Note Note 9, page 18 — BOOK I. RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY.

Notions about animals. The animals of the new continent excited the wonder of the people of Europe and increased the interest in America. Regarding them, also, the most extravagant stories were easily credited. It was recorded in the sober Latin of Peter Martyr that the advance of Cabot's ships was retarded by the multitude of codfish on the Newfoundland coast, and that the bears were accustomed to catch these fish in their claws. Note 9. It is hard to recognize the familiar opossum in the description by Purchas: "A monstrous deformed beast, whose fore part resembleth a fox, the hinder part an ape, excepting the feet, which are like a man's; beneath her belly she hath a receptacle like a purse, where she bestows her young until they can shift for themselves." The humming bird was believed to be a cross between a fly and a bird. The Hudson River Dutch settlers went further, and named it simply "the West Indian bee." These dainty creatures were prepared for exportation to Europe in New Amsterdam by drying them, in Barbadoes by filling them with sand. Evelyn's Diary, i, 277. They were accounted "pretty delicacies for ladies, who wore them at their breasts and girdles." Evelyn saw two preserved as great rarities at Oxford, in 1564. A New England versifier extols