[ a second-window aside with ]

The Editor’s
I N T R O D U C T I O N

F O R   A N   O R I G I N A L

R O S E S . C O M M U N I C A T I N G​ B Y​ D E S I G N .​ C O M

D I G I T A L   E D I T I O N

The following Editor’s Introduction is divided into 5 sections:

•  Section 1	Preliminaries
•  Section 2	Part 1 of The Planter’s Speech
•  Section 3	Part 2 of The Planter’s Speech
•  Section 4	Publication and distribution
•  Section 5	References

N O T E :  There are 31 “hover” boxes used on this Web page. To learn more about DHTML hover-box technology and possible display problems with it (especially if you are using Google Chrome or Opera for Web browsing and/or viewing this Web page on a mobile device), visit our FYI page, “A Note about this Website’s Use of Hover Boxes.” To view all 31 of this Web page’s hover notes as a separate Web page (where they are clustered together like end-notes), click/tap here.

---

Introducing: Thomas Tryon’s The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ... (1684)

§  Preliminaries

This 80-page treatise was first printed in 1684 as chapters 4 and 5 of Tryon’s handbook on animal husbandry and veterinary medicine, The Country-Man’s Companion. This book, which was reprinted in 1688, argued for the humane treatment of all our “Fellow-Creatures”:

The Righteous Man (saith the inspired Prophet) is Merciful to his Beast: Which Mercy, Compassion or Pittifulness consists not only in his not abusing them with excessive Labour, and unreasonable Stripes and Hardships, but in providing for them convenient Food, and helping to free them of Diseases and Infirmities, when by his own or other Negligence or ignorant Conduct, Distempers are brought upon them; or rather in such a prudent and moderate Government and Use of them, as may prevent, and give no occasion for such Evils.
   ’Tis generally said, and very truly, That Man is the Vice-Roy of the Creation, and to him is given Dominion over the Beasts of the Earth; but this rule is not absolute or tyrannical, but qualified as it may most conduce, in the first place, To the Glory of God, 2dly, To the real Use and Benefit of Man himself, and not to gratifie his fierce and wrathful or foolish and wanton Humor; and 3rdly, As it best tends to the helping, aiding and assisting those Beasts, to the obtaining all the Advantages their Natures are by the great, bountiful and always beneficent Creator made capable of; For as a Shepherd is the Ruler of his Flock and yet is bound to feed as well as fleece them: And as Angels, though of a kind superior to us, yet by Gods Decree are Ministring Spirits, and often imploy’d for the good of their Inferior (Man) so will not any wise, or (which is all one) good Man think it below him to descend to do good Offices to these under-graduated Fellow-Creatures of his, whom some with a proud disdainful Scorn call Dumb Creatures and Brute Beasts, though yet they will have a Voice to cry against their Oppressions; and if all things were rightly weighed, the former would appear much more Brutish (that is, more Absurd, and acting more contrary to the pure Dictates of unbyass’d and indepraved Nature) than the latter. It being certain that Lyons and Tygers are not more savage and cruel, Geese and Asses not half so stupid, Foxes and Monkies less knavish and ridiculous, Wolves not more ravenous, nor Goats more lascivious than abundance of those grave Bearded Animals that pride themselves with the empty Title of Rational Souls, whilst the whole bent of their Lives and Actings is Diametrically opposite to all the Precepts of Reason, and even of common Sense.
   This is not said to undervalue the Noble Dignity of Humane Nature, whereon the Adorable All-bless’d Creator vouchsafed originally to impress his own Image, but to remind that Insolent Creature (Man) (too apt to forget it) of his miserable degenerate state, and to awaken him to aspire to that real Dignity which he seems almost wholly to have forgot.
   And as in a former Treatise I have endeavoured to bring Man acquainted with, and prudently to govern himself (an Empire far more Happy and Glorious than any the Alexanders or the Caesars could by their Murthering Arms achieve) so in this short Discourse my aim is to offer some Helps for his better Management of two of the most useful Inferior Creatures committed to his charge, I mean, Horses and Sheep, concerning both which I have observed great Errors to have been committed, as well to their own Loss and Damage as to the Prejudice of those poor Creatures, by many that have the keeping of them.

(T. Tryon, The Country-Man’s Companion, 1st edn., 1684, A2r–A3v)

The archaic phrase “Inferior Creatures” will strike many of us today as at odds with a pointed animal-rights message, but for Tryon the phrase was simply descriptive of his culture’s socio-political hierarchies, and nothing more. “Superior” (powerful) and “Inferior” (less powerful) creatures did not imply value judgments or rankings based on the innate worth of either class. Indeed, Tryon was a radical egalitarian, arguing that equality for all was the true natural order of things, and a guiding principle for any utopian “Society of Clean and Innocent Livers,” as he hoped would be constructed in the American colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In the section of his posthumously-published Memoirs entitled “Some certain Principles, Maxims and Laws, which ought to be imbraced and observed by all such as have the Government either of Families, or Societies, and would Train them up in Temperance, Cleanness, Order, and innocency of Life,” Tryon mandated:

   6. Thou art to believe, that as all the illuminated and beautified Creatures, both of the Celestial and Terrestrial Globe, are the Works of the Eternal Creator, and have his Image and Signature stamped upon them, each according to its kind: So likewise, that his Paternal Love, Care, and preserving Power, is equally dispensed to each in due measure, according to its kind, even to the meanest of them.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 74–5)

   9. The preserving Powers of the Almighty, being equal and universal, not Limited to any particular Creature. Thou art therefore to take notice that the good Powers of Life, are as near and dear to one Creature, as to another; to the most Inferior, as much as to the most Superior.
   10. Thou shalt therefore believe, that it is a great and heinous Evil against thy Father, to oppress, starve, or kill any Creature, they being all his Children; and that as thou art bound to honour and imitate him, thou oughtest to preserve them in their natural Strength and Beauty, remembring that Health and Life are as valuable and precious to the Creatures, to each in its Kind, as to Man.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon, 1705, 76–8)

   1. Thou shalt not kill, oppress, hunt, hurry, nor offer any kind of Violence either to Mankind, or any Creature, either of the Air, Earth, or Water; they all bear thy Creator’s Image, and have his Laws of Order, Number, Weight and Measure, stamped in the Center of their Lives. Many of them likewise, are thy faithful Servants: And as true Religion chiefly consists in the imitating of our Creator; thou shalt therefore govern them in Love, Mercy, and Equality, even as he governs the World; all the numerous Inhabitants whereof, are his Children, both Superior and Inferior, and accordingly his Paternal preserving Care over them, is universal, and without partiality: And as thou wouldest not have thy Children whom thou hast begot, made and created, by Vertue and Power of the in-dwelling Word planted in the Center of thy Life; so neither must thou dare to destroy, or violate any Creature whatsoever; for they are thy Brethren, having the same Father, Creator, and Preserver with thy self, and participate equally with thee, according to their Natures, of his Care and Influence.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon, 1705, 82–4)

The same egalitarian principle applied to human interrelations, causing Tryon to remove the economic underpinnings of his culture’s gender hierarchies by mandating that “thy Daughters” inherit “equally ... with thy Sons”:

   11. Thou shalt imitate thy great Creator, in the distribution of thy Favours and Goods to thy Children, and as he has an equal regard to all his Offspring, distributing his fructifying Dews on every Field, and his preserving Care to every Creature: So shalt thou be equally careful of all thy Children, and shalt be impartial in the distribution of thy Talents amongst them, making thy Daughters equally Sharers with thy Sons, and thy younger Children with the Eldest: But if any of thy Children transgress the Laws of Innocency and Cleanness, and defile himself, dishonouring and disobeying thee; then thou shalt not give him any Portion or Share of thy Goods, unless with great Submission he acknowledge his Fault, and forsake the Evil.
   12. If any one die Childless, he shall divide his Estate into so many Portions as he hath Relations, duely weighing their Nearness and Circumstances; first having allotted one Portion for the use of the Poor, which shall not be less than the Tenth of the whole.
   13. If any one, who has joyned himself to the Society of Clean and Innocent Livers, dies without a Will; in such a Case, the Heads or Elders of such Society, shall divide his Estate amongst his Children, if he have any; or if he have none, then amongst his Relations, still reserving one Portion for the Poor. And if the Intestate leave Wife and Children, the Wife shall have no more than each Child; all things shall be performed in Equality.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon, 1705, 89–92)

Such themes are consistent throughout Tryon’s oeuvre. Whether dealing with mundane domestic matters such as the health hazards of “soft Feather-beds,” the generation of fleas and their cure, and the proper preparation of inexpensive vegetarian “Pottage, Gruels and Paps” — or pressing social matters having to do with educational reform, religious freedom and “Liberty of Conscience,” colonialism, slavery, human rights, and animal cruelty — or the most weighty cosmic matters preoccupying mystic philosophers, such as the divinely-inspired mathematical patterns, beauty and splendor of “the Lofty Illuminated Orderly Coelestial Governments” — all of Tryon’s published works reflect, like The Country-Man’s Companion and The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., on questions of the nature of the universe and the individual’s relationship to God and his world. No subject was too small, or too large, for his prolific pen and his savvy publishers, earning him a broad audience, both at home and abroad:

During the 1690s most of Tryon’s works went into two or three editions, and seem to have been widely read by sectarians of various schools, both in Britain and in North America, one being Benjamin Franklin, who read and absorbed The Way to Health in his youth. The number of Tryon’s works in collections in the United States shows the extent of his influence on protestant emigrants....

(V. Smith, ODNB entry for Thomas Tryon, n. pag.)

By all accounts, Thomas Tryon — an autodidact, vegetarian, Pythagorean and disciple of the Silesian mystic Jakob Böhme (or Boehme, 1575–1624), philosopher–mystic in his own right (a precocious child, he had his first mystic experience at the age of 6), erstwhile colonist, successful London merchant, and polymath author — was a remarkable individual.

^ Thomas Tryon (1634–1703), aged 68. Line engraving by Robert White (1645–1704), published as a frontispiece to Tryon’s The Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God, and Good Government of the Mind and Body (2 vols., 1703–4).

Tryon’s person was described by the publisher (Tace Sowle) of his posthumously-printed Memoirs as follows: “He was of middle Stature, a little stooping or incurvated, Slender, but well compacted, active and nimble, his Eyes small, a little sinking into his Head, his Aspect easily discovering something Extraordinary; his Air cheerful, lively and brisk, but grave, with something of Austerity, tho’ he was of the easiest access; but notwithstanding he was of no strong Make, yet through his great Temperance, Regularity and prudent Management of himself, by the Strength of his Spirits and Vigour of his Mind, he was capable of any fatigue, even to his last Illness, equally with any of the best Constitution of half his Years, though all his life time he had been a Man of unwearied application, and so indefatigable, that it may be as truly said of him, as ever was, or possibly can be said of any Man, that he was never Idle.” (Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon, 1705, 64–6)
   Tryon died soon after this portrait was engraved, on “the 21st of August, 1703. of the Strangury or Retention of Urine; Aged Sixty Nine Years, wanting Sixteen Days. The Eleventh [hour] in the Morning his cruel Distemper took him ....” (Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon, 1705, 62)

At the end of the 18th century, Tryon was profiled by the printseller James Caulfield (1764–1826), who specialized in Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons (especially those with entertainment value who “lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.”). Caulfield’s short letterpress biography of Tryon, accompanied by a new reproduction of White’s by-then rare portrait engraving, cast Tryon as “a singular Enthusiast” and amusement for Enlightenment sensibilities, at the same time commending his bootstrapping work ethic:

Thomas Tryon was one among many instances to prove how much personal industry, aided by prudence, may effect. He was born at Bibury, in Gloucestershire, of parents in a very humble situation; his father was a plasterer and tile-maker, and, at five years of age, rendered his son useful towards earning a part to support himself, by spinning and carding of wool, and assisting him in his own trade of a plasterer, which occupation he quitted to assume the office of a shepherd. At thirteen years of age he first began to learn to read, and at fourteen, by the strictest frugality, he found himself master of several sheep, one of which he gave to be taught the art of writing; and, shortly afterwards, he sold his whole stock of sheep for three pounds, and with that sum in his pocket made the best of his way to London, in hopes of improving his little fortune: he was not long in finding a situation, and became apprentice to a hat-maker, at Bridewell Dock: he paid the greatest attention in learning his business, to which he devoted the whole of the day, and amused himself the greatest part of the night in reading; he was peculiarly attached to books of astrology and the occult sciences, and Lilly, Partridge, Booker, and others of the same class, were his infallible oracles. In imitation of Roger Crabb, the Uxbridge hermit, he rejected the use of animal food, and affected to consider the lives of the dumb creation as sacred. Having heated his imagination to the highest pitch, he boasted that by his “temperance, cleanliness, and innocency,” he was purified for celestial enjoyment, and had felt himself inspired with divine illuminations. He possessed, however, sufficient prudence to take care of that which the generality of the world call “the main chance.” He entered and pursued business with such attention and success, that he accumulated a considerable fortune. His amusements and fancies were innocent, and hurt none; and, like some other humourists, marked the progress of the spirit in a journal, in which he carefully noted the mighty working wonders of his prolific brain, and at forty-eight commenced author upon other subjects, not less extraordinary than the preceding.
   Tryon was of a sensible, enthusiastic mind, acting entirely from his own resolves; not submitting to the guidance or advice of any one; had society or friendship directed him, or assisted his experience and application, he might have produced something worthy remark, and we might have admired, and been improved, instead of wondering and smiling at his singular mode of burying birds, or laughing at his abomination of woollen cloth, and his permission for our wearing linen.
   He died, August 21, 1703, at the age of 69, when perhaps he had thoughts of remaining a series of ages in this world, through his tenderness to beasts, birds, fishes, insects and reptiles.

(J. Caulfield, Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, from the Revolution in 1688 to the End of the Reign of George II, 4 vols., 1819–20, 1.54–6)

Tryon was certainly an outlier, even when judged by his own age with its Baroque sensibilities, and took note of this fact in most of his works, including the title-page for his The Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God, and Good Government of the Mind and Body, written — “in opposition to tradition, custom and bigottry, the governors of the present, and all preceding generations” — for others, like himself, who sought radical change in their lives. Of note, one of these kindred spirits was the famous woman playwright, poet and novelist, Aphra Behn (1640?–1689), said to be “the first professional woman writer.”

^ Aphara (modernized Aphra) Behn (1640?–1689), after the portrait painted by Mary Beale (bap. 1633, d. 1699).

“Apharra” is the spelling used for the epitaph on Behn’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. According to an 18th-century edition of the Biographia Britannica, “Her grave is covered with a plain black marble stone, on which is the following inscription: ‘Mrs. Apharra Behn died Aprill the 16, 1689. / Here lies a proof that wit can never be / Defence enough against mortality. / Great Poetess, O thy stupendous lays / The world admires, and the Muses praise. / Revived by Thomas Waine in respect to so bright a genius.’” (Biographia Britannica, 2nd edn., 1778–93, 2.145)
   To her contemporaries, Aphra Behn was known by a variety of names, with an ever greater variety of spellings — Afra Behn, “Astrea Behn,” “Astera Behen,” “Mrs. Behn,” “Mrs. Ann Behn” — and sometimes by the appellation “Sappho,” referring to the great lyric poet Sappho of Lesbos, then often invoked as the personification of Poetry. Seventeenth-century references to “our Sappho Mrs. Behn” were always ambiguous, however, since Sappho was not just singled out for her invention of Sapphic verse, but also represented as a lascivious lover of women and a suicide. “Astrea” was no less ambiguous, having been Behn’s code name while engaged in espionage at Antwerp for the government of Charles II in 1666. Behn gained some useful intelligence, but was double-crossed abroad, and undermined at home. Her mission ended in failure when promised government funds were not forthcoming, and she had to take out a loan, she could not repay, in order to return to England.

^ Mary Beale (bap. 1633, d. 1699), with Husband and Son. Self-portrait. Oil painting on canvas, created c.1659–1660.

The puritan Mary Beale was a protofeminist who argued for equality between men and women, both in friendship and marriage, in a scribal publication, written during the late 1660s, before setting herself up at London as a professional artist (with her husband’s support) in 1670. She was also supported and mentored by the court painter, Sir Peter Lely.
   “She soon attracted a wide clientele from among the gentry and aristocracy, and from their own distinguished circle of friends, who included fellows of the Royal Society and puritan clergy .... Her prices were competitive: £10 for a three-quarter-length and £5 for a half-length portrait. Typical canvases feature warm brown colour tones and a feigned stone cartouche .... In 1671 Mary Beale’s income totalled £118 5s., rising to £429 by 1677; the latter was perhaps her most prosperous year. Additional information about the Beales is provided by their close friend Samuel Woodforde .... He describes Mary as a sympathetic and hospitable friend, while the attractive, puritan nature of their household is indicated by the family’s practice of regularly setting aside 10 per cent of their annual income for the poor, and by Woodforde’s comment, following a convivial occasion at their home: ‘We were very cheerful, and I hope, without sin’ (Woodforde, 2 Dec 1664).” (C. Reeve, ODNB entry for Mary Beale, n. pag.)

As such, Behn was also an outlier, and as a writer for the Restoration stage (where all manner of depravity held sway), Behn developed a reputation for lewd, immoderate, and unfeminine behavior. However, as critic George Woodcock points out, this bad-girl caricature was at odds with the autobiographical commentary infusing the commendatory poem she wrote on Thomas Tryon’s The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness (1st edn., 1683):

[W]hile [Behn] enjoyed convivial gatherings, she was always moderate in her tastes, and does not appear to have encouraged debauchery. Indeed, she seems in later life to have been converted to a fairly rigorous abstinence, if we are to judge from one of her poems addressed to “the author of that Excellent Book Intituled The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness”. This was Thomas Tryon, a Pythagorean and disciple of Jacob Boehme, who wrote an interesting early manual on rational principles of health, advocating a vegetable diet, with a planned use of herbs, and abstinence from alcohol, tobacco and similar luxuries. Tryon expressed his ideas in a remarkably moderate and unfanatical way, and remains one of the most interesting and readable advocates of this way of life. Aphra Behn was evidently much impressed by his theories, and saw their close connection with her own naturalism and her recurring vision of the Golden Age of primitive men.....
   This poem, and the fact that Tryon himself prefixed it not only to The Way of Health, but also to his later book, The Way to Make All People Rich; or Wisdom’s Call to Temperance and Frugality, seem to show that, at least in the later period of her life, there was no substance whatever in the accusations of immoderate debauchery that were levelled against Aphra Behn. This concern for abstinence may indeed seem somewhat incompatible with the introduction of milk punch, which evidently belongs to an earlier period; nevertheless, there is a sense of dignity and proportion in all Aphra Behn’s work, and a hatred of extremes of behaviour, that make it seem unlikely that she was ever addicted to immoderation in her style of life. No doubt she lived gaily and generously, but not luxuriously or violently; her love of pleasure was truly Epicurean, in that she seems to have preferred taking it in a balanced manner to indulging it in excess.

(G. Woodcock, The Incomparable Aphra, 1948, 85–7)

At age 47, Aphra Behn became a chronic sufferer of “some very painful and even conspicuously distorting form of rheumatic disease” (Woodcock, 194). The satirist Robert Gould jeered her physical deformities in print (“Sappho, famous for her Gout, and Guilt”) as did an anonymous versifier in the early part of 1687 (“Long with a Sciatica she’s beside lame, / Her limbs distortur’d, Nerves shrunk up with pain”).

However much time and sickness had worn away her beauty and twisted her into an ageing cripple, to be mocked by the wits of a hostile faction, she remained a woman of spirit from whose eyes the old gaiety and defiance were never wholly absent, who still regarded life and people with a vast and sympathetic interest. Struggling against growing odds, she went on writing, no longer for fame so much as for the bread that was necessary to keep her weakening body alive. The struggle had reached a bitter stage, and all her good humour was needed to enable her to live through the last two difficult years of her comparatively short life.

(G. Woodcock, The Incomparable Aphra, 1948, 195)

This painful disease no doubt added to the urgency with which she turned, late in life, to the “natural” regimens recommended by Thomas Tryon in his works eulogizing the benefits of a moderate diet, and abstinence from drink and luxurious living. The two authors had much in common, including time spent in the “West Indies,” with Behn at the new English colony of Surinam from 1663–4, and Tryon at Barbados for about 5 years, 1663–4 and c.1664/5–1668/9. The colonial experience had been formative for both. “Behn claimed that her virgin muse was American and implied that it was in Surinam that she wrote her first play, The Young King, partly based on the romance Cléopâtre by La Calprenède.” (J. Todd, ODNB entry for Aphra Behn, n. pag.) As recorded in his autobiographical fragment, Tryon’s experience in the Americas included the mystic revelation

About Two Years after Marriage, I took a Voyage to Barbadoes, where I staid about a Year; but in some little time after my return home, I went for Holland; but my Errand there not succeeding to my expectation, I quickly returned home; and after a short stay, went again for Barbadoes, where I continued about Four Years, making Beavers to Success. During some part of this time, I was mightily stirred up to a more than ordinary Abstinence, which call of Wisdom I obeyed, and lived for some Weeks on Bread and Water, the liberty of Eggs, Milk, Butter and Cheese, and every thing proceeding from the Animal Kingdom, being denied me; in which the Lord manifested himself to me most wonderfully, and taught and shewed me many great mysteries; which Mercy and Love I hope I shall never forget. After this I returned for England ....

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 40–2)

that set him on the path to wisdom:

The Knowledge of a Man’s Self, is a Key to the Knowledge of all other things: But this Self-knowledge is never the Subject of Discourse in a Publick House. No, thou must retire within thy self, and by turning thy Mind inwards, and living Temperately, Innocently, and Abstemiously, obeying the Voice of Wisdom, thou wilt attain that Rich Treasure which is accompanied with incomprehensible Satisfaction. By imploying our time, as we mentioned before, and living strictly in our Method of Self-denial, it pleased the Lord to make manifest to me many things which I never sought, or so much as thought of in the beginning of my Separation [i.e., from the vanities of this world] ....

