 weaned from the world, may take up for my word, non eft 

 mortale quod optoP 



We may fuppofe that a rude acquaintance with the 

 more common or important animals of a new country will 

 commence with the difcovery of it. Thus the beginning 

 of European knowledge of the marine animals of Ameri- 

 ca goes back, doubtlefs, to the earlieft fifheries of New- 

 foundland ; and thefe began almoft immediately after the 

 difcovery of the continent. Game and peltry were alfo 

 likely to come to the knowledge of the earlieft adven- 

 turers; and fcattered among thefe, from the firft, were 

 doubtlefs men capable of regarding the world of new 

 objects around them with an intelligent, if not a literate 

 eye. Defcriptions in this way, and fpecimens, at length 

 reached Europe, and became known to the learned there 

 — to Gefner, Clufius, and Aldrovandus — from as early as 

 the middle of the fixteenth century. Without being 

 naturalifts, fuch obfervers as Heriot in Virginia (1585-6) 

 and Wood in Maflachufetts (1634) could give valuable 

 accounts of what they faw; and more, it may well be, 

 was due to the Chriftian millionaries, who accompanied or 

 followed the adventurers, for the converlion of the heathen. 

 Gabriel Sagard was one of thefe miflionaries, a recollet or 

 reformed Francifcan monk, who went from Paris to 



