Uogaps of Jofnt Soggelgn. 
9 
he, by any means, uninterefted in prefcriptions for the 
kitchen; as fee his elaborate recipe for cooking eels 
(Voyages, p. in), and alfo that {ibid., p. 190) for a com- 
pound liquor "that exceeds fiajfada, the Nectar of the 
country;" which is made, he tells us, of " Syder, Maligo- 
Raifons, Milk, and Syrup of Clove-Gilliflowers." But his 
curiofity in natural hiftory, and efpecially in botany, is his 
chief merit; and this now gives almoft all the value that 
is left to his books. 1 William Wood, the author of 
"New-England's ProfpecV (London, 1634 2 ), was a bet- 
ter obferver, generally, than Joffelyn ; but the latter makes 
up for his other fhort-comings by the particularity of his 
botanical information. 
The " Voyages " was Joffelyn's laft appearance in print. 
He was already advanced in years, and alludes to this at 
page 69 of the prefent book, where he fays he fhall refer 
the further inveftigation of a curious plant — of which a 
neighbor, " wandering in the woods to find out his ftrayed 
cattle," had brought him a fragment — " to thofe that are 
younger, and better able to undergo the pains and trouble 
of finding it out." " Henceforth," he declares in his 
"Voyages," p. 151, "you are to expect no more Relations 
black." Dr. Mitchell, the botanist of Virginia, has a paper upon the same topic, 
— the cause of the negro's color, — in the Philosophical Transactions ; but this 
appears less in accordance with more recent researches (Prichard, Nat. Hist, of 
Man, p. 81) than Josselyn's observations. 
1 " His book is a curiosity, sometimes worth examining, but seldom to be im- 
plicitly relied on." — Savage, in Winthrop, N. E., vol. i. p. 267, note. 
2 Reprinted, the third edition, with an introductory essay and some notes; 
Boston, 1764, — the edition made use of in these notes. 
B 