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 51–3)

and which he would later teach to others in his books:

About the 48th Year of my Age, I had an inward Instigation to Write and Publish something to the World; and this Impression was upon my Spirit to that degree, that I could not be satisfied, till I had set down in Writing several things the Lord had manifested to me, relating both to Divine and Natural Wisdom; recommending to the World Temperance, Cleanness, and Innocency of Living; and admonishing Mankind against Violence, Oppression, and Cruelty, either to their own Kind, or any inferior Creatures, giving them Wisdom’s Bill of Fare, what Foods and Drinks are most proper for preserving the Health, and Chearfulness, both of Body and Mind. I writ down several Mysteries relating to God, and his Government in the Methods of Nature, which I had not by hear-say, nor borrowed from other Authors, but as they were impressed upon me by my good Genius through the Mercy of God. And if any be awakened by my Writings, and stirred up to obey Wisdom’s Voice, which is continually crying aloud to them from the Center of their own Hearts; let them give the Praise and Glory to the Almighty Power: To whose innocent Laws, if they would heartily submit themselves, he would make himself more and more known unto them, and fill their Minds not only with Knowledge, but with a full Peace and compleat Satisfaction.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 54–6)

^ Engraved frontispiece by Claude Mellan (1598–1688) for the Biblia Sacra (Paris, 1642), after a design by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665).

Poussin’s celebrated frontispiece to a Parisian edition of the Bible (1642) depicts the Neoplatonic notion of a veiled delivery of divine truth and universal law, wherein an impressive veiled figure holding a sphinx represents the mystical understanding of the Scripture.
   The figure in the left foreground personifies History, and is adapted from visual tradition popularized in the emblem literature. “In his frontispiece for the Biblia Sacra of 1642 Poussin has again recreated Ripa’s Historia from her source, the Roman Victoria. She stands under the apparition of God, [and] looks back to past times (‘guardando in dietro, cioè al tempo passato’ according to Bellori) and holds her pen in a book whose opened page is in the dark. The contrast between this darkness and the aureole of light surrounding God turns the darkness into a metaphor of writing; Poussin’s own remarks about the sphinx as a representation of the obscurity of enigmatic things can be seen in relation to this.” (Oskar Bätschmann, Nicolas Poussin: Dialectics of Painting, 1990, 58)

Behn’s poem promoting Tryon’s books and Pythagorean lifestyle took note of the fact that “Fools & Madmen thy great Work condemn,” advising Tryon (and by extension, his readers) to “scorn the Sots that want the Sence to learn” from him as she had:

On the Author of that excellent and learned Book, entituled, The Way to Health, long Life and Happiness.

Haile Learned Bard! who dost thy power dispence,
And show’st us the first state of Innocence,
That happy Golden Age, when man was Young,
When the whole Race was Vigorous and strong;
When Nature did her wonderous Dictates give,
And taught the noble Salvage [i.e., savage] how to live;
When Christal Streams, and every plentious Wood
Afforded harmless Drink and wholesome Food.
E’re that Ingratitude in Man was found,
His Mother-Earth with Iron Ploughs to wound;
When unconfin’d, the spacious Plains produc’d
What Nature crav’d, and more than Nature us’d;
When every Sence to Innocent delights,
Th’ agreeing Elements unforc’d invites;
When Earth was gay, and Heaven was kind and bright,
And nothing horrid did perplex the sight.
Unprun’d the Roses and the Jes’mine grew,
Nature each day drest all the World a-new,
And Sweets without mans aid each moment grew;
Till wild Debauchery did the Mind invade,
And Vice and Luxury became a Trade;
Surer than War it laid whole Countries waste,
Nor Plague, nor Famine ruin’d half so fast:
By swift degrees we took the Poyson in,
Regarding not the danger, nor the Sin.
Delightful, Gay and Charming was the Bait,
While Death did on th’ inviting Pleasures wait
And ev’ry Age produc’d a feebler Race,
Sickly their days, and those declin’d apace,
Scarce Blossoms blow, and wither in less space;
Till Nature thus declining by degrees,
We have recourse to rich Restoratives,
By dull advice from some of learned Note,
We take the Poyson for the Antidote;
Till sinking Nature, cloy’d with false Supplies,
O’re-charg’d, grows fainter, languishes and dyes.
These are the Plagues that o’re this Island reign,
And has so many threescore Thousands slain,
Till you the saving Angel, whose blest hand
Has sheath’d that Sword that threatn’d half the Land.
More than a Parent, Sir, we you must own,
They give but Life, but you prolong it on:
You an innocent Power with Heaven do show,
Give us long Life and lasting Vertue too.
Such were the mighty Patriarchs of old,
Who God in all his Glory did behold:
Inspir’d like you, they Heaven’s Instructions show’d,
And were as Godds amidst the wondering Crowd:
Not he that bore th’ Almighty Wand, cou’d give
Diviner dictates how to eat, and live:
And so essential was this cleanly Food
For mans eternal Health, eternal Good,
That God did for his first lov’d Race provide
What thou by Gods Example hast prescrib’d.
Oh! Mayst thou live to justifie thy Fame,
To Ages lasting, as thy glorious Name!
May thy own Life make thy vast Reasons good,
(Philosophy admir’d, and understood!)
To every Sence ’tis plain, ’tis great, and clear,
And divine Wisdom does o’re all appear.
Learning and knowledge does support the whole,
And nothing can thy mighty Truth controul.
Let Fools & Madmen thy great Work condemn,
I’ve try’d thy Methods, and adore thy Theam.
Adore the Soul that [c]ou’d such Truths discern,
And scorn the Sots that want the Sence to learn.

(A. Behn, poem prefixed to The Way to Make All People Rich: or, Wisdoms Call to Temperance and Frugality in a Dialogue between Sophronio and Guloso ..., by T. Tryon, 1685, n. pag.)

Behn’s poetic précis of Tryon’s philosophy of life is an excellent introduction to themes which were central to his The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ....

§  Part 1 of The Planter’s Speech

I have written elsewhere at this website about how the happiness doctrine was a core principle for English republicanism by the time Thomas Jefferson wrote “the pursuit of happiness” into the Declaration of Independence for the fledgling American republic:

We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

(U.S. Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776; as printed in 1809)

Cf. the first of 16 articles comprising Virginia’s seminal Declaration of Rights (May–June 1776), a document which profoundly influenced the United States Declaration of Independence (July 1776) and the United States Bill of Rights (completed in 1789, ratified in 1791). It first declared the pursuit of happiness an “inherent” human right:

THAT all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

(Article I of A DECLARATION of RIGHTS Made by the Representatives of the Good People of Virginia, Assembled in Full and Free Convention; which rights do pertain to them, and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government, as printed in 1809. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights was introduced at a General Convention of Delegates and Representatives, from the several counties and corporations of Virginia, held at the Capitol in the City of Williamsburg, on 6 May 1776, with Edmund Pendleton serving as president of the Convention. It was unanimously adopted on 12 June 1776.)

and also, in this same article, first advanced the foundational idea of economic rights as human rights, anticipating Franklin Roosevelt’s Economic Bill of Rights, which he delivered in the State of the Union Address in January 1944, by 1.5 centuries (more evidence for Norman Stockwell’s insight during his interview with Felicia Wong, “So this idea of economic rights as human rights is very much a part of our democratic history, and yet also has been kind of severed from it” [N. Stockwell, “‘We Need Both Equity and Rights,’” 62]).

When I wrote earlier at this website about “the pursuit of happiness” as an “unalienable right” for early republicans, I suggested that both Aristotle and Algernon Sidney were possible influences for this foundational concept.

Here, I would like to suggest that Thomas Tryon (and other authors, such as John Ogilby, who addressed English-speaking émigrés) was also influential. Certainly, Tryon’s discussion of “your proposed Happiness in America” in part 1 of The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ... indicates that the god-given right of all to pursue a “happy” life drove the Anglo-American colonial project from its inception:

Our business therefore here in this New Land is not so much to build Houses, and establish Factories, and promote Trades and Manufactories, that may enrich our selves, (though all these things in their due place are not to be neglected) as to erect Temples of Holiness and Righteousness, which God may delight in; to lay such lasting Frames and Foundations of Temperance and Virtue as may support the Superstructures of our future Happiness, both in this and the other World.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 8)

To secure such happiness for present and future generations, Tryon advocated “some degree” of separation “from the Vanities of this World” (The Planter’s Speech, 24) so that a sustainable regional economy could be built around

Simplicity, as well in Cloathing, as in Meats, Drinks and Exercises, by which we shall not only free our selves from unnecessary Bonds, needless Changes, vain Fashions, burthensome Inconveniences we have many Years laboured under, but also teach our Posterity this important Truth, That the fewer things we need, the Happier we are, and the more quiet we shall lead our Lives; Superfluity and Extravagant Desires being the Mother of all Need, Labour, Pain, Trouble and Diseases.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 24–5)

Here, as elsewhere, Tryon disdained the over-consumption of natural resources (a public commons) by the idle rich. In chapter 3 of The Country-Man’s Companion Tryon complains about the imbalances of an economy (like London’s) based on “vain and superfluous” consumption:

... do not some particular Persons spend as much daily in Wine, strong Drink and Rich Food, (compounded with as many Ingredients as there are weeks in the Year) as would well sustain ten, twenty or forty People in simple harmless Food? And is there not spent daily in one City, viz. in London, near Fifty Thousand Pounds Sterling in Wine, Brandy, and other Spirits and strong Liquors? which is Eighteen Million, Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds Sterling every year? A Prodigious Sum of Money to be swallowed up and pissed away in one year, by a parcel of Spoil-Goods, on a spot of Ground not above six or seven Miles long, and three or four broad! The greatest part of all which is spent in superfluity, and by idle People, as well to their own particular Prejudice, in point of Health, as to the Impoverishment of the Publick, and Robbing of the more Poor and Industrious of those necessary Supplies which God and Nature bountifully allow’d to all Mankind....

(T. Tryon, The Country-Man’s Companion, 1st edn., 1684, 91)

Not only did such a system waste precious resources, it promoted plutocracy and more idleness.

... My Father got an Estate by Oppression, Blood and Violence, and made me his Heir, why then should I work? Had not I Slaves to do my Drudgery? I am a Gentleman born and bred, who shall hinder me from taking my Pleasure in Carrouzing, Pampering my Carcass, diverting my self in all manner of Uncleanness and Idleness?

(T. Tryon, The Country-Man’s Companion, 1st edn., 1684, 97)

In Tryon’s view, the entitled children of the well-off were an especial threat to the new-building of a godly Christian society in America.

... Therefore the Wise Antients, and great Princes and Prophets, the better to obey the Commands of God, and imitate his Works, both Coelestial and Terrestrial, were skilled, not only in sublime Arts and Sciences, but also in all Husbandry, and the mannagement of Cattel; As Abraham the great and Pious Father of the Faithful, and his Son Isaac, and his Grand-son Jacob, and Royal David, &c. whose Sepulchers, or the Shadows of their Memories our modern superfluous DONS pretend to Honour, and yet at the same time scorn to imitate them, but hate and contemn their Deeds. That famous Patriarch Isaac did not say to his Son Jacob, Thou art my Heir, it does not become thee to spend thy time to understand Husbandry, or to be a Plow-man or a Shepherd, and a Companion of Clowns and Rusticks, but I will have thee bred a Gentleman, that is, Eat and drink of the best, and superfluously, and do no work, but ride up and down in thy Coach, and be waited upon by a parcel of Servants altogether as idle as thy self; and thou shalt Rack thy Tenants, and Domineer over the Poor, and oppress and violate their Rights, and spend their Labours, and the sweat of their Brows in Riot and Wantonness, and lead a lazy swaggering Life, and bear all out because thou art my Son, and well Descended. But alas! these Maxims of Education were not known or practised in those days, but the Prudent Fathers brought up their Dutiful and Laborious Children to their own Trades, and in honest Country Imployments. Jacob had twelve Sons, how many of them did he make Lawyers, University-men, or Inns-of-Court-Gentlemen? No, No; they were every one of them Shepherds, and were not ashamed of their Occupation, nor thought it any dishonour to their Birth; for those were the Golden Times, so much celebrated by the Antients, when Kings and Princes studied Wisdom, and preferr’d the true Knowledge of God and Nature in themselves before the vain Conceits of Ignorance, Ambition, or the outward and barren Noise of Lip-Learning, but Tutor’d their Children in the Mysteries of undisguised Nature, and contented themselves with plain Country-Lives, mean Clothing and simple Food, which render’d them sound and healthful, both in Body and Mind; their Children for that Reason being not so (subject to such a number of Diseases as ours, nor to Immature Deaths ....

(T. Tryon, The Country-Man’s Companion, 1st edn., 1684, 94–6)

Tryon’s fix for this immediate danger is to counsel that Pennsylvania’s colonial “Superiors” be required to lead by example, and thus “accustom themselves to an higher degree of Temperance and Self-Denial” than those they govern (The Planter’s Speech, 25). Fully aware that this, alone, would not be sufficient to protect against the socioeconomic threat from “vain and superfluous” consumption, Tryon also recommended that the North American colonists implement laws and/or high taxes to force the desired changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns.

And to ensure the happiness of all those laboring to build the new American paradise, Tryon pressed for a shortened, 6-hour work day:

The usual time of our Labour need not exceed Six Hours in a natural day; for if every one performs that duely according to the Obligation which the Lord hath laid upon men in general, without exception, & content themselves with innocent Fruits, Grains and Seeds, and observe the Rules of Moderation and Temperance, you may assure your selves, that six hours Labour in a day will plentifully supply us with all things necessary for Life, Health or Pleasure; Not that the rest of our time should be spent in Idleness, much less wasted in vain Gaming or Riot, but imployed in meditating on the Works of God and Nature, innocent and useful Conference, reading profitable Books, refreshing our Spirits with the sweet Airs of Musick, practising curious and beneficial Arts, as Planting, Inoculating, Grafting, studying the Science of Numbers, the Use of the Globes, the Theory of Navigation, and all the parts of the Mathematicks, for those whose Genius leads them thereunto; Others to gain skill by Experience in the Knowledge of Herbs, Plants, and other Vegetations, to distinguish them by their Names, Shape and Virtues, take notice of their Agreement with, or Antipathy to each other; and particularly to observe the Signature of each; for on every thing God has engraven certain Mystick real Characters, fully expressing its true Nature and Vertues to such as can obtain the skill to read that Essential Alphabet; also reading of true and select Histories, wherein by taking notice of the Revolutions, Confusions, Slaughters and Miseries men in all Ages have brought upon themselves, by their Lusts and Pride, we may both learn to detest their Ways which lead to those Confusions, and be excited to a greater gratitude to God for his Mercies to us, in planting us under more happy Circumstances.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 33–5)

Tryon’s own work experience probably inspired this passage. At 18 years of age, when Tryon first went to London in 1652, he “bound my self Apprentice to a Castor-maker, at Bridewel-Dock, near Fleet-Street” (Memoirs, 17–18). Hat-making was “a laborious Trade” (Memoirs, 18) in which — by choice, in order to maximize his income — Tryon “wrought hard all day, from Five or Six in the Morning, till Ten or Eleven at Night” (Memoirs, 19) after which he would “sit up two or three Hours reading” (Memoirs, 19), studying astrology, medicine, “and several other natural Sciences and Arts” (Memoirs, 25).

I was not put upon this tedious daily working by my Master; for in our Trade ’tis customary for Apprentices to have a certain Task alotted them; which Task, being handy at my Trade, I not only fulfilled with ease, but by that my assiduous working, earned Five, Six, or Seven Shillings a Week, which my Master always readily paid me; And therewith I furnished my self with Books, paid my Tutors, and served all my occasions; but indeed, having no other way to raise Money, was thereby forced to work thus early and late. And I made the same advantage of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsontide Holydays; and would be at Work or Study, whilst my Fellow-servants were abroad taking their Pleasure.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 19–21)

As organized when he was young, most trades did not allow “time for such Imployments of the Brain,” yet Tryon “was so intent on my Study, that I abridged my self of my Sleep and Rest.” (Memoirs, 19) Under the new world order, this would not be necessary. Employees and apprentices would be able to balance work and personal growth, without running down the body in the process.

For Tryon, allowing sufficient time and opportunity for everyone to get to “know thyself” was key to a happy, well-ordered society and well-run government — a vision later enshrined in the title of the last original work of his to be published, the two-volume The Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God, and Good Government of the Mind and Body (1703–4). Tryon not only believed that “the Knowledge and true Understanding of a Man’s self, is preferable to all other Knowledge; for thereby he will discern the moving Spiritual Powers and Vertue of all the Laws of his Creator” (Memoirs, 80). He also believed that the creator gave man “Divine and Humane Wisdom, that he might learn how to govern himself, and all things under him” (Memoirs, 75).

As with all mystics, Tryon regards the inner “Voice of Wisdom” (Memoirs, 34), “made and created, by Vertue and Power of the in-dwelling Word planted in the Center of thy Life” (Memoirs, 84), as the only means of attaining “the true knowledge of God, Nature, and our selves” (The Planter’s Speech, 30).

... all other Learning or Knowledge, which depends on Custom, Chance and Tradition, is not a mans own; and therefore is but a bare Opinion, which most are apt to vary and change, and to have but little faith in, because such knowledge does not arise from the Root of their own Lives, but is forrein, spurious, adventitious, borrowed from abroad, and taken up upon the uncertain Credit of the People, who rarely know any thing as they ought to know. Nor does any thing make mans depraved state appear, more than for him to entertain vain Opinions, and follow Custom instead of Reason and the Nature of things; this being the only path that does keep so many in blindness and ignorance; and tho I love and honour Husbandmen for the Use, the Innocence, the Laboriousness and the Antiquity of their Calling, yet I must not flatter them so far, as not to tell them, that many of them are thus guilty of following too pertinaciously old Customs, not much unlike the Irish, whom nothing but the penalty of an Act of Parliament would restrain from fixing their Tackling to their Horses Tails in Plowing and Drawing, and from getting out their Corn by burning up the Straw, though they daily saw the Advantages of the English using Collars and Traces, and of their Threshing, whereby they had Straw to supply their Cattel in Winter, when many of theirs starved; yet they would keep to their old Barbarous Custom still, till they were cudgelled out of it by a Statute.

(T. Tryon, The Country-Man’s Companion, 1st edn., 1684, 7–8)

It follows from this that Tryon would be deeply suspicious of ceding health care in the new North American colony to an oligarchy of medical professionals working within a for-profit medical establishment, as existed in Europe. And so he was:

We ought by all means to discountenance all Babylonical Letter-learned Physitians, both for the Soul or Body; and on the contrary to direct [a]nd teach every one to hearken unto their own Genius and the Voice of Wisdom in themselves, which being minded, will teach every one the right Cure far better than their Mercinary Prescriptions.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 25)

Tryon believed (with some justification) that the public health was maintained by “good government” of oneself and society, rather than by resorting to pharmaceuticals, which were marketed to patients using rhetorical trickery:

... whensoever Men are minded for their own particular Interest to advance any Unequal Meats, Drinks or Medicines, though they be never so injurious to the Health and Preservation of the Human Nature, to effect those Private Designs, they first christen the Things with Vertuous Names, and attribute to them a great number of Noble Qualifications, whereby Ignorant and Credulous People are impos’d upon; and it has principally been by those Methods that Foul Gross Meats and Drinks, and also Poisonous Medicines have been insinuated, and have obtain’d; tho’ they have no such Vertuous Properties as the Lying Authors have stamped on them; as is most apparent by their Operations and the Effects they produce. So that Interest, Fancy, Ignorance and Lying have been the Original of most of the numerous Vertues that Physicians and others tell you are contained in those Drugs, Herbs, Seeds and Grains. But notwithstanding that every Days Experience gives those Mountebanks the lye; yet so foolish are Men, that they believe every Foppish Flattering Spa[r ?]k, both in Meats, Drinks and Medicines, when at the same time the Authors believe nothing of it, or have little assurance themselves, it being in them only a Gamester’s Trick to get Money.

(T. Tryon, vol. 2 of The Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God, and Good Government of the Mind and Body, 1704, 143–4)

The Quaker Gulielma Maria Penn (née Springett; d. 1694), wife of the Quaker leader and founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn (1644–1718), was one stellar example of the type of alternative health care regime Tryon recommended for the new colony. According to the Penns’ friend, John Aubrey,

W. Penn, esq., married Gulielma Maria Springet, daughter of Sir William Springet, of the Springets of the Broyles in Sussex.
   She was a posthuma of her father, a young gent. of religion and courage who dyed at the siege of Arundel. His daughter was his image in person and qualities, virtuous, generous, wise, humble; generally beloved for those good qualities and one more—the great cures she does, having great skill in physic and surgery, which she freely bestows.
   She early espoused the same way, about anno 1657. She was a great fortune to her husband, being worth de claro above 10,000 li. Her fortune, quality, and good humour gave her the importunity of many suitors of extraordinary condition, e.g. lord Brookes and lord J[ohn] [Vaughan], etc.; but valueing the unity of beliefe and the selfe deniall of her profession above the glories of the world, resisted their motions till Providence brought a man of equall condicion and to herself to the syncere embracing of the same fayth, whose mariage haz been crowned with a continued affection.

(J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, 2 vols., 1898, 2.134–5)

At least one other accomplished female physician is known to have been working in the colonies in the 1680s. Her cure for snakebite was passed to Royal Society scientists by the Rev. Dr. John Clayton, a resident of Virginia (minister at Jamestown) between April 1684 and May 1686:

A Gentlewoman, that was a notable Female Doctress, told me, that a Neighbour being bit by a Rattle-Snake, swelled excessively; some days afterwards she was sent for, who found him swell’d beyond what she thought it had been possible for the Skin to contain, and very Thirsty. She gave him Oriental Bezoar shaved, with a strong Decoction of the aforesaid Dittany, whereby she recovered the Person: To the best of my Remembrance, it was he that told me, asking him afterwards, what he felt when the Snake first bit him? He said, it seemed as if a flash of Fire had ran through his Veins.

(J. Clayton, “A Continuation of Mr. John Clayton’s Account of Virginia,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 18.210, May 1694, 133–4)

To Tryon, healthy, educated women were at the heart and center of a thriving society.

