The Beginnings of Natural History in America: An Address Delivered at the Sixth Anniversary Meeting of the Biological Society of Washington

A tlantic, prepared tjie way for the great armies of immigrants who were to follow. ,I twas also the anniversary of an important event in the history of science, for among the colonists was THOMAS HARRIOTT the first English man of science who crossed the A tlantic. His name is familiar to few, save those who love the time-browned pages and quaint narrations of Hakluyt, Purchas, and Pinkerton ;yet Harriott was foremost among the scholars of his time the Huxley or the Stokes of his day a man of wide culture, a skillful astronomer, a profound mathematician, the author of a standard treatise upon algebra, and a botanist, zoologist, and anthropologist withal. He had been the mathematical instructor of Raleigh, and in obeying this summons to go forth upon the present expedition, gave to it, says A nderson, the most valuable aid which could be derived from human strength. This eminent man deserves more than a passing notice on this occasion, and I have taken pains to bring together all that is known about him. He was born at Oxford in 1560, or as old Anthony Wood quaintly expresses it, he tumbled out of his mothers womb into the lap of the Oxonian muses, and, at an early age, was entered as a scholar in St. Mary s Hall, receiving his bachelors degree in 1579. He was soon received into Raleigh sfamily as his instructor in mathematics, and, at the age of twenty-five, made his voyage to A merica. After his return he was introduced by Raleigh to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, one of the most munificent patrons of science of that day, who allowed him a pension of 120 a year. A bout the same time, we are told, Hues, well known by his Treatise upon the Globes, fand Walter Warner, who is said to have given Harvey the first hint concerning the circulation of the blood, being both of them mathematicians, received A nderson: History of the Church of England in the Colon
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