File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17538490384).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo15amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY 355 ern hemisphere. A real service to science, as well as to the study of history and geo- graphy, has been rendered by Dr. E. L. Stevenson, in his facsimile reprints of six- teenth and seventeenth century world maps published under the auspices of the Hispanic Society of America. It will suffice to mention at this point the names of several authors who treated more or less extensively the natural history of the New World during the lat- ter half of the sixteenth century. The figures and descriptions of South Ameri- can animals given by Andre Thevet in his Singu- laritez de la France Antarctique (1558), and by Jean de Lery, in his Voyage en Brazil (1578), were freely made use of in a number of later com- pilations, one such be- ing the II is- ioria Na- turoe (1635) of Juan E. Nieremberg, a Jesuit pro- fessor at Madrid. Another was a His- tory of the Indies, in Latin, published at Florence in 1588 by the Jesuit Father Giovanni Maffei, who had access to the archives in Lisbon. Many interesting notices are to be found in La Historia del Mondo Nuow (1565), by the Italian traveler Girolamo Benzoni; also in the collection of voyages and travels pub- lished by Ramusio in 1556 and 1565, and in the "Observations" (1593) of the famous English freebooter. Sir Richard Hawkins. The following extract on the Barring the feet, which are crow-lilie, not a bad idea of a Brazilian toucan, Rhamphastus. (From Thevet's "Singularitez," 1558) chinchilla may serve as a specimen of Sir Richard's natural history notes: Amongst others (the Chileans) they have Uttle beastes like unto a squirrell, but that he is gray; his skin is the most deUcate soft and curious furre that I have seene, and of much estimation (as is of reason) in the Peru; few of them come into Spaine because it is diffi- cult to be come by; for that the princes and nobles laie waite for them. They call this beast chinchilla, and of them they have great abundance. More important from a scientific standpoint and more trustworthy than any of the minor writers just men- tioned are the works of the two Spanish c h r oniclers Jose de A- costa and Antonio de H e r r e r a, who wrote toward the end of the sixteenth and begin- ning of the seventeenth century re- spec tively. The Jesuit historian de Acosta (1590) would seem to have been the first wi'iter to notice the chinchilla, and he refers particularly, as do also Cieza de Leon and Garcilasso de la Vega, to the bones of fossil mam- mals found in the Campo de los Gigantes (Savanna of Bogota). Similar remains were also noted in Mexico by Francisco Hernandez, whose HistoricB Animalium (1628) remained for a long time in manuscript before being finally edited and published. (Article to be concluded in December Journal)
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