The whole Preservation of Mens Health and Strength does chiefly reside in the Wisdom and Temperance of Women. Therefor the ancient Wise Men in former Ages, did direct and accustom their Women to a higher degree of Temperance than the Men. Which Customs of Sobriety the Women of several Countries do maintain to this day, as in Spain, great part of France, Italy, and many great Countries under the Dominion of the Grand Seignior [i.e., the Muslim nations of the Ottoman Empire]. Their Women do always drink Water, their Food being for the most part of a mean and simple Quality; and for this Reason neither they nor their Children are subject to several Diseases which our Women and Children are. Wine and strong Drink should be sparingly drunk by Women, till they are past Child-bearing; because the frequent and common drinking of strong Drinks, does generate various Distempers in the Female Sex, such as are not fit to be discoursed of in this Place, which their Children often bring with them into the World. If the Seed be good, yet if the Ground be bad, it seldom brings forth good Fruit. Also Women are our Nurses for fifteen or sixteen Years; and they do not only suffer us to be Gluttons, by letting us eat and drink often, of their ill-prepared Food, beyond the power of the Digestive Faculty, and more than the Stomach can bear; but many of them will entice us to Gluttony, and some will force their Children to eat even against their Stomachs, till they cast it up again. Now if it be a difficult Point for a Man of Age and Experience to observe the necessary Rules of Temperance, how careful then ought Mothers and Nurses to be in ordering their Children? A great part of the Children that die, especially in Towns and Cities, is occasioned either by the Intemperance of their Mothers, during the time they go with Child, or afterwards by their unnatural and badly-prepared Food, and suffering them to eat to excess ....
   Also Women have the entire Management of all things that concern our Healths, during the whole time of our Lives; they prepare and dress our Food, and order all things in our Houses, both for Bed and Board. There is not one Man of a hundred that understand or takes any notice of whether his Food be well prepared or not; and if his Bed stinks, he is used to it, and so counts it all well. Mens Time and Study is chiefly taken up about getting a Livelihood, and providing things necessary for themselves and Families; so that there is not one among a thousand that understands any thing what belongs to the Preservation of his Health. Whatever the Women do and say touching the Preparation of [foods ?] and other ordering of Families for Health, most Men believe, [not ?] making the least scruple or question of the truth thereof. And well they may: For the chiefest Doctors of our Times do bow before them, and are altogether as subject to the Rules and Directions of Women, as other Men.

(T. Tryon, A Treatise of Cleanness in Meats and Drinks, of the Preparation of Food, the Excellency of Good Airs, and the Benefits of Clean Sweet Beds ..., 1682, 13–14)

Tryon was especially concerned with the health of English colonists transplanted to the foreign climes of the East and West Indies, and wrote extensively about how to better adapt to local circumstances (what and when to eat and drink, in particular), noting that

hankering after strong Liquors, and other the like Superfluities, destroy’d the Healths and Estates of many Thousands in these Western Indies, (as they are called) of our Country-men, viz. in Jamaica, Barbadoes and the Leward [i.e., Leeward] Islands, where they have and do make it a common practice to sell their excellent Butter, Eggs, Fruits, and fragrant Herbs, their Hens, Turkies, Ducks, &c. to purchase Rum, Brandy, Wine, and putrified stinking salt Flesh and Fish, which have destroy’d their Healths, emptied their Purses, and rendered them in every respect Unhappy.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 14)

He was one of the first to comment on the growing incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome in North America, and mentions it in part 1 of The Planter’s Speech:

In Women they [i.e., alcoholic drinks] destroy and corrupt the very Radix of Nature, and intail a great Number of incurable Diseases on Posterity.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 11)

(Over three centuries later in 2016, medical research into Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders [FASD] mostly confirms Tryon’s early observations, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommending that fertile women who are not on birth control abstain from drinking alcohol [see citations for R. J. Ignelzi (2012), Daniel Wheaton (2016), and Amna Nawaz (2018) in the References section at the end of this webessay].)

And as the colonists’ dietary habits migrated back-and-forth with them, Tryon warned against Europe’s growing appetite for imported sweets, especially the negative effects of this on children:

Again, The Food of most Children, of late Years, is so enriched with West and East-India Ingredients, that is, with Sugar and Spices, that thereby their Food becomes so hot in operation, that it does not only breed too much Nourishment, which generates Obstructions and Stoppages, but it heats the Body, drying up and consuming the Radical Moisture, and infecting the Blood with a sharp fretting Humour, which in some Complexions and Constitutions causeth Languishing Diseases ... so that the Joynts and Nerves become weak and feeble: in others, with the help of bad Diet, and other Uncleanliness, does cause Botches, Boils, and various sorts of Leprous Diseases....

(T. Tryon, A Treatise of Cleanness in Meats and Drinks, of the Preparation of Food, the Excellency of Good Airs, and the Benefits of Clean Sweet Beds ..., 1682, 15)

It was in order to remedy such evils that Tryon addressed so many books to “good House-Wifes” around the world, exhorting them to wrest control over their own lifestyles and the deteriorating health of a nation: for example, the aptly titled

The good houswife made a doctor, or, Health’s choice and sure friend: being a plain way of nature’s own prescribing, to prevent & cure most diseases incident to men, women and children, by diet and kitchin-physick only. Being an appendix to the book entituled, The way to health, &c. or a further demonstration of the philosophy therein contained. With some remarks on the practice of physick and chymistry. By Philotheos Physiologus, the author of The way to health, long life and happiness. The country-man’s companion, &c.

which first appeared in 1685.

Other examples of self-reliant, community-based healers were pointed to among the slaves brought to the Americas from the African continent. In part III (“A discourse in way of dialogue, between an Ethiopean or Negro-slave and a Christian, that was his master in America”) of Tryon’s anti-slavery tract, the effectiveness of traditional African medical practices is made clear:

’Tis not so long ago, that I was taken from him [i.e., the slave’s father, and a “Heathen Philosopher”] and sold hither, that I have forgot much of his Talk, and yet I remember some of his Skill, whereby I have Cured several of my Country-men since I came hither, of Diseases, that your Doctors could not help, either so surely or so suddainly.

(T. Tryon, Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies in Three Parts, 1684, 152)

And, of course, the American Indian already followed a locavore diet, and when left undisturbed, modelled in practice (lifestyle and activities) the very temperance and sobriety which Tryon preached. The longevity of aboriginal inhabitants was legendary, as in this popular 16th-century account of the Timucuan Indians (of the area presently known as St. Augustine, Florida) by the Huguenot painter and cartographer, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues:

At the time of year when they are in the habit of feasting each other, they employ cooks, who are chosen on purpose for the business. These, first of all, take a great round earthen vessel (which they know how to make and to burn so that water can be boiled in it as well as in our kettles), and place it over a large wood-fire, which one of them drives with a fan very effectively, holding it in the hand. The head cook now puts the things to be cooked into the great pot; others put water for washing into a hole in the ground; another brings water in a utensil that serves for a bucket; another pounds on a stone the aromatics that are to be used for seasoning; while the women are picking over or preparing the viands. Although they have great festivities, after their manner, yet they are very temperate in eating, and, in consequence, they live to a great age; for one of their inferior chiefs affirmed to me that he was three hundred years old, and that his father, whom he pointed out to me, was fifty years older; indeed, this last personage, I confess, looked like nothing but the bones of a man covered with a skin. Such facts might well make us Christians ashamed, who are so immoderate in indulgence both in eating and drinking, who shorten our own lives thereby, and who richly deserve to be put under the authority of these savages and of brute beasts, to be taught sobriety.

(J. Le Moyne de Morgues, Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae Provincia Gallis Acciderunt, Frankfurt, 1591; Eng. edn., 1875, 11)

Native Americans’ medical skills were also legendary, and Europeans were fascinated to learn of indigenous drugs and cures for everything from “fits of the mother” (a uterine disorder, the major symptoms of which were a sensation of fullness in the abdomen and chest with difficulty in breathing or choking; the condition was later renamed hysteria) to “Dysenteries and other Belly Fluxes” to cancer. In 1672, the travel writer John Josselyn (c.1608–1700?) reported on an AmerIndian cure for a hard cancer, known as a scirrhus, using tobacco:

An Indian dissolv’d a Scirrhous Tumour in the Arm and Hip, with a fomentation of Tobacco, applying afterwards the Herb stamp’d betwixt two stones.

(J. Josselyn, New-England’s Rarities Discovered ... Together with the Physical and Chyrurgical Remedies wherewith the Natives Constantly Use to Cure their Distempers, Wounds, and Sores ... Illustrated with Cuts, 1st edn., 1672, 98)

And Autumn Stanley has since recovered the role of AmerIndian medicine women in treating cancer:

Among the Maidu Indians of North America as late as the 1930s, women were the only shamans. With their drums, they officiated as both doctors and magicians.... Nor was ancient women’s medical knowledge exclusively herbal. California Indian medicine women used a technique that modern medicine has just rediscovered for fighting cancer and other diseases: visualization. The medicine woman took her patient to a lonely place in the forest, sweated and pommelled her, then sucked the disease from her mouth and put it in a basket to be taken home. Pain was “visualized by color and length.” The Seneca (Iroquois) had teams of shaman-healers who came to the patient, always led by a woman.

(A. Stanley, Mothers and Daughters of Invention, 93)

(For a fascinating update on traditional healers’ use of the “placebo effect” to heal mind & body, see citation for Nsikan Akpan in the References section at the end of this webessay.)

§  Part 2 of The Planter’s Speech

Part 2 (“The complaints of the birds and fowls of heaven to their creator, for the oppressions and violences most nations on the earth do offer unto them, particularly the people called Christians, lately settled in several provinces in America”) is one of the earliest calls for wise environmental stewardship of lands which would later constitute the United States.

It is a blistering animal-rights manifesto, in which Tryon not only promotes the more ethical treatment of animals in general, but also uses the speechifying of anthropomorphized North American birds to expose the hypocrisy of Anglo-American settlers,

coming into our Indian Territories for the sake of a good Conscience, and that they might exercise their Minds and Liberties in peaceable Well-doing, which the Sword of Wrath disquieted and hindered them from enjoying in their own Country ... with hellish Engines of Wrath, Cruelty and Bloodshed, as Guns, Swords, Powder, &c. as if they had been marching into the Fields of Mars, rather than into a Land of Tranquility and Repose.

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 45–6)

The birds express the true Christian values which Tryon hoped would be institutionalized and enculturated in the utopian setting of the new world, all the while mocking ungodly European cultures, such as when the birds tweet about the absurdity of race prejudice among humans:

... Nor are we [American birds] offended with each other, because our Feathers are not all of a length or of the same colour ....

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 47)

From the first (lasting) Anglo-American settlement at Jamestown, Virgina, European planters were tasked with converting the indigenous populations to Christianity. This was one of the mandates of settlement, and it was an embarassment to all concerned that the English had failed so miserably at it. So Tryon was not saying anything new when he rebuked English planters for dereliction of their Christian duty. But there was plenty that was new in what he advised as to how this religious conversion should be accomplished; in his vision of an egalitarian and democratic multicultural society; and, in his passion for economic and environmental justice.

As to be expected, Tryon was alarmed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in North America, interweaving this with a genuine concern over cultural genocide (Tryon always felt that the Spartan-like indigenous lifestyle was much better suited to the Americas than was European-style high living) and environmental degradation. In particular, he warned that the introduction of unfettered merchant capitalism was altering the Native American economy, and not for the better:

And so far as we [i.e., North American birds] can perceive, we shall quickly be but in little better Condition, if the Trade of Violence, Killing and Inhumanity be encouraged, as it has been hitherto; for the Europeans and Christians are far more expert in the feats of Arms, and these Murthering Mysteries than our former Masters, the Indians, whom the Christians and others do in contempt call Heathens, Barbarians and Savage Wild People, which indeed is true, and in their Barbarity they do as much Mischief as they can; but they had not where-with to destroy us in any considerable Numbers, neither are they such cunning Artists in the dark Wrath and Devilish Practices of Killing, nor did they attempt us but to satisfie their Hunger; whereas now they are encourag’d to make a Trade of selling our Bodies for Brandy, Rum and strong Liquors, which the Christians give them in Exchange, though the same proves almost as great a Mischief to the Indians as to us, and in the end will prove of as fatal Consequence to the Christians themselves.
   For by selling the Indians Guns, Powder, &c. they grow more expert in all kind of Violence, and practise the same not only upon us, but oft-times on one another, and in time, no doubt will attempt the same on those who furnish them with these Mortiferous Tools, as by Experience is found they have done in other places. Besides, the Christians bring them acquainted with the several sorts of pernicious intoxicating strong Drinks, before mentioned, the use of which makes them Mad, and tenfold more Devilish and Inhumane than they were before; for the more savage, wild and bruitish any Man is, both the more fond is he of such strong Liquors, and the more mischievous Effects have they upon him; so that rather than they will be without those abominable Drinks, after once they have tasted them, they will travel night & day with all Pains and Cunning imaginable, to hunt, kill and destroy us, and all other Creatures, not so much (now) for Food, as for the Skins, Feathers or Carkasses to sell, that so they may be able there-with to procure those baneful Drinks; whereas before the Christians Arrival they only were able to kill some few of us, and that too, as it were, for Necessity, for Food, and Skins to cover them in the Winter; but since they hunt Fish, and torment all the innocent Inhabitants of the Elements, so that they cannot have any rest or security; for they will sell the choicest of their Skins & Furs to procure a little Rum or Brandy, or a Gun, Powder, Shot, and the like, which only tend to their own Destruction, as well as ours; for as with the one they take away our sweet Lives, so with the other they ruin their own Healths, contract various Diseases never before heard of amongst them; and besides, put themselves to a World of needless Slavery and Toil to procure to themselves these Mischiefs. And is it not a shame that it should be said, (and too truly) that where the Christians come in new Plantations, they instead of converting, have often debauched the old neighbouring Indians and Heathen-Natives, and rendred many of them worse than they were before?

(T. Tryon, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ..., 1684, 51–3)

This argument seems odd coming from someone who directly profited — “making Beavers to Success” (T. Tryon, Memoirs, 41) — from the North American fur trade, which expanded rapidly in the early decades of the 17th century.

^ Handwritten receipt “For the Trade for Furrs” from Virginia, dated December 1621, and signed by Nicholas Ferrar (1593–1637), then treasurer of a glass company in the Virginia colony and a Member of His Majesties’ Council for the Virginia Company of London (and soon after this — from May 1622–July 1624 — the Virginia Company’s Deputy Treasurer).

The receipt refers to Virginia fox furs in the amount of £6 15s. 4d.
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (333KB) of the MS. receipt.

In his section on “The order, charge and gaines to be expected” from developing the Anglo-American fishery, Captain John Smith comments that “it is certaine, from Cannada and New England, within these six yeeres [1615–1620] hath come neere twenty thousand Bever skinnes” (J. Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles ..., 1624, 242). By the early 1650s, the colony of “New Netherland, now call’d New York” “produces yearly eighty thousand Beavers” for the European market (John Ogilby, America, 1670–1, 168 and 173; Ogilby’s source for this statistic was the best-selling Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant [Description of New Netherland], written c.1652–53 and published 1655 by the New Netherland landowner, lawyer, Native American ethnographer, and republican activist, Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck [c.1618–1655]). Tryon’s glum assessment of the social and environmental costs of this free-wheeling transatlantic trade is thus an interesting bookend to Thomas Hariot’s more optimistic outlook almost a century earlier. In his A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), Hariot, who had surveyed pre-Anglo-Virginia (present-day North Carolina, into Virginia) for Sir Walter Ralegh from June 1585 to June 1586, reported that the English could piggy-back on the Indians’ sustainable trade in deer skins without adding to the waste:

Dear skinnes dressed after the manner of Chamoes or undressed are to be had of the naturall inhabitants thousands yeerely by way of trafficke for trifles: and no more wast or spoyle of Deare then is and hath beene ordinarily in time before.

(T. Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, 1588, B3r)

As the diplomat and scholar Sir Robert Southwell (1635–1702) reported to the Royal Society a little over a century after Hariot’s Virginia was first published, the lucrative trade in deerskins relied on the unpaid, skilled labor of Algonquian women, with one woman able to “dress eight or ten Skins in a day” by traditional means, which Southwell described as follows:

The Felt being taken off is first streined by Lines, or otherwise, most like the Clothiers Racks, but for no other purpose but to dry them.
   The Brains of the Deer, whether Buck or Doe, is taken out and mesled [i.e., intermixed], and dawbed [daubed] on Moss or dryed Grass, and then dryed in the Sun, or by a Fire to preserve them.
   When the Hunting time is over, the Women dress the Skins; first, by putting them in a Pond, or Hole of Water, to soak them well. Then they with an old Knife fixed in a Cleft-Stick, force off the Hair, whilst they remain wet. The Hair being taken or forced off, they put as many Skins as they have made so ready, into a Kettle or Earthen Pot, and a proportion of the Deers Brains, before spoken of, into the Kettle with the Skins; and then put them over a Fire till they are more than Blood-warm; which will make them ladder and scour perfectly clean; which done, they with small sticks wrest and twist each Skin as long as they find any Wet to drop from them, letting them remain so wrested some Hours; and then they untwist each Skin, and put them into a sort of a Rack, like a Clothiers Rack (which they fix at every place they come to, with no more Trouble than two small Poles set upright, and two more put athwart, all fixed with their own Barcks,) and extend them every way by Lines, and as the Skin dries, so they with a dull Hatchet, or a Stick slatted, and brought to a round edge, or a Stone fitted by nature for that purpose, rub them all over to force all the Water and Grease out of them, till they become perfectly dry: which is all they do.
   And one Woman will dress eight or ten Skins in a day; that is, begin and end them. I intimate this because the Men never do it.

(R. Southwell, “The Method the Indians in Virginia and Carolina Use to Dress Buck and Doe Skins,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, No. 194, 1691, 532–3; for a fascinating look at 21st-century uses of biotechnology to reengineer the global leather trade, see citation for Christopher Booker et. al., “This Leather Substitute Is Grown in a New Jersey Lab,” in the References section at the end of this webessay)

Both Hariot and Tryon were unusual in their well-documented sympathy with Algonquian beliefs and customs, despite their expected use of Christian-inflected epithets such as “savages” (in the early-17th century, often spelled “salvages”) in their writings. Predictably, neither man’s utopian vision for Anglo-American trade came to pass. In Pennsylvania, as in the Carolina-Virginia-Maryland colony, the transatlantic fur trade’s reliance on Americans’ (indigenous and immigrant, alike) growing thirst for alcoholic beverages only became more pronounced with time. Colonial official James Logan (1674–1751), the Penns’ business agent in Pennsylvania for nearly 30 years, was perhaps the most aggressive promoter of the new commercial model which used alcohol as a means of exchange:

On his return to Pennsylvania in 1711 Logan engaged in the fur trade, using tactics described by Frederick Tolles as “hard, venturesome, unscrupulous if necessary”, as he got fur traders into debt and supplied them with rum for the Native Americans—even though the colony’s laws and the Quaker meeting forbade selling alcohol to the American Indians (Tolles, 90). By 1715 he was sending £1000 in furs per year to England. He called the wagons for transporting the furs from his trading post on Conestoga Creek “Conestoga wagons”, and this continued to be the way Americans named the hooped, canvas-covered wagons used for westward migration.

(J. W. Frost, ODNB entry for James Logan, n. pag.)

Like George Keith, James Logan — who excelled at negotiating with everyone, from Native Americans to British royal officials, bringing his business acumen and executive skills to bear in all matters — argued that Quaker principles were incompatible with governing, and at one point Logan advised William Penn to sell the right to government in his proprietary colony. A Quaker, but “not a strict pacifist,” Logan “believed there was little difference between a magistrate’s use of force and a defensive war.”

Seeing a coming imperial war with France, in 1741 at the Philadelphia yearly meeting (an annual gathering of Friends from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West New Jersey) Logan sent a treatise justifying war and seeking to persuade Quakers to withdraw from government. Quakers’ successful pursuit of wealth, he argued, made Pennsylvania a tempting target. The treatise had no immediate effect, but set a series of principles that would be considered in later wars.

(J. W. Frost, ODNB entry for James Logan, n. pag.)

Logan’s counter-arguments concerning guns and governance posed a real challenge for Quaker politics and politicians going forward, especially given Logan’s large sphere of influence.

Logan never lost his passion for learning and book collecting, being interested in astronomy, biology, optics, and numismatics as well as Greek and Latin classics. He collected a library of over 3000 volumes, which he bequeathed to the city of Philadelphia. He taught himself fluxions (calculus) by reading Newton’s Principia mathematica. Logan conducted scientific experiments on the sexuality of plants, and his results were published by the Royal Society and praised by Linnaeus. Robert Brown later named a genus after Logan, Logania, which in turn was employed to form the family name Loganiaceae. He had discussions with and opened his library to young scientists, including John Bartram, Thomas Godfrey, and Benjamin Franklin. Logan defended Godfrey’s claim to having invented the quadrant against John Hadley, and introduced Bartram’s work to Linnaeus. Logan also carried on a learned correspondence on many subjects with such diverse scholars as Peter Collinson, Cadwallader Colden, and William Jones. Like many scientists of his time, Logan believed that reason could discover a cosmic order and that science helped religion by describing the works of God. Logan died on 31 October 1751 at his home, Stenton, Germantown, Pennsylvania, and was buried in the Friends’ burial-ground, Arch Street, Philadelphia.

(J. W. Frost, ODNB entry for James Logan, n. pag.)

In contrast to Quakers like Logan, Tryon’s radical ideal of realizing the Holy Commonwealth by the establishment of a covenanted community in Pennsylvania and New Jersey led him, in later years, to renounce all trade in animal hides, mandating

Thou shalt not use the Skins of any living Creature for Shooes, Gloves, Saddles, or any other thing whatsoever. Thou shalt not lie on Down or Feather-beds, nor on the Beds of such as eat Flesh or Fish, or drink strong Drink.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 86; Tryon would no doubt approve — as better late than never — a New Jersey entrepreneur’s attempt to move us away from industrial-scale production & mass consumption of leather goods, as documented in Christopher Booker’s “This Leather Substitute Is Grown in a New Jersey Lab” [2018])

in the list of “Laws of Innocency and Cleanness” that would institutionalize Pythagorean abstinence and chastity, as culled from the manuscripts available to his female publisher after his death.

Of note, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ... also included a section of “Laws and Orders proper for Women to Observe,” wherein is expressed the typical disdain of the godly for anything associated with seduction and sexual activity; e.g.: “We strictly prohibit and forbid the reading of Plays, Romances, and the like; as also the singing of all kinds of Love-Songs” (Memoirs, 124). More surprising is the dress code for women, which not only includes the expected prohibition on consumer goods made from animal carcasses, but also Tryon’s recommendation that all females over the age of 7 be veiled:

   16. You shall keep one Fashion in your Garments or Apparel, which shall be grave, decent, easie, and convenient for Travel, Labour, Work, and Business, either for within, or without Doors. You shall use no superfluous Trimmings, nor fantastick Ornaments: Your Garments shall not be mixed, viz. of Linnen and Woollen, or the like. You shall not make your selves any Garments, nor any sort of Furniture for your Houses, or any sort of Utensiles of the Skins of an Animals, neither shall you use the Fat of any Animal, either for Candles, Soap, or any other Use. He that is endued with Wisdom, Understanding, and a distinguishing Power, has all that his Heart can desire, both in Time and Eternity.
   17. All Women above the Age of Seven Years, shall be Vailed when they go abroad. This will not only mightily preserve the Female Beautie’s Power, but advance the natural Esteem, and render them more Valuable.

