[104] Wood’s account (New-Eng. Prospect, l. c.) is worth comparing with Higginson’s (New-England’s Plantation, l. c.) and with Josselyn’s, both here and at pp. 23 and 114 of the Voyages. Wood justly says of this “most poisonous and dangerous creature,” that it is “nothing so bad as the report goes of him.... He is naturally,” he continues, “the most sleepy and unnimble creature that lives; never offering to leap or bite any man, if he be not trodden on first: and it is their desire, in hot weather, to lie in paths where the sun may shine on them; where they will sleep so soundly, that I have known four men to stride over them, and never awake her.... Five or six men,” he adds, “have been bitten by them; which, by using of snake-weed” (compare the preface to this, p. 119), “were all cured; never any yet losing his life by them. Cows have been bitten; but, being cut in divers places, and this weed thrust into their flesh, were cured. I never heard of any beast that was yet lost by any of them, saving one mare” (l. c.). Of other serpents, Wood mentions the black snake; and Josselyn, in his Voyages (l. c.), speaks of “infinite numbers, of various colours;” and especially of “one sort that exceeds all the rest; and that is the checkquered snake, having as many colours within the checkquers shadowing one another as there are in a rainbow.” He says again, “The water-snake will be as big about the belly as the calf of a man’s leg” which is, perhaps, the water-adder. Josselyn adds, “I never heard of any mischief that snakes did” (l. c.); and so Wood: “Neither doth any other kind of snakes” (the rattle-snake always excepted, as no doubt dangerous when trodden on) “molest either man or beast.” There are perhaps no worse prejudices in common life, than those which breed cruelty. In the Voyages (p. 23), our author makes mention “of a sea-serpent, or snake, that lay quoiled up like a cable upon a rock at Cape Ann. A boat passing by with English aboard, and two Indians, they would have shot the serpent: but the Indians disswaded them; saying, that, if he were not kill’d outright, they would be all in danger of their lives.” This was from “some neighbouring gentlemen in our house, who came to welcome me into the countrey;” and it seems, that, “amongst variety of discourse, they told me also of a young lyon (not long before) killed at Piscataway by an Indian;” which, indeed, was possibly not without foundation. And as to the serpent, compare a Report of a Committee of the Linnæan Society of New England relative to a large marine animal, supposed to be a serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Mass., in August, 1817 (Boston, 1817); which contains also a full account of a smaller animal—supposed not to differ, even in species, from the large—which was taken on the rocks of Cape Ann.—See also Storer, Report on the Reptiles of Mass.; Supplement, p. 410.
[105] The author continues his entomological observations, in his Voyages, p. 115; and the account is fuller than Wood’s; New-England’s Prospect, chap. xi.
[106] Gerard by Johnson, p. 17,—Carex flava, L.; the first species of this genus indicated in North America, and common also to Europe. There is no doubt of the reference, taking Josselyn’s name to be meant for specific, and to refer to Gerard’s first figure with the same name. But it is certainly possible that our author had in view only a general reference to Gerard’s fourteenth chapter, “Of Hedgehog Grasse,” which brings together plants of very different genera; and, in this case, his name is of little account. Cutler (Account of Indig. Veg., l. c., 1785) mentions three genera of Cyperaceæ, but not Carex; nor did he ever publish that description of our true Gramineæ “and other native grasses,” which, he says (l. c., p. 407), “may be the subject of another paper.” The first edition of Bigelow’s Florula Bostoniensis (1814) has seven species of Carex, which are increased to seventeen in the second edition (1824); the list embracing the most common and conspicuous forms. The genus has since been made an object of special study, and the number of our species, in consequence, greatly increased. A list of Carices of the neighborhood of Boston, published by the present writer in 1841 (Hovey’s Mag. Hort.), gives forty-seven species; and Professor Dewey’s Report on the Herbaceous Plants of Massachusetts, in 1840, reckons ninety-one species within the limits of his work.
[107] Johnson’s Gerard, p. 42,—English matweed, or helme (the other species being excluded, as not English, by our author’s caption); which I take to be Calamagrostis arenaria (L.) Roth, of Gray, Man., p. 548; called sea-matweed in England, and common to Europe and America. But if the author only intended to refer to Gerard’s “Chapter 34, of Mat-weed,”—which is perhaps, on the whole, unlikely,—his name is of no value.
[108] Gerard, p. 46,—Typha latifolia, L.,—common to America and Europe.
[109] Gerard, p. 47,—Stellaria graminea, L.; for which our author mistook, as did Cutler a century after, the nearly akin S. longifolia, Muhl.
[110] Appears not to be meant for a specific reference to any of Gerard’s species; but only an indication of the genus, with the single distinguishing character of color, which was enough to separate the New-England plants from the only British one referred by Gerard to Iris. Both of our blue-flags are peculiar to the country.
[111] Not one of Gerard’s bastard daffodils, but his dog’s-tooth, p. 204 (Erythronium, L.). Our common dog’s-tooth was at first taken for a variety of the European, but is now reckoned distinct.
[112] Gerard, p. 205,—Orchis, L., etc. It is here clear that the name is used only in a general way. The second name (Satyrion), perhaps, however, makes our author’s notion a little more definite, and permits us to refer the plants he had probably in view to species of Platanthera, Rich. (Gray, Man., p. 444), of which only one is certainly known to be common to us and Europe.
[113] Gerard, em. p. 257,—Nasturtium officinale, L. Reckoned also by Cutler, and indeed naturalized in some parts of the country (Gray, Man., p. 30); but our author had probably N. palustre, DC. (marsh-cress), if any thing of this genus, and not rather Cardamine hirsuta, L. (hairy lady’s smock), in his mind. Both the last are common to us and Europe.—Gray, l. c.