Note 25 — INTRODUCTION.

The late Dr. Waterhouse, Professor of Medicine at Cambridge, read lectures on Natural History to his classes as early as 1788, and published the botanical part of these lectures in the Monthly Anthology, 1804-8; reprinting this in 1811, with the title of the Botanist (Boston, 8vo, pp. 228). In the preface to this volume, the author’s are claimed to have been the first public lectures on Natural History given in the United States. The Massachusetts Professorship of Botany and Entomology was founded in 1805, and the Botanical Garden in 1807; but the eminent naturalist who first filled the chair left little behind him to bear witness to his acknowledged “learning and genius.”—Quincy, Hist. Harv. Univ., vol. ii. p. 330. The studies of Peck were not, however, confined to the Fauna and Flora of New England; and his distinguished successors in the lecture-room and the botanical garden—Mr. Nuttall, the late Dr. Harris, and Professor Gray—may be said to have maintained a like general, rather than local character, in the entomological and botanical investigations pursued at the University.