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 125–7)

In 1678, the social historian R. B. (Nathaniel Crouch) marveled at how the Plains Indians in that region of North America then known as Quivira made judicious use of every part of the buffalo, with no waste.

CHAP. XXIIII
QUIVIRA in California.

The Province of Quivira in California, is a Country full of Herbage, breeding great store of Cattel, differing not much in bigness from those of Europe, but that they have an high Bunch betwixt their shoulders, bristled on the back like Bores, which somewhat resemble the mane of a Horse; their legs short and clad with Fetlocks, their Horns short, but sharp; the whole Beast of so horrid an aspect, that a Horse will not venture near him, till well acquainted; yet in this Beast lyes all the Riches of the Inhabitants of the Country; for they are to them, as Ale to Drunkards, Meat, Drink, and Cloath, and more too; for the Hides yield them houses, or at least the covering of them, their Bones, Bodkins; their Hair, Thread; their Sinewes, Ropes; their Hornes, Mawes, and Bladders, Vessels; their Dung Fire; their Calf skins, Budgets to draw and keep water in; their Blood, Drink; and their Flesh Meat.
   There is also said to be a Cave between two Mountains, from which the Rain descending, turns into Alabaster, naturally fashioned into Pillars; and other Portraitures.

(R. B., Miracles of Art and Nature, 1678, 41–2; see the References section at the end of this webessay for links to digital facsimiles of 4 early maps [from 1594 to 1625] showing Kansas [Quivira] as part of California)

But Hariot’s and Tryon’s arguments promoting wise management of American resources, following this indigenous model, competed with the many accounts of boundless plenty which poured from the press. In 1682, Samuel Wilson advised “People who have an Inclination to try their Fortunes in America” that the province of Carolina — then “that part of Florida, which lies between twenty nine and thirty six Degrees, and thirty Minutes of Northern Latitude” — was an especially “pleasant & fertile Country, abounding in health and pleasure, and with all things necessary for the sustenance of mankind,” permitting the near-effortless accumulation of wealth. (S. Wilson, An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, 1682, 5 and 17) For example,

Neat Cattle thrive and increase here exceedingly, there being perticular Planters that have already seven or eight hundred head, and will in a few years in all probability, have as many thousands, unless they sell some part; the Cattle are not subject to any Disease as yet perceiv’d, and are fat all the Year long without any Fother, the little Winter they have, not pinching them so as to be perceiv’d, which is a great advantage the Planters here have of the more Northern Plantations who are all forc’d to give their Cattle Fother, and must spend a great part of their Summers Labour in providing three or four Months Fother for their Cattle in the Winter, or else would have few of them alive in the Spring, which will keep them from ever having very great Heards, or be able to do much in Planting any Comodity for Forreign Markets; the providing Winter Food for their Cattle, taking up so much of their Summers Labour; So that many Judicious Persons think that Carolina will be able by Sea, to supply those Northern Collonys, with salted Beef for their Shipping, cheaper than they themselves with what is bred amongst them; for, considering that all the Woods in Carolina afford good Pasturage, and the small Rent that is paid to the Lords Proprietors for Land, an Ox is raised at almost as little expence in Carolina, as a Hen is in England. And it hath by experience been found that Beef will take salt at Ashly-River any Month in the Year, and save very well....
   Hogs increase in Carolina abundantly, and in a manner without any charge or trouble to the Planter, only to make them Sheds, wherein they may be protected from the Sun and Rain, and Morning and Evening to give them a little Indian Corn, or the pickings and parings of Potatoes, Turnips, or other Roots, and at the same time blowing a Horn, or making any other constant noyse, to which being us’d, they will afterwards upon hearing it, repair home, the rest of their Food they get in the Woods, of Masts, and Nuts of several sorts; and when those fail, they have Grass and Roots enough, the ground being never frozen so hard as to keep them from Rooting, these conveniencies breeds them large, and in the Mast time they are very fat, all which makes the rearing them so easy, that there are many Planters that are single and have never a Servant, that have two or three hundred Hogs, of which they make great profit; Barbados, Jamaica, and New-England, affording a constant good price for their Pork; by which means they get wherewithal to build them more convenient Houses, and to purchase Servants, and Negro-slaves.

(S. Wilson, An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, 1682, 13)

According to Wilson, there is little disease in this land of plenty:

Such, who in this Country have seated themselves near great Marshes, are subject to Agues, as those are who are so seated in England: but such who are planted more remote from Marshes or standing Waters, are exceeding healthy; insomuch, that out of a Family consisting of never less than twelve Perons, not one hath died since their first Arrival there, which is nine years: but what is more, not one hath been sick in all that time; nor is there one of the Masters of Families that went over in the first Vessels, dead of sickness in Carolina, except one, who was seventy and five years of Age before he came there; though the number of those Masters of Families be pretty considerable: divers persons that went out of England Ptisical, and Consumptive, have recover’d, and others subject in England to frequent fits of the Stone, have been absolutely freed from them after they have been there a short time; nor is the Gout there yet known. The Ayr gives a strong Appetite and quick Digestion, nor is it without suitable effects, men finding themselves apparently more lightsome, more prone, and more able to all Youthful Exercises, than in England, the Women are very Fruitful, and the Children have fresh Sanguine Complexions.

(S. Wilson, An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, 1682, 9–10)

along with a limitless supply of natural drugs — “Jallop, Sassaparilla, Turmerick, Sassafras, Snake-root, & divers others” — with which to manage health and generate more wealth. Wilson stressed that “great profit” was in Carolina for the taking, not only from “the vast heards of Cattle and Swine,” but also from capitalizing on such organic “Commoditys” as wine, oil, silk, tobacco (“Tobacco doth here grow very well, and is nearer to the nature of the Spanish Tobacco than that of Virginia.”), indigo, cotton, flax, hemp, pitch & tar, oak, sumac, and exotic medicines. (S. Wilson, 17–18)

Unlike Hariot, promoters such as Wilson preached environmental exploitation, promising their readers that Carolina offered the enterprising émigré endless “conveniencies.” John Ogilby described the lord proprietary of Carolina, reorganized by Baron Ashley and John Locke in 1669, as a prosperous new Eden where unimaginable natural bounty led inevitably (without effort or expense) to health and well-being:

A Countrey wherein Nature shews how bountiful she can be without the assistance of Art, the Inhabitants (excepting a little Maiz which their old Men and Women Plant) depending meerly on the natural and spontaneous Growth of the Soil for their Provisions, the Woods furnishing them with store of Fruit and Venison, and the Rivers with plenty of several sorts of wholsom and savory Fish.
   This Maintenance, which without forecast or toil they receive from the natural fruitfulness of the Countrey, will, if we consider either the largeness of their Growth, or the duration of their Lives, be thought neither scanty nor unhealthy, their Stature being of a larger size than that of English-men, their Make strong and well proportion’d, a crooked or mis-shapen Person being not to be found in the whole Countrey; and (where the chance of War, which they are almost continually engag’d in one against another in their little Governments, spares any of them) they live to an incredible old age; so that when the English came there, they found some of their Kings, who saw descend from them the sixth Generation.

(John Ogilby, America, 1st issue, 1670–1, 295)

Ogilby assumed (as would his readers) that newcomers to this land of plenty — “a Countrey where every one may be happy if it be not his own fault” (J. Ogilby, America, 212) — were free to exploit Carolina’s abundant, untapped natural resources, with infinite possibilities for enriching the proprietor and colonist alike:

The Rivers are stor’d with plenty of excellent Fish of several sorts, which are taken with great ease in abundance, and are one great part of the Natives Provision, who are never like to want this Recruit, in a Countrey so abounding in large Rivers, there being in that, one small Tract between Port Rasal and Cape Carteret, which are not one Degree distant, five or six great Navigable Rivers, that empty themselves into the Sea. These Rivers are also cover’d with Flocks of Ducks and Mallard, whereof millions are seen together, besides Cranes, Herons, Geese, Curlews, and other Water-Fowl, who are so easie to be kill’d, that onely rising at the discharge and noise of a Gun, they instantly light again in the same place, and presently offer a fresh Mark to the Fowler. At the Mouths of the Rivers, and along the Sea-Coast, are Beds of Oysters, which are of a longer Make than those in Europe, but very well tasted, wherein are often found good large Pearls, which though the unskilful Indians by washing the Oysters do commonly discolour, and spoil their lustre, yet ’tis not to be doubted, but if rightly order’d, there will be found many of value, and the Fishing for them turn to some account.
   Besides the easie Provisions which the Rivers and Sea afford, their Woods are well stock’d with Deer, Rabbets, Hares, Turtle-Doves, Phesants, Partridges, and an infinite number of Wood-Pigeons and wild Turkies, which are the ordinary Dishes of the Indians, whose House-keeping depends on their Fishing and Hunting, and who have found it no ill way of Living in so fertile a Countrey, to trust themselves without any labor or forecast, to the Supplies which are there provided to their hands, without the continual trouble of Tillage and Husbandry. Besides, these Woods are fill’d with innumerable variety of smaller Birds, as different in their Notes as Kinds.

(J. Ogilby, America, 1st issue, 1670–1, 207)

The songbirds were of special value, trapped by American boys for sale to the doting parents of English boys:

Of Virginia Nightingale, or red Bird, there are two sorts, the Cocks of both sorts are of a pure Scarlet, the Hens of a Duskish red; I distinguish them into two sorts, for the one has a tufted Cops on the Head, the other is smooth feather’d: I never saw a tufted Cock with a smooth headed Hen, or on the contrary; they generally resorting a Cock and Hen together, and play in a Thicket of Thorns or Bryars in the Winter, nigh to which the Boys set their Traps, and so catch them and sell them to the Merchants for about Six Pence apiece; by whom they are brought for England; they are something less than a Thrush.

(J. Clayton, “His Letter to the Royal Society,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 17.206, Dec. 1693, 995)

Earlier in the century, Margaret Cavendish documented the English use of trapped birds as pacifiers for children in her poem, “A Dialogue of Birds,” which, like part 2 of Tryon’s The Planter’s Speech, gave birds (lark, nightingale, owl, robin, sparrow, magpie, finch, linnet, jackdaw, partridge, woodcock, peewit, snite, quail, pigeon, swallow, parrot, titmouse, wren, yellow hammer, blackbird, thrush) a voice with which to complain about their cruel treatment and subjection to human whim:

The Sparrow said, were our Condition such [as that of the robin],
But Men do strive with Nets us for to catch:
With Guns, and Bowes they shoot us from the Trees,
And by small shot, we oft our Lifes do leese,
Because we pick a Cherry here, and there,
When, God he knowes, we eate them in great feare.
But Men will eat, untill their Belly burst,
And surfets take: if we eat, we are curst.
Yet we by Nature are revenged still,
For eating over-much themselves they kill.
And if a Child do chance to cry, or brawle,
They strive to catch us, to please that Child withall:
With Threads they tye our legs almost to crack,
That when we hop away, they pull us back:
And when they cry Fip, Fip, strait we must come,
And for our paines they’l give us one small Crum.

(M. Cavendish, “A Dialogue of Birds,” in Poems and Fancies, 1st edn., 1653, 71; cf. Caroline Van Hemert’s poignant op-ed about the “extraordinary songs” of a bilingual golden-crowned sparrow inhabiting the mountains near Whitehorse, in Canada’s Yukon wilderness)

^ Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664). Oil painting on canvas, created in 1658.

Shows children playing with a small bird, much as Margaret Cavendish described in the above lines from the sparrow’s complaint (“They strive to catch us, to please that Child withall: / With Threads they tye our legs almost to crack, / That when we hop away, they pull us back:”).
   Zurbarán’s The Virgin with the Child Jesus and Saint John the Baptist is featured in “Art & Empire: The Golden Age of Spain,” a superb exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art that runs from 5/18/2019 to 9/2/2019. The painting was painstakingly restored for the show, as described in the exhibition’s complementary Balboa Art Conservation Center Lecture, “Restoring a Masterpiece.”
   For more on the exhibition’s documentation of early-modern cultural exchanges between Spain, the Americas, and Asia, see the illustrated review by Martina Schimitschek, “The Rise of Spain: San Diego Museum of Art’s ambitious new exhibition, four years in the making, tells the story of Spanish global expansion” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/12/2019, pp. E1 and E6).

Both Tryon and Cavendish shared their culture’s fascination with the divine harmonies and purity of bird song, making birds the ideal spokes-creatures for Tryon’s radical point of view regarding the “natural Rights” (The Planter’s Speech, 46) afforded equally to all things which are part of God’s creation.

The power of bird song attracted scientific attention as well, especially from the new science, which continued to be intrigued by Pythagoras’ study of sound, and from this, the belief that the whole universe rested on numbers and their relationship. Tryon believed that birds derived their “Natural or Innate Language” — a “Mathematical Order of Speech” — from these “Universal Principles” (while humankind was no longer fluent in the original natural language spoken by Adam):

So that upon the whole it is sufficiently evident that the Language of the Inferior Animals does excel and is more stupendious, musical, short, pertinent and innocent than the Speech and Languages of Men: For the Creatures speak from solid undeniable constant uniform Principles ... It is farther to be considered, that no Creature under Heaven has so much sully’d and debased this harmonious exalted and illuminated Power of Sounds, Tones, Voices and speaking ecchoing Unity as Mankind, who by their contentious Inequality of Mind, and advancing the dark melancholly jarring Notes of horrid Customs and Tradition, with vast pains and unwearied Industry have confounded and almost expungd all Serene Truth, with Words coined and invented on purpose for the promoting and erecting of Selfhood.

(T. Tryon, vol. 2 of The Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God, and Good Government of the Mind and Body, 1704, 194)

Scholars continue to debate the issues raised here by Tryon, over three centuries ago, concerning birds’ knowledge of a universal grammar, with researchers such as Tim Gentner providing new empirical evidence for Tryon’s revelation “that humans and other animals share basic levels of pattern recognition” (I. Kiderra, 13) required for language. (For more evidence of birds’ advanced problem-solving skills and other behaviors which challenge our basic notions of intelligence, see citations in the References section at the end of this webessay for: [1] the December 2017 NOVA special, Bird Brain; and [2] Megan Thompson’s August 2017 reporting, “How a Hawaiian Island Is Fighting Invasive Parakeets”; and [3] reporting in February 2015 published at the Daily Mail and The Times of India websites re. similarities in pigeon and human cognition; and [4] Carole Gan’s reporting on the finding of Richard Levenson, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at UC Davis Health System, that “With some training and selective food reinforcement, pigeons do just as well as humans in categorizing digitized slides and mammograms of benign and malignant human breast tissue”; and [5] Sean Greene’s reporting on New Caledonian crows’ development and use of technology [hooked stick tools] to collect food, as recently captured on video; and [6] Caroline Van Hemert’s op-ed about a bilingual golden-crowned sparrow, whose unique story “sheds light on being human for scientists.”)

In the lesson on songbirds (No. 21) in his influential picture-book teaching children Latin and vernacular “nomenclature of all the chief things that are in the world; and of mens employments therein,” the eminent theologian and educational reformer, Johannes Amos Comenius (aka Jan Amos Komenský; 1592–1670) listed the most notable avian voices in 17th-century Europe: “The party-coloured Parret [callout 5]. The Black-bird, [callout 6]. The stare, [callout 7]. with the Mag-pie, and the Jay, learn to frame Mens Words,” observed Comenius, with the predictable outcome that “A great many are wont to be shut in Cages [callout 8].” (J. A. Comenius, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, Eng. trans. by C. Hoole, 1659, 45)

^ Facsimile of the spread for symbol No. 21 on songbirds (pages 44–5), from the first English edn. (1659) of Comenius’s elementary school-book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus [The Visible World Pictured].

Educational reformers such as Bathsua Makin (1600–1675?) immediately adapted the new Comenian pedagogy, which offered innovative techniques for educating girls, as well as boys, in arts & sciences. Building on Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus, Makin pioneered lab classes for girls “of quality” at her Tottenham High Cross school, proposing that — as at the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, with its Musæum Regalis Societatis (prized collection of “natural and artificial rarities”) — “Repositories ... for Visibles shall be prepared; by which, from beholding the things, Gentlewomen may learn the Names, Natures, Values, and Use of Herbs, Shrubs, Trees, Mineral-Juices, Metals and Stones.” (B. Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, 43)
   Makin assured parents of prospective students that, with such a ground-breaking curriculum as she offered, “a Girl shall much easier fasten in her memory the names of Herbs, Shrubs, Mineral-Juyces, Metals, Precious Stones; as also the names of Birds, Beasts, Fishes; the parts of Man’s Body; if she see the things themselves in specie; or the Pictures and Representations, where the things themselves cannot be had.” (B. Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, 36)
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (848KB) of Comenius’s natural-history lesson on songbirds.

At the time, there was much debate about whether or not the caged bird was as eloquent, or sang as beautifully, as the free-ranging bird, and Margaret Cavendish, who discerned multiple similarities between birds and European women of the upper classes, easily extended the metaphor of the caged bird to the political realm: women, she wrote,

are kept like birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses, not sufferd to fly abroad to see the several changes of fortune, and the various humors, ordained and created by nature; thus wanting the experiences of nature, we must needs want the understanding and knowledge and so consequently prudence, and invention of men: thus by an opinion, which I hope is but an erronious one in men, we are shut out of all power, and Authority by reason we are never imployed either in civil nor marshall affaires, our counsels are despised, and laught at, the best of our actions are troden down with scorn, by the over-weaning conceit men have of themselves and through a dispisement of us.

(M. Cavendish, epistle “To the Two Universities” in Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1st edn., 1655, B2v)

Others before the marchioness (afterwards duchess) of Newcastle applied the caged-bird metaphor to politics. E.g., Prince Henry (Henry Stuart, 1594–1612), eldest son of James I (with whom Henry had a fraught relationship), once remarked about his “great Favorite,” Sir Walter Ralegh (1552–1618) — who had an even more fraught relationship with the high-handed James I (he eventually executed Ralegh for treason) — that “No one but my father would keep such a bird in a cage.” Margaret’s invention was in using the simile to link her culture’s banal discrimination against women — the condition Cavendish named “the Female Slavery” — with such arousing cases as the romantic & heroic figure of Ralegh (“such a bird”) and the aristocrat’s prized household avian soprano/hunter, with the potential to soar to previously unimaginable heights when freed from its gilded cage.

^ Allegory of Air, 1 of 4 prints in the series, The Four Elements (no date). Engraved by an anonymous artist, after a design by Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), and published at Frankfurt by two sons of the goldsmith and engraver Theodor de Bry (1528–1598): Jan Theodor de Bry (1561–1623) and Jan Israel de Bry (d. 1611), both of whom, like their father, were accomplished engravers as well as publishers.

Goltzius was a celebrated artist of the Haarlem school — described by John Evelyn (1620–1706), a connoisseur and promoter of graphic art, as one of “the profoundest Masters that ever handled the Burin, for never did any exceed this rare workman” (J. Evelyn, Sculptura, 1662, 70) — and the brother-in-law of the celebrated Jacobean scientist and inventor, Cornelis Drebbel (1572–1633), who trained in Goltzius’ studio while a young man, during which period Drebbel executed a well-regarded map of his native Alkmaar, dated 1597. Drebbel’s own verbal investigation of the four elements, Een kort tractaet van de Natuere der Elementen [A Short Treatise on the Nature of the Elements], was first published in 1604, so The Four Elements was evidently a topic of great interest in Goltzius’s workshop, and Goltzius designed at least two series on the subject. (Goltzius himself published another of his allegorical series of the elements c.1586, wherein the figure of Air is shown surrounded by birds and butterflies in flight, with an eagle perched on his left hand and a chameleon perched on his right hand; a scene depicting Pentecost occupies the lower right corner.)
   Prints of Goltzius’ work (such as the above Allegory of Air) were sold in London, where Goltzius’ own engravings — known “for a bold touch, variety of posture, curious and true shaddow” — were “commonly to be had in Popes-head-alley.” Goltzius’ work was also widely available on the continent, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Margaret Cavendish, whose own work of science fiction was partly inspired by Drebbel, was also familiar with prints showcasing Goltzius’ visual imagination.
   Regardless, Goltzius’ artistic play with The Four Elements tapped into the same Zeitgeist infusing Margaret Cavendish’s moral and natural philosophy. In this series of Goltzius’ The Four Elements, Air is symbolized by a nobleman, shown with a falcon perched on his right hand, and a bird in a cage in the lower right corner.
   Of note, the four elements also figured symbolically in heraldry, dictating the colors of coats of arms and military banners, etc. For a brief discussion of this, see the annotated citation for John Josselyn’s New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672) in the References section at the end of this webessay.
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (268KB) of the late-16th-century engraving of Goltzius’ Allegory of Air.

Traditionally, veterinary medicine and care of the “inferior creatures,” including birds, fell to those who studied and worked in agriculture. In the latter half of the 17th century, improvements to husbandry were all the rage, prompted by the indefatigable labors of the social reformer Samuel Hartlib and his circle. One such improver was the astrologer and physician Joseph Blagrave (b. 1610, d. in or before 1682), author of The Epitome of the Art of Husbandry (1669) and New Additions to the Art of Husbandry (1675), as well as a series of ephemerides, books on astrological medicine, and a Supplement or Enlargement to Mr. Nich. Culpepper’s English Physitian, to which Is Annexed a New Tract for the Cure of Wounds by Gunshot (1674). In his New Additions to the Art of Husbandry, Blagrave made an interesting comment about birds’ speech

... of all things that were created, nothing praises and sets forth the Creator, amongst Animal Creatures, more than these poor harmless birds. And it is a thing much to be observed, that of all the Animal Creatures that ever were made, none can learn, or by any means be taught to speak but the bird.

