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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352 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL the wit and policy of men her hunters, (for being inclosed, she can never get out again,) the Hunters being at hand to watch her down- fall, and work her overthrow, first of all to save her young ones from taking and taming, she destroyeth them all with her own teeth; for there was never any of them taken alive; and when she seeth the Hunters come about her, she roareth, cryeth, howleth, brayeth,
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Above, the iguana; below, the manatee, or sea-cow. Both fig- ures are from Oviedo's History of the Indies, 1535, and are the earhest known representations of tliese animals and uttereth such a fearfull, noysome and terrible clamor, that the men which watch to kill her, are not thereby a little amazed, but at last being animated, because there can be no resistance, they approach, and with their darts and spears wound her to death, and then take off her skin, and leave the carcass in the earth. And this is all that I finde re- corded of this most savage Beast." Peter Martyr, as already remarked, gives the earliest and at the same time a very satisfactory account of the tapir. The next writer after the "Father of American history," as this author has been called, to describe the tapir is the bachiller Enciso, whose ' Suma dc Geo- grafia', was first published at Seville in 1519. In 1526 Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo pub- lished the Sumario, or epit- ome of his comprehensive history, and in chapters twelve and twenty-two of the shorter work are to be foimd excellent descrip- tions of the tapir and arma- dillo. The earliest printed figure of the armadillo is found in the Exoticorum of Clusius or L'Escluse (1605), in which work are also found figures, based upon original observation, of the sloth and manatee. De Laet in his Novus Orbis (1633), and George Marc- grav ^ in his justly famous treatise on Brazilian natu- ral history (1648), both copy the figure given by Clusius of the rare three-banded armadillo. 1 There have been published, by Martins and Liclitenstein, excellent commentaries on the plants and animals of Brazil which were described by George Marcgrav and Wilhelm Piso imder the editorship of De Laet in 1648, and the same service was performed by Liclitenstein for the JNIexican quadrupeds described by Francisco Hernandez in the Latin edition of his Historiw Animalium published in 1628. (Abhandl. Akad. Wiss. Berlin 1827, pp. 88-127. See also earlier volimies for Marcgrav). On Hernandez and his works, see O. Rich, Books relating to America, pp. 72-74, and Joseph Sabin, Bibliotheca Ameri- cana, vol. viii, pp. 239-241. The commentary by Martius, the Munich botanist, is found in Ab- handl. k. bayer. Akad., 1853, vol. vii.

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