(J. Blagrave, New Additions to the Art of Husbandry ... with Directions for Breeding and Ordering All Sorts of Singing-Birds; with Remedies for their Several Maladies, not before Publickly Made Known, 1st edn., 1675, 135–6)

which drew the attention of Henry Oldenburg, publisher and editor of the world’s oldest continuous scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (est. 1665), who wrote in his book review of Blagrave’s work:

He notes it pag 136. to be very observable, that no Animal besides Birds, can learn, or, by any means, be taught to speak, or to imitate a mans voice: We may add, Nor yet to imitate, and much less to emulate Mans singing, or any music made by man; As our Author records a hot and continued contention between a Gentleman of his Acquaintance, and a Nightingale free in a Grove, for the victory in singing, 79; which story supports the credit of the old contention between the Nightingale and the Lutenist, celebrated in the Elegant Poesie of Famianus Strada. And the famous Lord Peyreske gave his vote, (as Gassendus tells us) for the music of Birds above any Harmony that man can make. And the music of Birds is then sweetest, when they are free, and at full liberty, (and cannot complain of restraint) in a Grove; and where they can choose their Consorts, and the places, and postures of approach or distance, and with choice of Echoes, as our Author noted in the Nightingals and Wood-larks, two Nightingals to two Wood larks, 79. And we have not seen any Animals more fondly loving to Mankind, than Birds. And it seems easie to tame Birds to resort to what Groves we please, (and some have performed it;) there to build their Nests, and to breed up their young, only being furnished with fit materials at hand: And for such as cannot bear our Winter, or our Summer, they may in season be invited into clean enclosures. And when at liberty, they may be confined to one Grove or Thicket adorned with fragrant and health-breathing Trees; and affrighted from fruitful Groves, where they are hurtful; though neither be many furlongs distant from each other, nor from the Lords Mansion.
   Neither is there scarce any Animal so fierce, but may be tamed by Music, or by some other way of Cicuration; most of them for Human use. For proof of which, I referr to two ingenuous Chapters, the 8th chapt. of Music, and the 11th of The Art of taming wild Beasts, in the brief Treatise of Human Industry, or Of Human Wit [i.e., Thomas Powell’s Humane Industry (1661)]; which deserves to be corrected, and reprinted, and continually augmented, as Arts grow on; so that this Treatise may grow on, as Dictionaries have grown to more perfection. These are for words and discourses; That for Realities, Arts, and Sciences.
   Since the most furious of Mankind, and the fiercest of other Animals may be tam’d by Music (as is there instanced chap. 8.) and since the Crocodile, Serpents, Fishes, and Sea-monsters may be made fond and serviceable to Mankind, (as is copiously there instanced chap. 11.) we may thence hope and presume, that the Cicuration of all Animals in the Groves and Woods, in the Wilderness, Seas and Rivers, may hereafter come into more esteem, and into more general use and practise, than now it is; and more compleatly to assert Mans dominion over this whole Globe, than hitherto is attained.
   And that this discipline is not a very Novelty, but (of old) belonging to Agriculture, according to the staunch method of learned Varro, when he was 80 years old; we have his testimony ....
   ’Tis not now for our credit, to loose any ground or footing of the Dominion, which our Ancestors long since acquired. ’Tis a noble Work, and work enough for some ages to come....
   Our American Colonies are concern’d for the one, and for the other; for the taming of Man and Beasts; both the Savages, and the Wildernesses. And some have a peculiar faculty and promptness for both. But to tame the wild and savage Man, is the hardest task ... And as those Singing-birds (in the opinion of some) are tamed to best purpose, which are free, and at call, in the Groves; so also are those Savages tamed best, who taste the truest freedom in Civil Government, and Civil Manners, in good Discipline, and in a life of agreeable delights, and reasonable satisfaction. This were to retrive [i.e., retrieve] the prudence of the old Romans, whilst they raised their Empire: Then they reclaimed more Barbarians by their ingenious Civilities, than they subdued by oppression and force, as is gravely testified by Salust. But, when they became unnatural by their luxury and divisions, then they suffered the Inundations, and fell under the feet of Barbarians.
   And no Treat can be more safe, innocent, and effectual for an unreclaim’d people, to reduce them to apply their ears to the best documents, than Music; Sometimes to make their Wilderness eccho with the Trumpet, Cornet, and loudest Musick; Sometimes to cheer up all with the merry Flagellate, Flute, Fife, and Pipe: And when the game is ended, to sweeten all with the Lute, Harps, and Violins ....

(H. Oldenburg, “An Accompt of Some Books,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, No. 114, 1675, 324–6)

To my knowledge, no English planters attempted to pacify their Native American neighbors with music, instead of guns, as Oldenburg here suggested, and Oldenburg’s ignorance of competing Algonquian music traditions must be attributed to the mostly ethnocentric accounts, still circulating in England, of aboriginal rituals and festivities, which often terrified foreign observers (especially the drumming). Describing indigenous music-making in colonial Virginia, the nonconforming presbyterian clergyman, Samuel Clarke (1599–1682), wrote in his compilation of travellers’ narratives (Clarke was never in Virginia himself) that

Their Musick is a thick Cane on which they Pipe as on a Recorder. For their Wars they have a great deep Platter of Wood, which they cover with a skin, upon which they beat as upon a Drum; of these they have Base, Tenor, Countertenor, Mean, and Trebble. If any great person come to the Habitation of a Werowanee, they spread a Mat for him to sit upon, setting themselves just opposite to him; then all the company with a tunable voice of shouting, bid him welcome. Then some of the chiefest make an Oration to him, which they do with such vehemency that they sweat till they drop again....

(S. Clarke, A True, and Faithful Account of the Four Chiefest Plantations of the English in America, 1670, 10)

A more critical interpretation of indigenous music, given by William Strachey (resident at Jamestown from 1610–11 and employed for 3 years as Secretary of State for the new colony of Virginia), was never printed, but circulated widely as a scribal publication within policy-making circles (e.g., “the Ashmole MS,” presented to Sir Allen Apsley, purveyor to the King’s Navy, c.1612; “the Percy Manuscript,” presented to Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, c.1612; and “the Sloane MS,” presented to Sir Francis Bacon, newly-appointed lord chancellor, in 1618). In Strachey’s opinion, the Powhatans’ sinister music was rife with anti-English sentiments, and their wild song-and-dance reminded him of the Sufis’ Whirling Dervishes:

They have likewise their errotica carmina, or amorous dittyes in their language, some numerous and some not, which they will sing tunable ynough: they have contryved a kynd of angry song against us in their homely rymes, which concludeth with a kynd of Petition unto their Okeus, and to all the host of their Idolls, to plague the Tassantasses (for so they call us) and their posterityes, as likewise another scornefull song they made of us the last yeare at the Falls in manner of Tryumph at what tyme they killed Capt. William West our Lord Generalls nephew, and 2. or 3. more, and tooke one Symon Score a saylor and one Cob a boy prisoners, that song goes thus
   1. Mattanerew shashashewaw crawango pechecoma
        Whe Tassantassa inoshashaw yehockan pocosack
        Whe, whe, yah, ha, ha, ne, he, wittowa, wittowa.
   2. Mattanerew shashashewaw, erawango pechecoma
        Capt. Newport inoshashaw neir in hoc nantion matassan
        Whe whe, yah, ha, ha, etc.
   3. Mattanerew shashashewaw erowango pechecoma
        Thom. Newport inoshashaw neir in hoc nantion monocock
        Whe whe etc.
   4. Mattanerew shushashewaw erowango pechecoma
        Pockin Simon moshasha mingon nantian Tamahuck.
        Whe whe, etc.
Which may signifie how that they killed us for all our Poccasacks, that is our Guns, and for all Capt Newport brought them Copper and could hurt Thomas Newport (a boy whose name indeed is Thomas Savadge, whome Capt Newport leaving with Powhatan to learne the Language, at what tyme he presented the said Powhatan with a copper Crowne and other guifts from his Majestie, sayd he was his sonne) for all his Monnacock that is his bright Sword, and how they could take Symon (for they seldome said our Sirname) Prysoner for all his Tamahauke, that is his Hatchett, adding as for a burthen unto their song what lamentation our people made when they kild him, namely saying how they would cry whe whe, etc., which they mock’t us for and cryed agayne to us Yah, ha ha, Tewittaw, Tewittawa, Tewittawa: for yt is true they never bemoane themselves, nor cry out, giving up so much as a groane for any death how cruell soever and full of Torment.
   As for their dauncing the sport seemes unto them, and the use almost as frequent and necessary as their meat and drinck in which they consume much tyme, and for which they appoint many and often meetings, and have therefore, as yt were sett Orgies or Festivalls for the same Pastime, as have at this day the merry Greekes within the Arches; at our Colonies first sitting downe amongest them, when any of our people repayred unto their Townes, the Indians would not thinck they had expressed their welcome unto them sufficiently ynough untill they had shewed them a daunce: the manner of which is thus: one of them standeth by with some furre or leather thing in his left hand, upon which he beates with his right, and sings withall, as if he began the Quier, and kept unto the rest their just tyme, when upon a certayne stroke or word (as upon his Cue or tyme to come in) one riseth up and begynns the daunce; after he hath daunced a while steppes forth an other, as if he came in just upon his rest, and in this order all of them so many as there be one after another who then daunce an equall distaunce from each other in a ring, showting, howling and stamping their feet against the grownd with such force and payne, that they sweat againe, and with all variety of straung [strange] mimick-trickes and distorted faces, making so confused a Yell and noise, as so many frantique and disquieted Bacchanalls, and sure they will keepe stroake just one with another, but with the handes, head, face, and body every one hath a severall gesture, as who have seene the Darvises in their holy daunces in the Moschas [mosques] upon Wednesdayes and Frydayes in Turkey many resemble these unto them, you shall fynd the manner expressed in the figure in the second booke Chapt.

(W. Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, MS. publication written c.1609–1612, new edn., edited by L. B. Wright and V. Freund, 1953, 85–87)

The “figure in the second booke” of his MS. referred to by Strachey would have been a copy of an original drawing (see below) by John White, whose “watercolour images of Native Americans in the late sixteenth century were exceptional for his era and unsurpassed as a visual record of south-eastern tribal life until the advent of photography.” (K. M. Tiro, ODNB entry for White, n. pag.) White was part of the 1585 expedition to the English colony commonly known as “Virginia” (then encompassing the whole of North America between 34° and 45° north latitude), which was promoted and financed by Sir Walter Ralegh, who had paired White (the explorer-artist) with Thomas Hariot (the explorer-scientist) “to collect information about the people, plants, and animals of America for the benefit of subsequent colonization efforts. The sympathetic and lively drawings White produced of Carolina Algonquian life, documenting aboriginal settlement patterns, technology, clothing, body decoration, ceremonial life, and subsistence practices, are among the earliest extant images of Native Americans. These images circulated widely as engravings in the first volume of Theodor de Bry’s America (1590). Although de Bry’s engravings were less naturalistic and accurate than White’s originals, the images became ingrained in the European imagination and helped stimulate the colonial enterprise. They also influenced European pictorial representations of Native Americans for centuries to come.” (K. M. Tiro, ODNB entry for White, n. pag.)

^ Festive Roanoke Indian dance. Watercolor study, by John White (fl. 1577–1593), created in or after 1585.

One of 63 surviving American subjects from a much larger primary collection by White, of which an unknown number — along with charts, maps, American specimens, and Hariot’s journals — “were by the Saylers cast over boord” because “the weather was so boysterous, and the pinnaces so often on ground” when the colonists abandoned Roanoke Island in June 1586 with Drake’s fleet, which was returning to England after a mismanaged raid on Spanish ports and shipping in the West Indies.
   Only 23 of White’s extant watercolors — including this one — were engraved by Theodore de Bry for his Virginia (1590).
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (331KB) of White’s watercolor of Indian celebratory song-and-dance “after they have ended their feaste [and] they make merrie togither.” The original sheet was folded, which accounts for the ghosting evident around some of the dancing figures, where there has been a transfer of pigment and black lead from one side of the paper to the other.
   White’s evocative watercolor, depicting Algonquians dancing around a circle of carved posts, magnifies a detail from White’s watercolor picturing “The towne of Secota” (aka Secoton), situated on the north back of Pamlico River in the present Beaufort county, North Carolina.

There (see lower right of watercolor drawing), the above song-and-dance scene — glossed by White: “A Ceremony in their prayers w^th strange jesturs and songs dansing abowt posts carved on the topps lyke mens faces.” — shows visitors from neighboring towns in attendance at the Secota festivities, and is juxtaposed with other scenes of village life, including a depiction of 3 individuals eating (see center of watercolor drawing), glossed by White: “Their sitting at meate” (see below for White’s magnified detail of this other town scene).
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (316 KB) of White’s watercolor picturing the Indian town of Secota, which contextualizes the detailed scenes (above and below) of dancing and feasting.
   This artwork was also engraved by de Bry, as Plate XX (“The Towne of Secota”) in his illustrated edition of Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590).

De Bry added callouts to White’s original, and a detailed gloss on the facing page which reads in full: “Their townes that are not inclosed with poles aire commonlye fayrer. Then suche as are inclosed, as appereth in this figure which livelye expresseth the towne of Secotam. For the howses are Scattered heer and ther, and they have gardein expressed by the letter E. wherin groweth Tobacco which the inhabitants call Uppowoc. They have also groaves wherin thei take deer, and fields wherin they sowe their corne. In their corne fields they builde as yt weare a scaffolde wher on they sett a cottage like to a rownde chaire, signiffied by F. wherin they place one to watche. for there are suche nomber or fowles, and beasts, that unless they keepe the better watche, they would soone devoure all their corne. For which cause the watcheman maketh continual cryes and noyse. They sowe their corne with a certaine distance noted by H. other wise one stalke would choke the growthe of another and the corne would not come unto his rypeurs G. For the leaves therof are large, like unto the leaves of great reedes. They have also a severall broade plotte C. whear they meete with their neighbours, to celebrate their cheefe solemne feastes as the 18. picture [Plate XVIII, “Their Danses whych They Use att their Hyghe Feastes”] doth declare: and a place D. whear after they have ended their feaste they make merrie togither. Over against this place they have a rownd plott B. wher they assemble themselves to make their solemne prayers. Not far from which place ther is a lardge buildinge A. wherin are the tombes of their kings and princes, as will appere by the 22. figure[.] likewise they have garden notted bey the letter I. wherin they use to sowe pompions. Also a place marked with K. wherin the[y] make a fyre att their solemne feasts, and hard without the towne a river L. from whence they fetche their water. This people therfore voyde of all covetousnes lyve cherfullye and att their harts ease. Butt they solemnise their feasts in the nigt, and therfore they keepe verye great fyres to avoyde darkenes, ant [and] to testifie their Joye.” (T. Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, new edn. issued and illustrated by T. de Bry, 5 parts, 1590, 4.D1r)
   Click/tap here to view a large digital facsimile (2.2 MB) of de Bry’s engraving (Plate XX), after White, of the Indian town of Secota.

^ Plate XVIII, “Their danses whych they use att their hyghe [high] feastes.” Copper engraving by Theodore de Bry (1528–1598), after watercolor by John White (fl. 1577–1593). Printed in de Bry’s illustrated edition of Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590).

Of note, De Bry worked from a set of White’s drawings, now lost, “with added landscapes and other additional detail,” such that the de Bry plates have more “local colour” and “give us greater insight into the culture of these South-eastern Algonquians than do the [White] drawings themselves.” (P. Hulton, America, 1585, 18)
   “Where we can compare the engravings with [White’s extant] originals, not it must be stressed again the versions actually used by them [now lost], we can see how faithfully they [engravers Theodore de Bry and Gysbert van Veen] reproduced their models. Their ability to draw the human figure was in fact rather better than White’s so that they, not always consciously perhaps, tended sometimes to idealize and to Europeanize the Indian figure and features. They would often make the female Indian face accord more than did White’s drawings with European ideas of beauty and attractiveness, introducing Mannerist stylistic characteristics then in fashion more markedly than White himself. But there is at least the one example [plate XVI in de Bry’s 1590 edn. of Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia; see below] of a posture which De Bry considered so strange that he deliberately modified it. But this kind of modification is exceptional. The others are rather trivial departures from White’s record which merely serve to emphasize how closely De Bry generally kept to his models.” (P. Hulton, America, 1585, 18)
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (781KB) of de Bry’s Plate XVIII. The engraving is a fold-out (hence, the vertical line to the left of the middle of the print, where the fold is).

The gloss for Plate XVIII in de Bry’s Virginia (first written in Latin by Hariot, then Englished for de Bry by the geographer Richard Hakluyt, then edited at Frankfurt by de Bry, who introduced German-inflected idiosyncratic diction and spelling) describes the Roanoke Indians’ dance ritual as follows:

The place where they meet is a broade playne, abowt the which are planted in the grownde certayne posts carved with heads like to the faces of Nonnes [nuns] covered with theyr vayles. Ten beeing sett in order they dance, singe, and use the strangest gestures that they can possiblye devise. Three of the fayrest Virgins, of the companie are in the mydds [midst], which imbrassinge one another doe as yt wear [were] turne abowt in their dancinge. All this is donne after the sunne is sett for avoydinge of heate. When they are weerye of dancinge, they goe oute of the circle, and come in untill their dances be ended, and they goe to make merrye as is expressed in the 16 figure [that is, Plate XVI, for which, see below].

(T. Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, new edn. issued and illustrated by T. de Bry, 5 parts, 1590, 4.C2r)

^ Plate XVI, “Their sitting at meate.” Copper engraving by Theodore de Bry (1528–1598), after watercolor by John White (fl. 1577–1593). Printed in de Bry’s illustrated edition of Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590).

Plate XVI shows “their manner of feeding,” to which English observers attributed Algonquian Americans’ excellent health over the course of relatively long lives (compared to Europeans).
   The gloss for Plate XVI reads: “They lay a matt made of bents one [on] the grownde and sett their meate on the mids therof, and then sit downe Rownde, the men uppon one side, and the woemen on the other. Their meate is Mayz sodden, in suche sorte as I [i.e., Thomas Hariot] described yt in the former treatise of verye good taste, deers flesche, or of some other beaste, and fishe. They are verye sober in their eatinge, and trinkinge [drinking], and consequentlye verye longe lived because they doe not oppress nature.” (T. Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, ed. and ill. by T. de Bry, 5 parts, 1590, 4.C1r)
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (651KB) of de Bry’s Plate XVI.
   In addition to his customary “trivial departures from White’s record” — adding local color (e.g., a landscape background, and incidental objects such as the pouch and tobacco pipe in the foreground) to the two figures sparely depicted in the surviving watercolor by White (see below), and idealizing the Indian physique (enhanced musculature, Europeanized facial features) — de Bry made what Hulton considers an “exceptional” modification to White’s original. De Bry’s Plate XVI is “the one example of a posture which De Bry considered so strange that he deliberately modified it.” (P. Hulton, America, 1585, 18)

^ Inhabitants of “the towne of Secota” (situated on the north back of Pamlico River in the present Beaufort county, North Carolina) “sitting at meate,” eating “Mayz sodden.” Watercolor study, by John White (fl. 1577–1593), created in or after 1585.

This is the only extant version of the original watercolor engraved by Theodore de Bry, as Plate XVI, for his 1590 edn. of Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.
   In White’s original watercolor, a man and a woman are shown eating while squatting in a relaxed posture which Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues described as “sit down on their heels.” This description accompanied Le Moyne’s picturing of a ceremonial scene with the Timucuan women of Florida (after their “husbands have died in war or by disease”) as they petitioned their leaders, seeking “vengeance for their dead husbands, the means of living during their widowhood, and permission to marry again at the end of the time appointed by law.” (J. Le Moyne de Morgues, Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae Provincia Gallis Acciderunt, Eng. edn., 1875, 8; illustrated Pl. 18)
   Sitting down on your heels is a common enough posture around the world, and it was depicted by other ethnographers subsequent to White and Le Moyne. But de Bry found such habits so unbelievable that he portrayed his feasting sitters inauthentically stretched out on the ground instead, in a variation of the right-angled seated posture favored by chair-loving Europeans, but “utilized by only a third to a half of the people in the world.” Not having witnessed Native American dining postures himself, de Bry was unable to imagine seated comfort outside the box of European-style chair-and-table culture. As Galen Cranz points out in her study of the history of the now-ubiquitous chair — unconsciously yet forcefully shaping the physical and social dimensions of our lives — “postural variations are culturally, not anatomically, determined. Sitting, like other postures, is regulated all around the world according to gender, age, and social status. Sitting on the floor with both legs out in front is generally a woman’s posture, wherever it is found. The cowboy squat ... is mostly a man’s, with one knee up.” (G. Cranz, The Chair, 26 and 27)
   Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (397KB) of White’s watercolor.
   To view a large digital facsimile (338KB) of de Bry’s engraving of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’s drawing from his Brevis Narratio showing Timucuan women sitting on their heels (Plate 18 in Part II of Theodor de Bry’s 13-part Historia Americae sive Novi Orbis, published at Frankfurt in 1591), click/tap here. The gloss for this image is given separately below (see the citation for Le Moyne’s Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae Provincia Gallis Acciderunt in the References section at the end of this webessay).

This early illustrated account of “merrye” Carolina Algonquian life & culture is less inflammatory than Strachey’s impressions of Powhatan-style carnival, with its subversive undercurrents which Strachey interpreted as a threat to English supremacy in the region. Hariot-White-de Bry’s presentation of regional Native Americans as festive and “merry” partners in trade and commerce met Ralegh’s immediate need for public-relations material promoting the colonial enterprise in North America. It also reflected Hariot’s and White’s relatively-benign personal encounters with a people they in many ways admired. In contrast, Strachey’s less sanguine view of Anglo-Algonquian relations reflected the strain of scaled-up colonialism in the Chesapeake tidewater region — evidence that the Jamestown settlement was still precarious, especially in the event of a Powhatan uprising. As documented by Strachey, the increased tensions and mutual suspicion recorded in Powhatan song-and-dance c.1610 suggests that the time for “ingenious Civilities” and musical persuasion, as recommended by Oldenburg, had already passed.

Like Oldenburg and other virtuosi affiliated with the new science movement, Thomas Tryon believed in the power of music to tame the wild beast in all of us, and allotted an important role to music in the utopian godly society he projected onto Pennsylvania and New Jersey (e.g., Tryon recommended that English emigrants to this region eat their meals in the early morning [between 8–9 am] and then again in the late afternoon [between 4–5 pm], rather than at noon as in England, with song before and after each meal to aid the digestion). Such ideas derived from Pythagoras, who

endeavour’d to assuage the Passions of the Mind with Verses, and Numbers; and made a Practice of composing his Mind every Morning by his Harp; frequently singing the Paeans of Thales.

(Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia, 2 vols., 1728, s.v. Pythagoreans, 2.921)

Tryon’s deep and abiding interest in the Pythagorean uses of music as a medicine — “a most profitable correction of manners and life by Musick,” “conducing much against the affections and diseases of the mind, and against the dejections and corrodings of the same” (Thomas Stanley, “Medicine by Musick,” The History of Philosophy [4 vols., 1655–1662], new edn., 1687, 534) — was shared by many, on both sides of the Atlantic. Numerous women and men have experimented with the healing effects of music since Pythagoras.

Another very ancient therapy exploits the healing effects of music; or, as the women I discuss would have it, music can open the way for people to heal themselves. This ancient technique was used by midwives in many cultures, and by priestesses in the ancient Near Eastern and pre-Hellenic Greek healing temples thousands of years ago. Indeed, according to Sophie Drinker, the Roman midwives’ chief aid at childbirth was music. Some hint of the power of music survives in popular culture, as in Congreve’s memorable lines, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, / To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” But its healing power, long ignored by the medical establishment, is only recently being rediscovered. I consider it here because music is sound, and sound is a vibration that acts in a physical way upon human bodies.
   Laurel Elizabeth Keyes uses everyone’s “personal key note or tone which, when discovered and sung, brings on a feeling of centeredness and well-being” to help people learn to heal themselves. She has written a book on her work. The large academic literature on music therapy deals almost entirely with what music can do in various medical (especially psychological) conditions, and not how or why. The “what,” however, is impressive enough: music can slow heart rates and lower blood pressure, calm mental patients, help “socialize” angry youths and skid row alcoholics, help the multiply handicapped to learn, aid stroke patients in recovering or relearning language, banish headaches and backaches, etc.

(Autumn Stanley, Mothers and Daughters of Invention, 577)

(We can now add dementia to Stanley’s 1990s list of human conditions treatable with music therapy [see entry in the References section at the end of this webessay for “Music Helps People in Nursing Home Once Considered Unreachable”].)

Tryon’s own experiments with musical persuasion, while a shepherd, are documented in the section “Of Sounds, and the Benefits Musical Harmony yields to Men and Beasts, and in particular to Sheep” in his treatise, The Country-Man’s Companion:

... for Sheep are Creatures of a most excellent Composition as to the Elements of the Body and Spirits, and therefore all Harmony and Equality has great Affinity with their Natures, and they are therewith wonderfully delighted and pleased, especially in times of scarcity when Pasturages are hard and scarce, as also in cold rainy wet Weather; for at such times, Musick does as it were compose and moderate their discontented Minds and Spirits, and gently allures them to quietness, which does much suit with the Humour and Disposition of this Creature, and affords them great Benefit.

(T. Tryon, The Country-Man’s Companion, 1st edn., 1684, 82)

To that other 17th-century animal advocate, Margaret Cavendish,

All Birds are full of Spirit, and have more ingenious Fancies than Beasts, as we may see by their curious building of their Nests, in providing for their Young, in avoiding great Storms, in choosing the best Seasons, as by shifting their Habitation, and in their flying in a pointed Figure which cuts or peirceth the Air, which makes the Passage easy, and so in many other things of the like Nature; But the Reason seems to be because the chief Region they live in (which is Air) is pure and serene, when Beasts live together on the Earth, where the Air about is more Grosse by reason of continual thick Vapours that issue out; but the Region wherein Birds fly, is clarified by the Sun, which makes the spirits of Birds more refined, subtill, and more lively, or chearfull; For all Beasts are heavy, and dull in comparison of Birds, having not Wings to fly into the serene Air; But Beasts seem to have as much solid Judgement, & as clear Understandings as Birds, and as providently carefull of their Subsistence and safty [i.e., safety], both for their Young and themselves, as Birds; But Birds have more Curiosity, Fancy, and Chearfullness than Beasts, or indeed than Men; for they are alwaies chirping and singing, hopping and flying about, but Beasts are like Grave, Formal, and Solid Common-Wealths-men, and Birds like elevated Poets.

(M. Cavendish, “Of Birds”, in The Worlds Olio, 1st edn., 1655, 143–4)

Cavendish did not believe that beasts or birds could speak, but she and her huband, William — a foremost authority on horses, with an international reputation and following, including Thomas Tryon, who reprinted some of “The Lord Cavendishes Receipts” for treating horses from Newcastle’s A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, and Work Them, According to Nature (1667) — both believed that animals engaged in an elevated form of non-linguistic reasoning and were every bit as intelligent — if not more so — than human beings.

Of Birds.

Who knowes; but Birds which in the Aire flyes,
Do know from whence the Blustring Winds do rise?
May know what Thunder is, which no Man knowes,
And what’s a blazing Star, or where it goes.
Whether it be a Chip, fallen from the Sun,
And so goes out, when Aliment is done.
Whether a Sulphurous Vapour drawne up high,
And when the Sulphure’s spent, the Flame doth dye.
Or whether it be a Gelly set on Fire,
And wasting like a Candle doth expire.
Or whether it be a Star wholly intire,
Perchance might know of Birds, could we inquire.

(M. Cavendish, Poems and Fancies, 1st edn., 1653, 105–6)

For Cavendish, function follows form, and man’s “Outward Shape,” which facilitates upright walking and speech, explains his supremacy over other creatures:

The Shape of Man’s Sensitive Body, is, in some manner, of a mixt Form: but, he is singular in this, That he is of an upright and straight Shape; of which, no other Animal but Man is: which Shape makes him not only fit, proper, easie and free, for all exterior actions; but also for Speech: for being streight, as in a straight and direct Line from the Head to the Feet, so as his Nose, Mouth, Throat, Neck, Chest, Stomack, Belly, Thighs, and Leggs, are from a straight Line: also, his Organ-Pipes, Nerves, Sinews, and Joynts, are in a straight and equal posture to each other; which is the cause, Man’s Tongue, and Organs, are more apt for Speech than those of any other Creature; which makes him more apt to imitate any other Creature’s Voyces, or Sounds: Whereas other Animal Creatures, by reason of their bending Shapes, and crooked Organs, are not apt for Speech; neither (in my Opinion) have other Animals so melodious a Sound, or Voice, as Man: for, though some sorts of Birds Voices are sweet, yet they are weak, and faint; and Beasts Voices are harsh, and rude: but of all other Animals, besides Man, Birds are the most apt for Speech; by reason they are more of an upright shape, than Beasts, or any other sorts of Animal Creatures, as Fish, and the like; for, Birds are of a straight and upright shape, as from their Breasts, to their Heads; but, being not so straight as Man, causes Birds to speak uneasily, and constrainedly: Man’s shape is so ingeniously contrived, that he is fit and proper for more several sorts of exterior actions, than any other Animal Creature; which is the cause he seems as Lord and Sovereign of other Animal Creatures.

(M. Cavendish, “Of Man’s Shape and Speech,” in Grounds of Natural Philosophy, 1668, 49–50)

This was a more androcentric argument than Cavendish had made earlier in The Worlds Olio (1655), but the underlying principle remained the same: it is our “shape” that “form[s] and fit[s] things to” the mind; “all Knowledge, by your Form, you gain.” Hence, there is nothing innately superior about man: humans are just differently formed, making them “apter for some Actions,” such as speaking, than other animals. (Both the duchess and duke of Newcastle would have been fascinated by new communications technologies which bypass these physical linguistic limitations to allow for translational understanding between species, such as that profiled by the PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan in “Talking to Dogs Isn’t So Far-Fetched: Researchers Translate Canine with Computer Science”; see the References section at the end of this webessay for the link.) From Margaret Cavendish’s poem, “Of Humility”:

When with returning Thoughts my selfe behold,
I find all Creatures else made of that Mould.
And for the Mind, which some say is like Gods,
I do not find, ’twixt Man, and Beast such oddes:
Only the Shape of Men is fit for use,
Which makes him seem much wiser then a Goose.
For had a Goose (which seemes of simple Kind)
A Shape to form, and fit things to his Mind:
To make such Creatures as himselfe obey,
Could hunt and shoot those that would ’scape away;
As wise would seem as Man, be as much fear’d,
And, when the [G]oose comes neere, the Man be scar’d.
Who knowes but Beasts may wiser then Men bee?
We no such Errours, or Mistakes can see.
Like quiet Men besides they joy in rest,
To eat, and drink in Peace, they think it best.
Their Food is all they seek, the rest think vaine,
If not unto Eternity remaine.
Despise not Beast, nor yet be proud of Art,
But Nature thank, for forming so each Part.
And since your Knowledge is begot by form,
Let not your Pride that Reason overcome.
For if that Motion in your Braine workes best,
Despise not Beast, cause Motion is deprest.
Nor proud of Speech, ’cause Reason you can shew,
For Beast hath Reason too, for all we know.
But Shape the Mind informes with what doth find,
Which being taught, is wiser then Beast-kind.

(M. Cavendish, “Of Humility,” in Poems and Fancies, 1st edn., 1653, 94–5)

Where Cavendish speculated on the role of comparative anatomy in shaping cognitive abilities and “outward” actions (Cavendish believed that the “inward” nature of human and non-human animals was the same), others in the scientific community, such as the Reverend John Clayton, who first trained as a physician before turning to divinity (without relinquishing his scientific interests), engaged in more hands-on investigations, giving demonstrations of his experimental work before the Royal Society. In a letter written to this august scientific body, dated 17 August 1688, Clayton reported his findings from detailed anatomical studies of American songbirds:

Dr. Moulin and I made in our Anatomy many Observations of Singing Birds to this effect: The Ears of Birds differ much from those of Men or Beasts, there’s almost a direct passage from one Ear to the other of Birds, so that prick but the small Membrane called the Drum on either Ear, and Water poured in at one Ear will run out at the other: But this is not all, but what is much more remarkable, they have no Coclea, but instead thereof there’s a small Cocleous or twisting Passage that opens into a large Cavity, that runs betwixt two Sculls, and passes all round the Head, the upper Scull is supported by many hundreds of small Thred-like Pillers or Fibers, which as we supposed had another use also, to brake the Sound from making any confused Eccho, and to make it one and distinct; this passage we observed betwixt the two Sculls was much larger in Singing Birds than in others that do not sing, so very remarkable that any Person that has been but show’d this may easily judge by the Head what Bird is a Singing Bird, or has aptitude thereto, tho’ he never saw the Bird before, nor knew what Bird it were: This has often made me reflect how much the Modification of Voices depends upon the acuracy [sic] of the Ear, and how deaf Persons become dumb: And since I have observed that many Children that have an acute Wit enough that are slow of Speech, that is long before they speak are much longer before they can pronounce those Letters that are sharps, as g. h. r. and never have an aptitude to learn to sing. Hence I judge that Songs that have many Sharps in them are the difficultest to sing well, and discover any Person’s Skill upon the tryal of Musick most. This I suppose only, having no Skill in Musick my self, nor having ever discoursed any Person about it, as I remember we show’d some of these things to the Royal Society, and I drew some Cuts thereof, and gave the Doctor upon promise that he would put these and many other our joynt Observations in Print, but I hear he is since dead. I have Anatomized most sorts of Creatures, and never found any Four-footed Creature with an Ear like a Bird, unless a Mole; and a Mole has an Ear much like them, with a very thin double Scull, and great Cavity like a Bird, and is very acute of hearing, the Scull by reason of the large Cavity is very slender and easily crush’d, so that a Mole is quickly kill’d with a bruise on the Scull like a Lark, and upon the bruise the Membranes of the Scull turn black; whence Segerus mistake Membranae Cerebri in superficie exteriori omnino nigrae visae: But when I have taken care not to bruise the Scull the Membranes were not black at all, both Segerus and Severinus I think had some perceptions of the different Structure of a Mole’s Ear, but not any thing of its Analogy to a Bird’s Ear; they speak of a Bone Egregie pumicosum: And Segerus says there’s a Ductus ad ossis usque petrosi cavitatem protensus, plurimis fibrillis Membraneis annectabatur.

(J. Clayton, “His Letter to the Royal Society,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 17.206, Dec. 1693, 993–5)

No doubt, had he realized the role such dissections and animal experiments would play in the science of the colonies, for centuries to come, Tryon would have added another “Thou shalt not ...” to the “Laws of Innocency and Cleanness” governing his godly utopia in the new world. Such invasive natural inquiry, especially when perpetrated in the name of advancing medical science for the benefit of one species — which had other, more benign, options for improving its health and well-being — over all others, was a perverse distortion of the divine order of things, whereby

The Undergraduated Anim[a]ls do exceed Mankind in all the innocent Delights and true real Pleasures of Life. ... The Inferior Animals do likewise exceed Man in that great and principal Pleasure of Life call’d Health, the Blessing that sweetens all other Injoyments by its amiable courteous healing preserving Operations, without which there is no Delight nor Satisfaction ....

(T. Tryon, vol. 2 of The Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God, and Good Government of the Mind and Body, 1704, 207)

To our great shame, American physician-researchers such as Lawrence Hansen are still, in a new millennium, having to spell out the ethical, scientific, and economic reasons for ending taxpayer-funded experimentation on “man’s best friend” and other animals in modern biomedical research (L. Hansen, “Lab Experiments on Dogs Are Cruel and Unnecessary,” B7).

And, as of Summer 2020, the founders’ legacy of good stewardship is again under attack, this time by the profiteering administration of President Donald Trump, which “plans to scale back a century-old law protecting most American wild bird species despite warnings that billions of birds could die as a result” (Matthew Brown, “Trump Administration Moves Forward with Plan to End Wild Bird Protections,” n. pag.; see also the reporting by Courtney Norris and Alex D’Elia, “Trump Fast-Tracks Environmental Rollbacks to Deliver on Campaign Promises,” n. pag.).

§  Publication and distribution

I have explained elsewhere (see our What’s Blooming news page, entry first posted on 5/9/2014, with continuing revisions) about why Tryon chose to address his call for colonial reforms to the planters of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Here, I want to expand a little on the transatlantic publishing network backing Tryon’s reform program.

Both The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ... and The Country-Man’s Companion close with a publisher’s advertisement for Tryon’s recently-issued 670-page medical handbook, The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness (1st edn., 1683). All three titles were “Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway-Lane near Shoreditch.”

Andrew Sowle, known for printing radical and reforming works,

began printing for the Quakers some time before the Restoration ... Early Quaker publications were perceived as posing a serious threat to the social order, and printers rarely showed their name in imprints. Sowle’s name does not appear in imprints before 1680. From that year until 1690 imprints show that he retailed works at his home in Shoreditch “at the sign of the Crooked Billet” and also at “Devonshire New Buildings” near Bishopsgate Street, the site of the first public Quaker meetings in London. In 1687 he added a third outlet in Gracechurch Street, near the main Quaker meeting-house. The papers of Quaker leader William Penn, however, reveal that Sowle was printing for the Society of Friends on a regular basis by 1672, and in 1674 minutes of the Quaker morning meeting name him as one of their official printers. Sowle managed to hide his press from government authorities until 1678....
   The Sowle press was the primary channel through which early Quaker works were published, and Andrew Sowle printed works by nearly all of the founders of Quakerism, including authors such as George Fox, Robert Barclay, George Whitehead, Isaac Penington, and William Penn. (Sowle is estimated, for instance, to have printed more than 90 per cent of Penn’s works.) During the eleven years that his name appears in imprints Sowle published well over eighty works for the Friends. The Quakers also relied on the Sowles to organize the distribution of their publications; in this regard, the Sowle press is an important exception to the rule in this period that printing houses generally did not retail their own products. From its beginnings some time near the Restoration until 1829 when it can no longer be traced under any variation of name, this unique publishing operation flourished not only in London but also, through the Bradford connection, in America.

(P. McDowell, ODNB entry for Andrew Sowle, n. pag.)

Tryon was not a Quaker, but he was a radical Puritan and fellow dissenter, having been a practicing Anabaptist for three years,

... My Master [i.e., the London castor-maker with whom Tryon apprenticed] was an honest sober Man, one of those called Anabaptists. After I had been with him about Two Years, I enclined to that Opinion; and was Baptized after their way, and admitted into a Congregation among them, and continued in that Opinion about Three Years: ....

(T. Tryon, Some Memoirs of the Life Mr. Tho. Tryon ..., 1705, 18)

Tryon’s first introduction to Quakerism may have been at Barbados, where prominent landowners such as Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Rous (d. before 1692), and his son John Rous (d. 1695), had converted to Quakerism by 1656 when the son’s A Warning to the Inhabitants of Barbadoes was published at London, with 600 copies distributed in Barbados. The island colony was by then a gateway to the new world for Quaker missionaries, including John Rous, who traveled to New England in 1657, and endured repeated imprisonments and public floggings by the authorities in Plymouth and Boston. After Rous and two other Quaker missionaries had their right ears cut off following their trial and conviction for heresy at Boston, Rous returned to Barbados, and then traveled on to England, where he published harrowing accounts of Quaker sufferings and persecutions inflicted by the Boston authorities, whose “zeal towards God ... is turned in to hypocrisie.”

Despite their differences concerning ritual, doctrine, and church governance, the various Civil War sects and sectarian churches making up the 17th-century radical puritan movement (including Quakers, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Independents, Fifth Monarchists, Levellers, Diggers, Muggletonians, Seekers, Ranters, Familists, Brownists, and “millenarians”) had core beliefs in common (e.g., that the holy spirit rather than reason was the energizing instrument of salvation) which set them in opposition to the established Anglican Church and its exercise of episcopal authority, which they considered corrupt, idolatrous, or unscriptural. For example, the Anabaptists (literally, I wash again) — whose ranks numbered 40,000 in the 1530s when John of Leiden (aka Jan Beuckelson, d. 1535) and his followers settled in Münster, Westphalia, taking control of the city and establishing a communistic theocracy — were easily linked with the Quakers in the late-17th century (by which time, both missionary movements were, to varying degrees, pacifist; advocated separation of church and state; sought to restore the institutions and the spirit of the primitive church; and refused to swear civil oaths). Although re-baptizers are found “even in the Primitive Church,”

Those properly called Anabaptists, are a Sect of Protestants, who first appeared in the XVIth Century, in some Provinces of Germany, particularly Westphalia, where ... They taught, that Baptism was not to be conferr’d on Children; that it is unlawful to swear, or to bear Arms; that a true Christian cannot be a Magistrate, &c....
   The Anabaptists adopted several other Dogmata from the Gnosticks, &c. touching the Incarnation, &c. But those who now retain the Name, have abandoned the greatest Part thereof; and in lieu of the Fanatick Zeal of the antient Founders of the Sect, have given into an Exemplary Simplicity in their Actions, Discipline, Dress, &c. not much unlike the modern Quakers.

(E. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, 2 vols., 1728, s.v. Anabaptists, 1.81–2)

Sectarian alliances were quite fluid, however, and Chambers lists over 26 Anabaptist splinter sects:

As they multiplied, they divided into a great number of Sects; which took particular Denominations, either from the Leaders thereof, or the peculiar Opinions, which they superadded to the general System of Anabaptism.--The principal were the Muncerians, Catharists, Enthusiasts, Silentes, Adamites, Georgians, Independants, Hutites, Melchiorites, Nudipedalians, Mennonites, Bulcholdians, Augustinians, Servetians, Monasterians, Libertins, Deoreliotians, Semperorantes, Polygamites, Ambrosians, Clancularians, Manifestarians, Bacularians, Pacificators, Pastoricides, Sanguinarii, &c.

(E. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, 2 vols., 1728, s.v. Anabaptists, 1.82)

But the general values binding the heretical sects which formed what has been called “the left wing of radical Puritanism” (C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, 313) held. In particular, there was much cross-over between Quakers and Pythagoreans and Behemists, like Tryon. The political revolutionary Gerrard Winstanley (bap. 1609, d. 1676), whose radical Digger doctrine had much in common with Thomas Tryon’s Behemist doctrine, died a Quaker. And numerous religious writers, such as the millenarian George Foster (fl. 1650), popularized a message of social levelling (the end of inequality and the overthrow of plutocracy) akin to Tryon’s, and believed, as did Tryon, in the recovery of Eden as a vegan paradise, where other animals enjoyed the same universal freedoms as human beings. As a young man, the Quaker bibliographer and writer John Whiting (1656–1722) read the works of Sir Walter Ralegh (whose History of the World was “saucy in censuring princes” and an inspiration to Puritan republicans and revolutionaries) as well as Jakob Böhme (or Boehme).

Boehme’s theosophist philosophy blended mystical religious experience based on an understanding of the soul, alchemy, and Paracelsian medicine which found a ready audience of those disaffected by religious factionalism. Boehme’s ideas of a personal spiritual relationship with God predated and were similar to those of George Fox; the Behemists eventually amalgamated with the Quakers, who downplayed Boehme’s enthusiasm for astrology. The Silesian’s hermetic philosophy was also popular among natural philosophers who responded to his vision that science was the way to understand the workings of the universe.

(K. G. Baston, ODNB entry for John Sparrow, n. pag.)

In such manner, those who were far less radical than Tryon also were drawn to the Religious Society of Friends. For example, the natural philosopher, Anne, Viscountess Conway (1631–1679), converted to Quakerism late in life, as did her resident physician from 1670 until 1679, the medic, chemist and Christian cabbalist Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1698), who co-edited her Principia Philosophiae (1690) — a theodicy and monadology inspired by her own cabbalistic studies, which would in turn influence the Monadologie (1714) of the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). The viscountess converted to Quakerism over the rigorous objections of her family, and friends such as the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (and, indeed, her family never accepted her religious conversion and would not honor her wishes for a Quaker burial, insisting instead on a Church of England funeral, and on burying her according to the Anglican rite). (S. Hutton, ODNB entry for Anne Conway, n. pag.) Lady Conway was known to, and visited by, all the Quaker leaders of her day (George Fox, Robert Barclay, George Keith, William Penn), and she operated quietly behind the scenes, using her social position to help other Quakers who had been persecuted by the state and imprisoned for their beliefs.

Still others in high positions had an affinity for Quaker doctrine, even if they had no intention of converting. One such was Sir William Davenant (1606–1668), a royalist and valued member of Henrietta Maria’s circle, by whom he was engaged in court propaganda, especially the spectacular Caroline masques on which he collaborated with Inigo Jones, “the two men combining to give full expression to Stuart autocratic ideals.” (M. Edmond, ODNB entry for William Davenant, n. pag.) After the royalist armies were defeated and Davenant joined the exiled court at St Germain-en-Laye near Paris, Henrietta Maria arranged for Davenant to take up an appointment in the North American colonies, and in May 1650, Davenant set sail for Virginia accompanied by about 36 French convict-weavers, whose services were needed in order to launch a silk industry in the colony. Davenant was captured at sea by the Parliamentarians, and imprisoned by the commonwealth, for having been an enemy combatant, until October 1652 — “a victim of bureaucracy and muddle.” (Edmond, n. pag.) After the restoration of Charles II, “he opened a modern theatre with scenery, built up a distinguished company of players of both sexes, revived old plays [several by Shakespeare] and promoted writers of new ones, and exercised a virtual stage monopoly until his sudden death.” (Edmond, n. pag.) “In a long career through great social change, William Davenant kept abreast of and sometimes advanced the tastes of the day” (Edmond, n. pag.), so it is not insignificant that this cultured man, who defied the Commonwealth ban on the playhouses and never catered to Puritan sensibilities, believed that Quakerism would prevail over the Anglican church:

His private opinion was that Religion at last,—e.g. a hundred yeares hence,—would come to settlement, and that in a kind of ingeniose Quakerisme.

(J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, 2 vols., 1898, 1.209)

Despite severe treatment, Quakers were “a growing economic segment of society, in England as well as Ireland. By 1677 there were at least fourteen substantial Quaker merchants in London alone. These, together with Quaker merchants and tradesmen throughout England and Ireland, represented a sizeable contribution to the economic growth of the country.” (M. K. Geiter, ODNB entry for William Penn, n. pag.)

The Sowles had 10 children, of whom 3 daughters survived to adulthood, all becoming Quaker printers like their father.

Tace Sowle, born on 29 March 1666, succeeded her father as head of the Sowle press in 1691, which thrived under her management. Her name appeared “in nearly 300 imprints during the first fifteen years of her career (1691–1705)” and she was “the leading Quaker printer and bookseller for more than half a century (1691–1749),” during which time she printed “more than one hundred works by thirteen different women (including one non-Quaker, the leader of the Philadelphian Society, the visionary Jane Lead.” (P. McDowell, ODNB entry for Tace Sowle, n. pag.) Tace Sowle also published (posthumously) two works by the American alchemist and medical practitioner, George Starkey, born in Bermuda in 1628.

Even as a wealthy independent businesswoman, Tace Sowle had to deal with the stigma of Quakerism, as is made clear by the London bookseller, John Dunton (1659–1732), who felt compelled to defend his good report of her character and religious reverence:

Mrs. Tacy Sowle------She is both a Printer, as well as a Bookseller, and the Daughter of one; and understands her Trade very well; being a good Compositor her self: Her Love and Piety to her aged Mother, is eminently remarkable; even to that Degree, that she keeps her self unmarried for this only Reason (as I have been inform’d) That it may not be out of her Power to let her Mother have always the Chief Command in her House.
   I have known this Eminent Quaker for many Years (have been generously treated at her House) and must do her the Justice, to say, I believe her a Conscientious Person.
   If any blame me for being thus charitable, I can’t help it; for I cannot think it a peice [sic] of Religion to anathematize from Christ, all such as will not subscribe to every one of my Articles; but am conscious to so many Errors, speculative and practical, in my self, that I know not how to be severe towards others; for since Christs Church is not limited to any Nation or Party, (as is own’d in Robert Barclay’s Apology, &c. which Mrs. Sowle once presented to me) I do believe sincerity, and holiness will carry us to Heaven, with any Wind, and with any Name. At least, I have so much charity as to think all those Persons go to Heaven, whether they be Church-Men, Presbyterians, or Quakers, &c. in whom I see so much Goodness and Vertue, as is visible in the Life and Conversation of Mrs. Sowle[.]

(J. Dunton, The Life and Errors of John Dunton Late Citizen of London ... Together with the Lives and Characters of a Thousand Persons Now Living in London ..., 2 pts., 1705, 1.300–1)

Perhaps spurred by her homeland’s institutionalized prejudice — or just because it was good business — Tace Sowle sought out new markets and built a flourishing international book trade:

The Quakers relied on Sowle Raylton to oversee the national and international distribution of their books and tracts, and she shipped several thousands of items every year, not only throughout Great Britain and Ireland but also to continental Europe and other “foreign partes beyond the seas” (the American colonies and the Caribbean).

(P. McDowell, ODNB entry for Tace Sowle, n. pag.)

This alone ensured that Tryon’s books were broadly distributed. But Tace Sowle had other important connections that ensured her access to the American market, including in Pennsylvania where she herself owned 1,000 acres of land.

In 1685, Tace’s sister, Elizabeth Sowle (d. 1731), married a family apprentice, William Bradford (1663–1752), and emigrated with him to Pennsylvania, where they became the first Quaker printers in the American colonies. Bradford was based in the Oxford township, near Philadelphia, from 1685 until he moved to New York in 1693. In both locations he remained connected to the Sowle family business back in London, importing various published works from his sister-in-law for sale in colonial America.

Among Bradford’s earliest imprints after setting up in New York was George Keith’s An Exhortation & Caution to Friends concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes (New York, 1693) — a radical abolitionist statement, and the first protest against slavery printed in America. Keith’s Exhortation repeats arguments first broached by Thomas Tryon in his Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies in Three Parts (London, 1684) and The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ... (London, 1684) — both of which were printed by Andrew Sowle while Bradford was his apprentice (Bradford was freed on 3 December 1684). So this is one case where we can clearly trace the influences of one author upon another.

In such manner did radical works and ideas circulate through the sociointellectual networks nurtured by those in the print trade who kept authors and scholars worldwide abreast of relevant publications in their fields.

[ To view all 31 hover-box notes for this Editor’s Introduction,
grouped together on a separate Web page, click/tap here. ]

§  References

Akpan, Nsikan. “The science of using your expectations to relieve pain.” A PBS NewsHour segment, first aired 11 April 2018.

SUMMARY: “Traditional healing is used around the world, from acupuncture to laying of hands to yoga. How do these alternative remedies work to heal the body and the brain? As part of our series ScienceScope and in cooperation with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the NewsHour’s Nsikan Akpan ventures to Oaxaca, Mexico to dive into the neuroscience of expectation.”
   Akpan’s science reporting is supplemented with an equally provocative webessay, “The Placebo Effect’s Role in Healing, Explained” (posted to the Science section of the NewsHour’s website, 4/11/2018), by Erik Vance, author of Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal (National Geographic, 2016).
   Of note, Vance comments here that cancer is not among the diseases known to respond to the placebo effect: “Akpan’s distorted pain experience is a classic placebo response. But not all placebos are this effective. Some conditions seem to naturally respond better than others. Pain, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, and even addiction seem particularly susceptible to placebo. Others that may also join the list are autism, autoimmune disorders, asthma and immune response. Meanwhile, cancer, obsessive compulsive disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease don’t seem to respond as well to placebo.” (E. Vance, n. pag.)

Anon. “An account of the life and writings of Thomas Stanley, esq;.” In The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect. Illustrated with the effigies of divers of them. By Thomas Stanley, esq:. The third edition. To which is added the life of the author, never before published. 4 vols. London: printed for W. Battersby at Thavy’s Inn-gate, near St. Andrew’s Church in Holbourn, Hugh Newman, Tho. Cockerill, Herbert Walwyn in the Poultry, and A. and J. Churchil in Pater-Noster-Row, MDCCI [1701]. 1.a1r-e1r.

This posthumous reissue of 1701 was the 1st printing of Stanley’s celebrated Lives of the Philosophers to include a Life of Stanley, himself.
   Since no author is credited with the biography of Stanley prefixed to this 3rd edn. (1701) of the 4-vol. set of Stanley’s Lives of the Philosophers, it was probably the work of a hack writer in the employ of the publishers who commissioned it.
   The publishers’ Life of Stanley (1701) is quoted in the Introduction to our HTML transcription of Stanley’s 17th-century commentary on Pythagorean “Medicine by Musick” from the 1st edn. of The History of Philosophy (vol. 3, 1660).

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov’s biographical encyclopedia of science & technology: the lives and achievements of 1510 great scientists from ancient times to the present. 2nd rev. edn. New York: Doubleday, 1982.

Aubrey, John. “Brief lives”, chiefly of contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 & 1696. Ed. by Andrew Clark. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898.

B., R. Admirable curiosities[,] rarities, & wonders in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or, An account of many remarkable persons, and places, and likewise of the battels, seiges, prodigious earthquakes, tempests, inundations, thunders, lightnings, fires, murders, and other considerable occurrences, and accidents for several hundred years past. Together with the natural and artificial rarities in every county, and many other observable matters; as they are recorded by the most authentick, and credible historians of former and latter ages; adorned with the lively description of several memorable things therein contained, ingraven on copper plates. By R. B. author of the History of the wars of England, &c., and Remarks of London, &c. London: Printed by Tho. Snowden for Nath. Crouch at the Bell, next to Kemp’s Coffee-house in Exchang-Alley, over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, 1682.

In the section of Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, & Wonders cataloguing England’s “Plenties and Ornaments,” R. B. repeated proverbial wisdom about Englishwomen’s superior beauty and socioeconomic status, but was less enamoured of their feminine intellects. In England, he writes, “The Women are generally handsomer than in other places, sufficiently endowed with natural Beauties, without the Adulteration of Art. In an absolute Woman (say the Italians) are required the parts of a Dutch Woman from the Girdle downward, of a French Woman from the Girdle to the Shoulders, over which must be placed an English Face; as their Beauties so likewise their Prerogatives are the greatest of any Nation, neither so servilly submissive as the French, nor so jealously guarded as the Italian, but keeping so true a decorum, that as England is termed the Purgatory of Servants, and the Hell of Horses, so it is acknowledged the Paradise of Women: And it is a common by-word among the Italians, That if there were a Bridge built over the narrow Seas, all the Women of Europe would run into England: For here they have the upper hand in the Streets, the upper place at the Table, the Thirds of their Husbands Estates, and their equal share in all Lands; which are Priviledges wherewith other Women are not acquainted; they were of high esteem in former times amongst Forreign Nations, for the modesty and gravity of their Conversations, but the Women of these times are so much addicted to the light Garb of the French, that they have lost much of their honour and reputation among sober Persons abroad, who before admired them.” (R. B., Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, & Wonders in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1st edn., 1682, 4)
   R. B.’s rosy description of England as the Paradise of Women — written only 20 years after Margaret Cavendish complained about Englishwomen’s lot under the condition she named “the Female Slavery” — requires qualification. R. B. (aka Nathaniel Crouch) was a pro-woman author and publisher, who took on a woman apprentice (Elizabeth Guard, from Norton in Sussex), and did more than most to advance women in the trades. But even in the print business, where married women flourished, opportunities for single women trying to get ahead were severely limited. The English printer, Eleanor Playford (fl. 1680s), is a case in point. Eleanor inherited the widow Anne Godbid’s specialist printing house (specializing in music and mathematical books) by way of her brother (and Anne’s partner), John Playford the younger (1650–1685), who first apprenticed with Anne’s husband, William Godbid (d. 1679), then partnered with Anne until she died in 1683, and then ran the Little Britain printing house on his own. When John died in 1685, his unmarried sister Eleanor took over the business, bringing out Daniel Newhouse’s The Whole Art of Navigation (1685) that same year. Eleanor continued to manage the printing shop herself, “but as she was not a stationer’s widow she was not allowed to continue and advertised the printing shop for sale in the London Gazette for 3–6 May 1686. Unable to find a buyer for its specialized equipment, Eleanor unsuccessfully petitioned the king for permission to run the shop herself.” James II was not inclined to overturn the entrenched English system of male supremacy, either at home or abroad.
   As such, R. B.’s claim about Englishwomen having “Priviledges wherewith other Women are not acquainted” was also an exaggeration, as evidenced in the case of the Dutchwoman Margaret Hardenbrook Philipse (d. 1691?), a merchant trader in New Netherland (afterwards New York), who immigrated to New Amsterdam in the late 1650s, and as an independent businesswoman, capitalized on the flourishing transatlantic trade between Amsterdam, the Dutch West Indies, and New Amsterdam, amassing great wealth and social status. With the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, the Dutch colony became the proprietorship of James, duke of York (later James II), who imposed English law, which restricted the legal rights and responsibilities of women. Under Dutch colonial law, Margaret had independent business status, and traded under her maiden name, Hardenbrook. With the transition to English law that followed the conquest, Margaret’s husband was given responsibility for his wife’s legal and business activities, and once her status was changed to that of a femme covert, Margaret’s freedoms and commercial activities were curtailed. Like the English Eleanor Playford, the Dutch-American Margaretta (or Margariet) Hardenbrook (or Hardenbroeck) actually lost “Priviledges” under the English administration of James II.

B., R. Miracles of art and nature: or, A brief description of the several varieties of birds, beasts, fishes, plants, and fruits of other countreys. Together with several other remarkable things in the world. By R. B. gent. London: Printed for William Bowtel at the sign of the Golden Key near Miter-Court in Fleet-Street, 1678.

R. B. (Robert/Richard Burton) was the pseudonym of bookseller and historian Nathaniel Crouch (c.1640–1725?), whose genius for popular historiography was described by one of his “hearty” friends in the book trade, John Dunton, as follows: “I think I have given you the very Soul of his Character, when I have told you that his Talent lies at Collection. He has melted down the best of our English Histories into Twelve-Penny-Books, which are fill’d with WONDERS, RARITIES and CURIOSITIES, for you must know, his Title Pages are a little swelling.” (J. Dunton, The Life and Errors of John Dunton Late Citizen of London ... Together with the Lives and Characters of a Thousand Persons Now Living in London ..., 2 pts., 1705, 1.282)
   R. B.’s assorted histories (including 2 works of Anglo-American colonial history) were wildly popular on both sides of the Atlantic (e.g., Benjamin Franklin records in his Autobiography that he sold the works of Bunyan in order to obtain a coveted copy of “Burton’s books”). They were collected and reprinted many times, and were still selling well in the 1860s.
   Archaeologists are just now beginning to recover early-modern Quivira, with its “miracles of art and nature” (low-waste cities) which captivated the imagination of Europeans such as R. B./Burton/Crouch. The LA Times has done some fascinating reporting on this; see “Signs of a Lost City under a Kansas Town: Artifacts found in the area seem to align with conquistadors’ texts and myths about original inhabitants,” by David Kelly (Los Angeles Times, 8/19/2018, pp. A1 and A10), retitled “Archaeologists Explore a Rural Field in Kansas, and a Lost City Emerges” for online posting.
   Researchers believe the site they are excavating (2018) in an Arkansas City, Kansas field may be the lost city of Etzanoa, “home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700” who lived in “thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers” (D. Kelly, A1 and A10).
   “The early Great Plains had long been imagined as a vast empty space populated by nomadic tribes following buffalo herds. But if Blakeslee [i.e., Donald Blakeslee, an anthropologist and archaeology professor at Wichita State University] is right, at least some of the tribes were urban. They built large towns, raised crops, made fine pottery, processed bison on a massive scale and led a settled existence. There were trade connections all the way to the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in Mexico.  ¶  ‘So this was not some remote place. The people traded and lived in huge communities,’ Blakeslee said. ‘Everything we thought we knew turns out to be wrong. I think this needs a place in every schoolbook.’  ¶  And that may just be the beginning. Blakeslee has found archaeological evidence in Rice and McPherson counties for other large settlements extending for miles, which he believes existed around the same time as Etzanoa.” (D. Kelly, A10)
   Given the current political climate which casts California as an alien outlier state, pitting California values against those of the U.S. heartland, it is worth remembering that at the founding of this country, during the 17th century, California was the name used by Crouch and many others at the time, including prominent cartographers, to describe the entire western half of the United States, as in the passage from R. B.’s Miracles of Art and Nature quoted above, which locates Kansas (Quivira) in continental California.
   As explained at Wikipedia, “On early 16th and 17th century maps of North America, a large region including what is now Kansas, Oklahoma, southeastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico and the Texas panhandle was called Quivira.” “Quivira is a place first mentioned by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541, who visited it during his searches for the mythical ‘Seven Cities of Jade’. The location and identity of Quivira is believed by most authorities to be in central Kansas. The Quivirans are believed to have been Wichita or another Caddoan tribe (Pawnee, Arikara, etc.).” (Wikipedia article on Quivira, accessed 7/30/2018)
   I include here reproductions of 4 early maps which all show California extending considerably inland, encompassing Quivira:
1.  [from 1594]  World map, Orbis terrarum typus de integro multis in locis emendatus auctore Petro Plancio 1594, by Peter Plancius (1552–1622), the Dutch navigational expert.

   Described by England’s foremost authorities in the navigational sciences as “contayning more places newly found, aswell in the East and West Indies, as also towards the North Pole, which no other Map made heretofore hath,” Plancius’ world map immediately became the preferred text for English men and women, of all classes, when studying world history and geography. “Petrus Plancius his universall map, serving both for sea and land, and by him lately put foorth in the yeare of our Lord, 1592” circulated widely and was copied many times by cartographers and engravers, which gave it considerable influence throughout the next century.
   Plancius’ discoveries exerted further influence on Jacobean science & culture through the intelligences of Matthaeus Sladus, who married Plancius’ step-daughter, and supplied the English court of James I and its ambassador in Holland, Dudley Carleton, with information on matters of religion and church politics, particulars on anonymous printers and authors of pamphlets against King James and others, as well as information about secret matters of a political or economic nature.
   Click/tap here to view a digital facsimile (large 1.9MB file) of Plancius’ world map (1594).
2.  [from 1622]  Map of the Pacific Ocean, by Hessel Gerritsz (c.1581–1632), a colleague of Plancius, who recommended him for the prestigious position of cartographer to the Dutch East India Company.

   Click/tap here to view a digital facsimile (577KB) of Gerritsz’ parchment map (1622).
3.  [from 1618]  Map of America printed in an Italian reissue of the best-selling Universal Relations (Relazioni Universali, 4 vols., 1591–98), by Giovanni Botero (1540–1617), entitled Le relationi universali di Giovanni Botero benese, divise in sette parti.... Con le figure, & due copiosissime tauole.... Nuovamente ristampate, & ricorrette (In Venetia: Appresso Alessandro Vecchi, MDCXVIII [1618]).

   Click/tap here to view a digital facsimile (730KB) of the anonymous map of America, printed in Botero’s Relationi Universali (1618).
4.  [from 1625]  “Hondius his Map of America,” printed in vol. 3 of Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas his Pilgrimes (4 vols., 1624–5), by the geographical compiler, clergyman, and member of the Virginia Company, Samuel Purchas (bap. 1577, d. 1626).

   This influential collection of oral and written accounts of travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas took over 3 years to print, and was the largest work ever to issue from an English press at the time. Although he did not illustrate his Pilgrimes with maps from Plancius, Purchas was in contact with the great Dutch mapmaker, who provided Purchas with “a loose Paper” written by Willem Barentsz concerning his 3rd voyage to Cathay and China via the Northeast Passage, in 1596.
   Click/tap here to view a digital facsimile (large 1.2MB file) of Hondius’s map of America, printed in Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625).
5.  [from 1638]  Americae Descript. Map of the Americas printed on p. 52 in The Merchants Mappe of Commerce (2 pts., 1st edn., 1638), by the London-based Levant and East India merchant, Lewes Roberts (1596–1641).

   This is an exact reprint of “Hondius his Map of America” (cf. No. 4 above), printed in Samuel Purchas’ Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), with the callout for continental “California” to the south and east of Quivira (thus, encompassing it, as interpreted by 17th-century viewers like R. B.).
   Roberts’ authoritative tome for the mercantile community offered English travellers the most reliable topographical information, “drawne according to the best and latest discoveries that have beene made,” along with detailed accounts of local commodities, currency, weights and measures, and rates of exchange. His comprehensive guidebook to “the Art of Merchandizing, in all the parts of the habitable World” was deliberately built “upon the knowledge of Geographie, and upon the use of Mapps and Sea-Cards in generall, so delightfull, profitable and necessary to the Merchant, that it cannot be by him that would be accompted such a one, neither neglected nor omitted.” (L. Roberts, “To the Reader,” The Merchants Mappe of Commerce, 1st edn., 1638, A5v) The work was an immediate success, and revised editions were published in 1671, 1677, and 1700.
   Roberts admits that “the Trade of America, [is] the least and worst knowne unto us,” and he asks readers to “excuse the defects or omissions, that may by further triall peradventure be found herein” (L. Roberts, “To the Reader,” A6r). His selection of Hondius’ map of the Americas — depicting the “new world” as a known unknown, “leaving unperfect to the view of all men those places, lands and harbours, which have not been fully discovered and found out” (L. Roberts, 53) — to introduce this least charted section of his book on global trade is significant.
   The map’s creator, Jodocus Hondius (or Joost de Hondt, 1563–1612), was known for engraving maps and charts bearing the latest information brought back by mariners venturing new routes into distant seas, including the great explorers Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Thomas Cavendish. As his map of the Americas suggests, Hondius was also influenced by the work of Petrus Plancius, whose newly-invented constellations (based on a recent survey by Dutch navigators) were first shown on Hondius’ celestial globe published in 1597.
   Cf. the updated world map of his son, Henricus Hondius (or Hendrik de Hondt, 1597–1651), entitled Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula (1630). The son’s map, which introduced the Australian coastline to a broad public, was less innovative in its revisioning of the west coast of North America, whereby California is reduced to an island. In the son’s revised view of the Americas, there is no continental California, and no callout for Quivira.
   Click/tap here to view a digital facsimile (large 1.2MB file) of Jodocus Hondius’s map of the Americas, printed in The Merchants Mappe of Commerce (1638).

Baston, K. Grudzien. “Sparrow, John (1615–1670), translator and lawyer.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Bätschmann, Oskar. Nicolas Poussin: dialectics of painting. Translated by Marko Daniels. London: Reaktion Books, 1990.

Behn, Aphra. “On the author of that excellent and learned book, entituled, The way to health, long life and happiness.” In The way to make all people rich: or, Wisdoms call to temperan[c]e and frugality in a dialogue between Sophronio and Guloso, one a lover of sobriety, the other addicted to gluttony and excess. By Philotheos Physiologus, the author of The way to health, The country-man’s companion, The good house-wife made a doctor, &c. By Thomas Tryon. [London]: Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle, in Holloway-Lane, Shoreditch, 1685.

This was the first printing of the commendatory verses by Aphra Behn promoting Thomas Tryon’s The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness, 1st published in 1683.
   Tryon later included Behn’s verses with the 3rd edn. (1697) of his The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness.

Bird Brain. One-hour documentary, first aired on 20 December 2017. Episode 20 of Season 44 of NOVA, a weekly science series on U.S. public television, produced by WGBH Boston.

As summarized at NOVA’s website for Bird Brain: “Call somebody a ‘bird brain,’ and you’re not delivering them a compliment. But as NOVA shows, birds turn out to have advanced problem-solving skills that we usually assume are unique to humans. Watch astonishing tests of avian aptitude: parrots that can plan for the future, jackdaws that can ‘read’ human faces, and crows that can solve multi-step puzzles with tools like pebbles, sticks, and hooks. Could these just be clever tricks based on instinct or triggered by subtle cues from their human handlers? To rule out any doubts, NOVA puts feathered Einsteins through their paces and reveals skills that even three- or four-year-old children have a hard time mastering—such as putting off one reward now to get a bigger one later. From this revolution in thinking about our feathered friends, the conclusion seems irresistible that bird brains see the world in ways that aren’t so different from our own.” (n. pag.)

Blome, Richard. The present state of His Majesties isles and territories in America, viz. Jamaica, Barbadoes, S. Christophers, Nevis, Antego, S. Vincent, Dominica, New-Jersey, Pensilvania, Monserat, Anguilla, Bermudas, Carolina, Virginia, New-England, Tobago, New-Found-Land, Mary-Land, New-York. With new maps of every place. Together with astronomical tables, which will serve as a constant diary or calendar, for the use of the English inhabitants in those islands; from the year 1686 to 1700. Also a table by which, at any time of the day or night here in England, you may know what hour it is in any of those parts. And how to make sun-dials fitting for all those places. Licens’d, July 20. 1686. Roger L-Estrange. London: Printed by H. Clark, for Dorman Newman, at the Kings-Arms in the Poultrey, 1687.

Richard Blome (bap. 1635?, d. 1705), along "with his more famous rival, the cartographer and mapseller John Ogilby,” “has been given credit for inaugurating a new period of activity in English cartography, if not geography.” Known to scholars and Royal Society Fellows as the “boldest Plagiary in the whole pack” of opportunistic publishers churning out sycophantic subscription works and employing hack writers for a pittance, Blome’s expertise as an heraldic painter (painting family arms for funerals and other important ceremonial occasions) gave him the necessary connections, among the rich and famous, to become one of the first publishers “to use the advance subscription method to finance many projects.” (S. Mendyk, ODNB entry for Richard Blome, n. pag.)
   Blome’s “account of the Colibry or Humming-Bird” is located in the section of this work describing the Caribbean island of St. Christopher’s. Like the Huguenot refugee, Durand, publishing his first-person account of Virginia that same year, Blome emphasizes the jewel-like hummingbird’s marvellous scent: it “is admirable for its Beauty, Bulk, sweet Sent, and manner of Life; for being the least of all Birds, he gloriously confirms the Saying of Pliny That Nature is ever greatest in its least productions: Some of these Birds are no bigger bodied than the greater sorts of Flies, yet of such beautiful Feathers, that the Neck, Wings and Back represent the Rainbow; there are others that have such a bright red under their Neck, that at a distance one would imagine it to be a Carbuncle, the Belly, and under the Wings as yellow as Gold, the Thighs green like an Emerald, the Feet and Beak as black as polish’d Ebony, the two little Eyes like two Diamonds set in an Oval, of the colour of burnish’d Steel, the Head is grass-green, which gives it such a lustre that it looks as if gilt; the Male hath a little Tuft on the Head, in which may be seen all the Colours which enamel this little Body, the Miracle of this feathered Commonwealth is one of the rarest productions of Nature; he moves that little Crown of Feathers at pleasure, and is more beautiful than the Female; as his Bulk and Plumage is miraculous, so is the activity of his flight, making a noise with his wings as if a little whirlwind were raised in the Air of a sudden, which surprizes them that hear him before they see him; he lives only on the dew which he sucks from the flowers of Trees with his Tongue, which is longer than his Beak, hollow as a Reed, and about the bigness of a small Needle; ’tis pleasant to look on him in that posture; for spreading abroad his little Crest, one would think he had on his head a Crown of Rubies and all sorts of precious stones, animated, and flying in the Air: The Female commonly lays but two Eggs, which are oval, about the bigness of a Pea or small Pearl; and though he lose much of his Beauty when dead, yet there is so much left, that some Ladies have worn them for Pendants, and imagined they became them better than any other; its Smell is so odoriferous, that it is like the finest Musk and Amber.” (Richard Blome, The Present State of His Majesty’s Isles and Territories in America, 1687, 52–53)
   Cf. Durand’s Voyages d’un Francois Exilé pour la Religion avec Une Description de la Vergine & Marilan dans l’Amerique a la Haye (1687).

Böhme, Jakob. Aurora. That is, the day-spring. Or dawning of the day in the Orient or morning-rednesse in the rising of the sun. That is the root or mother of philosophie, astrologie & theologie from the true ground. Or a description of nature. I. How all was, and came to be in the beginning. II. How nature and the elements are become creaturely. III. Also of the two qualities evill and good. IIII. From whence all things had their original. V. And how all stand and work at present. VI. Also how all will be at the end of this time. VII. Also what is the condition of the kingdom of God, and of the kingdom of Hell. VIII. And how men work and act creaturely in each of them. All this set down diligently from a true ground in the knowledge of the spirit, and in the imp[u]lse of God. By Jacob Behme Teutonick philosopher. Being his first book. Written in Gerlitz in Germany anno Christi M.DC.XII. on Tuesday after the day of Pentecost of Whitsunday aetatis suae 37. London: Printed by John Streater, for Giles Calvert, and are be sold at his Shop at the Black-Spread-Eagle at the West-End of Pauls, 1656.

Aurora ... or a Description of Nature is an English translation, by John Sparrow, of Jakob Böhme’s Aurora, oder Morgenröthe im Aufgang (1612).
   “Boehme was not an easy author to understand, as Sparrow himself admitted in his preface to his translation, XL Questions Concerning the Soule (1647): ‘some will think it so hard to attaine … when they read the answer to the first Question … that they will forbeare to take so much paines as they suppose it requisite’ (sig. A3v). Sparrow went on to encourage his readers to overcome their hesitation, and provided alternate translations or interpretations in the margins to help with difficult concepts. Boehme himself had provided glossaries to his works which Sparrow included in his translations.” (K. G. Baston, ODNB entry for “Sparrow, John (1615–1670), translator and lawyer”, online edn., 2004, n. pag.)
   Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677) engraved the allegorical frontispiece for Sparrow’s translation, which was intended to stimulate the visual imagination of Böhme’s English-language readers.

   Click/tap here to view a digital facsimile (349KB) of Hollar’s visualization of the biblical verses called out in the gloss (left side of spread): Revelation 1:4; Revelation 4:3 and 4:5–11; Revelation 5:6 and 5:8–10; Isaiah 9:2; Matthew 4:16.

Booker, Christopher, with Sam Weber and Connie Kargbo. “This leather substitute is grown in a New Jersey Lab.” A PBS NewsHour Weekend feature, first aired 13 October 2018.

SUMMARY: “Modern Meadow, a New Jersey-based startup, is using biotechnology to produce material that looks and feels similar to leather. The company says that producing this leather-like material, made of lab-grown collagen, carries a lower environmental impact than other means of leather production. NewsHour Weekend’s Christopher Booker reports.”
   On the subject of biofabricated Tshirts:
      “[CHRISTOPHER BOOKER:] Last year, the company launched the clothing brand, Zoa. [Its] first product, a white t-shirt pieced together using its leather-like biofabricated material, was recently displayed in the museum of modern art as part of a fashion exhibit. Investors have poured more than 50 million in venture funding but the company has yet to produce any clothing that’s commercially available.  ¶  So it’s a ways off from say being able to purchase a shirt at Walmart that’s been biofabricated?
      “[SUZANNE LEE (chief creative officer at Modern Meadow):] Right. I mean, you know the first, the first thing is always going to be that any new technology is both expensive in the first instance and limited in its volume. But as all these companies scale the technology then it will come down in price and become more available.” (n. pag.)
   Not everyone is enamored of the quest for biotechnology to displace traditional, artisanal methods of converting animal hide into leather (the sort of “brain-tanning and smoking” techniques favored by the Algonquian women of North America’s mid- and south-Atlantic region, as documented in 1691 by Sir Robert Southwell).
   From the detailed critical comment posted by “JeanSC” in response to Booker’s report: “There are a number of different tannages to make leather, and they have vastly different environmental impacts.... And if, for example, the hide comes from a deer taken by hunting, and is processed by brain-tanning and smoking, even the environmental impacts of that are small; we’ve been using this method for thousands of years. This makes the best soft-tanned leather available.  ¶  The video accompanying the slam on leather-making was bigoted against modern tanneries. It was obviously taken in some Third World country, showing everything done outside. The large U.S. city I live in used to have a huge supply of hides from stockyards and many tanneries. The stockyards are gone — and there is ONE tannery left here. By all accounts, it complies with all pollution regulations and is a good neighbor as well as a respected company. I was given a tour years ago and have bought leather from them for a custom project. All the work is done inside. Yes, it’s messy, and the hides have stuff which has to be removed to make leather. Workers in some parts of the process wear high boots and heavy aprons. So what? Life is messy. I think for the performance qualities I seek in leather, part of the input has to be the life the original owner of the hide lived, and the stresses put on his skin. If you want to create those qualities in a lab — we make textiles for this....” (n. pag.)

Bowerbank, Sylvia. “Lead [née Ward], Jane (1624–1704), mystic and author.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Brown, Alexander. The Genesis of the United States. A narrative of the movement in England, 1605-1616, which resulted in the plantation of North America by englishmen, disclosing the contest between England and Spain for the possession of the soil now occupied by the United States of America; set forth through a series of historical manuscripts now first printed together with a reissue of rare contemporaneous tracts, accompanied by bibliographical memoranda, notes, and brief biographies. Collected, arranged, and edited by Alexander Brown. 2 vols. 1890; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.

Brown, Matthew. “Trump administration moves forward with plan to end wild bird protections.” An Associated Press article, posted to the PBS NewsHour website, 5 June 2020.

As part of its concerted rollback of environmental regulations, President Trump’s White House is going after the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 — “one of the country’s first major federal environmental laws, enacted just after the conservation movement embodied by President Teddy Roosevelt had emerged as a new force in American politics.” (Matthew Brown, n. pag.)
   The 1918 law was enacted “after many U.S. bird populations had been decimated by hunting and poaching — much of it for feathers for women’s hats.” (M. Brown, n. pag.)
   Imperiled U.S. bird populations date to the 17th century, when the unregulated transatlantic avian trade first took off. For example, American hummingbirds — highly valued for their use in feather paintings; as jewelry (European women, adapting indigenous fashions, such as live-snake earrings, wore dead hummingbirds as pendants); and as showpiece air fresheners (according to the cartographer and publisher, Richard Blome, “its Smell is so odoriferous, that it is like the finest Musk and Amber”) — were then a coveted and profitable item. Durand, the Huguenot refugee who travelled through Virginia and Maryland in 1686–87, recorded that the jewel-like American hummingbird fetched “a price of eight pounds sterling apiece” in England (--- Durand, Une Description de la Vergine & Marilan dans l’Amerique a la Haye [1687], Eng. trans., 1923, 120).
   In 2020, fashion trends and global markets have shifted, and the industries seeking to profit at the expense of wild birds now include energy & telecom companies, with the Trump administration arguing that “the deaths of birds that fly into oil pits, mining sites, telecommunications towers, wind turbines and other hazards should be treated as accidents not subject to prosecution.” (M. Brown, n. pag.)
   As before, the stakes are high: “some vulnerable species could decline to the point where they would require protection under the Endangered Species Act.” (M. Brown, n. pag.)
   See also below citation for Courtney Norris and Alex D’Elia.

Capp, Bernard. “Jinner, Sarah (fl. 1658–1664), compiler of almanacs and medical practitioner.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, October 2004.

Caulfield, James. Portraits, memoirs, and characters, of remarkable persons, from the revolution in 1688 to the end of the reign of George II. Collected from the most authentic accounts extant. By James Caulfield. In four volumes. 4 vols. London: H. R. Young and T. H. Whitely, 1819–20.

Cavendish, Margaret. Grounds of natural philosophy: divided into thirteen parts, with an appendix containing five parts. The second edition, much altered from the first, which went under the name of Philosophical and physical opinions. London: A. Maxwell, 1668.

3rd edn. (retitled) and Cavendish’s final work on her life’s passion, natural philosophy: “Of all my Works, this Work which I have Writ, / My Best Belov’d and Greatest Favorite” (M. Cavendish, epistle “To my Just Readers” in Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 2nd edn., 1663, 457).
   This 3rd edn. of Cavendish’s scientific “master-piece” was printed by a woman (Anne Maxwell), plus revised and edited by the duchess herself.
   For “this beloved Child of my Brain,” Margaret alone claimed responsibility for corrections, alterations, and additions to the text, “never putting it [her book] to suck at the Breast of some Learned Nurse, whom I might have got from among your Students, to have assisted me; but would, obstinately, suckle it my self, and bring it up, without the help of any Scholar” (M. Cavendish, epistle “To All the Universities in Europe” in Grounds of Natural Philosophy, 1668, a2v).

Cavendish, Margaret. The philosophical and physical opinions. Written by her excellency, the lady marchionesse of Newcastle. London: Printed for J. Martin and J. Allestrye at the Bell in St. Pauls Church-Yard, 1655.

1st edn. of Cavendish’s scientific “master-piece”: “... my beloved of all my works, prefering it as my master-piece, although I do beleeve it will not please my Readers, because as I have said in some of my Epistles, few take delight in the study of Natural Philosophy” (M. Cavendish, epistle “To the Reader” in Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1st edn., 1655, A3v). This work was reissued in 1663 and 1668 (the 3rd revised edn. retitled Grounds of Natural Philosophy).

Cavendish, Margaret. Playes written by the thrice noble, illustrious and excellent princess, the lady marchioness of Newcastle. London: Printed by A. Warren, for John Martyn, James Allestry, and Tho. Dicas, at the Bell in Saint Pauls Church Yard, 1662.

There are 14 plays in this first collection of Cavendish’s dramatic works, with continuous pagination: Loves Adventures, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 3–77); The Comedy Named the Several Wits (pp. 78–121); Youths Glory, and Deaths Banquet, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 122–180); The Lady Contemplation, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 181–246); Wits Cabal, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 247–322); The Unnatural Tragedie (pp. 323–366); The Publick Wooing (pp. 367–421); The Matrimonial Trouble. A Comedy, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 422–488); Natures Three Daughters, Beauty, Love, and Wit, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 489–527); The Religious (pp. 528–556); The Comical Hash (pp. 557–577); Bell in Campo, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 578–633); A Comedy of the Apocriphal Ladies (pp. 634–651); The Female Academy (pp. 652–679).
   The plays were written while Cavendish lived abroad in Antwerp, and sent to England for printing at some point in the late-1650s, when her MSS. were lost at sea: “I heard the Ship was Drown’d, wherein the man was that had the Charge and Care of my Playes, to carry them into E. to be printed, I being then in A. which when I heard, I was extremely Troubled, and if I had not had the Original of them by me, truly I should have been much Afflicted, and accounted the Loss of my Twenty Playes, as the Loss of Twenty Lives, for in my Mind I should have Died Twenty Deaths, which would have been a great Torment, or I should have been near the Fate of those Playes, and almost Drown’d in Salt Tears, as they in the Salt Sea; but they are Destinated to Live, and I hope, I in them, when my Body is Dead, and Turned to Dust; But I am so Prudent, and Careful of my Poor Labours, which are my Writing Works, as I alwayes keep the Copies of them safely with me, until they are Printed, and then I Commit the Originals to the Fire, like Parents which are willing to Die, whenas they are sure of their Childrens Lives, knowing when they are Old, and past Breeding, they are but Useless in this World: But howsoever their Paper Bodies are Consumed, like as the Roman Emperours, in Funeral Flames, I cannot say, an Eagle Flies out of them, or that they Turn into a Blazing Star, although they make a great Blazing Light when they Burn.” (M. Cavendish, CCXI. Sociable Letters, 1664, 295–296)
   This passage suggests that the original volume of her dramatic works contained 20 (not 14) plays, and she repeats this claim elsewhere in a preface: “I have put forth Twenty Playes already, which number I thought to be Sufficient.” (M. Cavendish, CCXI. Sociable Letters, 1664, c2v)
   The discrepancy is explained by changes in how we catalog her plays. 17th- and 18th-century catalogs of her works count each of the 7 plays in 2 parts as 2 separate plays (and so, apparently, did Margaret herself), thus bringing the total number of plays in the volume to 21.

Cavendish, Margaret. Poems and fancies. Written by the right honourable, the Lady Margaret countess of Newcastle. London: Printed by T. R. for J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1653.

1st edn. This work was reissued in 1664 and 1668, with the 3rd edn. printed by a woman: Anne Maxwell.
   I have chosen here to quote from the error-ridden 1st edn. of Poems and Fancies, rather than the corrected editions of 1664 and 1668, because Cavendish’s unedited first edition is a truer representation of the woman who boasted, “my Work goes out into the World like an Unpolish’d Stone or Metall, a meer Rough-cast without any Gloss or Splendor.” (M. Cavendish, Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 2nd edn., 1663, b4r)
   Margaret Cavendish did not produce what Minh-ha T. Trinh has called “well-behaved writing” (Trinh, 17). She had no patience for revision, preferring, like most of us, to “make” rather than to “mend.” As such, she out-sourced the drudge work of “rectifying” the many imperfections of each editio princeps, written and printed in haste, with one exception: her book of natural philosophy, Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655, 1663, 1668).

Cavendish, Margaret. The worlds olio. Written by the right honorable, the Lady Margaret Newcastle. London: Printed for J. Martin and J. Allestrye at the Bell in St. Pauls Church-Yard, 1655.

1st edn. This work was reissued in 1671, and printed by a woman: Anne Maxwell.
   Again, I have chosen to quote from the 1st edn., even though “In my Book called the Worlds Olio, there are such grosse mistakes in misplacing of Chapters, and so many literall faults, as my book is much disadvantaged thereby.... I do not lay all the faults in my book to the Printers or Correctors charge, for that would be so great an injustice, as I could never forgive my self for the crime, for the Chapters that are misplaced are through my fault, by reason I sent some part of it after the book was in the presse, and it seems that the Printer or Corrector not understanding where to place them, put them in a wrong place.  ¶  But the literate faults I lay to their charge, whereof I cannot choose but complain, for in some places it is so falsly printed, as one word alters the sense of many lines; whereby my book is much prejudiced, and not onely by putting in false words, as a costements, for accoutraments, ungrateful for ungraceful, muster for mufler, and the like; but the significancy of words, to expresse a singular for a plural; yet I must confesse that this book is much truer Printed then my book of Poems, for where this book hath one fault, that hath ten....” (M. Cavendish, Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1st edn., 1655, A4r)
   For an HTML transcription of Cavendish’s essay on female education, “Of Gentlewomen that Are Sent to Board Schools,” click/tap here. For alternative 17th-century protofeminist challenges to “Man’s Prerogative” of education, see below, entries for Sarah Jinner, and Bathsua Makin, and Fran Teague.

Cavendish, William. A new method and extraordinary invention to dress horses, and work them, according to nature; as also, to perfect nature by the subtilty of art; which was never found out, but by the thrice noble, high, and puissant prince William Cavendishe. Duke, marquess, and earl of Newcastle; earl of Ogle; viscount Mansfield; and baron of Bolsover, of Ogle, of Bertram, Botham, and Hepple: gentleman of his majesties bed-chamber; one of his majesties most honourable privy-councel; knight of the most noble Order of the Garter; his majesties lieutenant of the county and town of Nottingham; and justice in Ayre Trent-North: who had the honour to be governour to our most glorious king, and gracious soveraign, in his youth, when he was prince of Wales; and soon after was made captain general of all the provinces beyond the river of Trent, and other parts of the kingdom of England; with power, by a special commission, to make knights. London: Printed by Tho. Milbourn in the year 1667.

This was the first English printing of Newcastle’s magnificent La Méthode nouvelle et Invention extraordinaire de Dresser des Chevaux (originally printed at Antwerp in 1657/8, with an engraved title-page and 42 additional copper-plates executed by Lucas Vosterman and others, after designs by Abraham van Diepenbeeck).
   Despite its similar title, Newcastle’s A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, and Work Them, According to Nature was not a translation of the original French work. In the dedication to Charles II, Newcastle refers to this as his “Second” book of horsemanship, and repeats this classification in his epistle “To the Readers”: “... having again, since my Return to my Native Country, had much leisure, in my solitary Country Life, to recollect my Thoughts, and try new Experiments about that Art; I now, for the more particular Satisfaction of my Country-men, Print this second Book, in English; which being neither a Translation of the first, nor an absolutely necessary Addition to it, may be of use by it self, without the other, as the other hath been hitherto, and is still, without this; but both together will questionless do best” (b1r–v).
   None of the 17th-century edns. of Newcastle’s manual of dressage published at London (this rev. Eng. edn. and a Fr. trans. of it in 1667, a 2nd impression of the Fr. trans. in 1671, and a 2nd impression of the original Eng. in 1677) were illustrated.

Chambers, Ephraim. Cyclopædia, or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences. Containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify’d thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial: the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c. among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c: the whole intended as a course of antient and modern learning. Compiled from the best authors, dictionaries, journals, memoirs, transactions, ephemerides, &c. in several languages, by E. Chambers. 2 vols. London: Printed for J. and J. Knapton [and 18 others], 1728.

A digital reissue (2014) of the 18th-century Cyclopaedia’s article on Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans is available as an In Brief Topic at the companion website, She-philosopher.com.
   Chambers clearly drew on Thomas Stanley’s account of Pythagoras in vol. 3 of The History of Philosophy (4 vols., 1655–1662; see below entry) for his own synopsis.

Chambers, Ephraim, rev. by George Lewis Scott, et al. A supplement to Mr. Chambers’s Cyclopædia: or, universal dictionary of arts and sciences. In two volumes. London: Printed for W. Innys and J. Richardson, R. Ware, J. and P. Knapton, T. Osborne, S. Birt, T. and T. Longman, D. Browne, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, J. Hodges, J. Shuckburgh, A. Millar, J. and J. Rivington, J. Ward, M. Senex, and the Executors of J. Darby, MDCCLIII [1753].

Christine, de Pisan. Here begynneth the table of the rubryshys of the boke of the fayt of armes and of chyvalrye whiche sayd boke is departyd in to foure partyes. [Westminster]: Printed by William Caxton, [1490].

This is William Caxton’s English edition (which Caxton both translated and printed) of Christine de Pisan’s early-15th-century compilation on the art of warfare, Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie [The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry], first printed (posthumously) at Paris in 1488, but written much earlier (c.1408–9).
   Christine de Pisan (c.1364–c.1431) authored this “early and outstanding example” of the theoretical study of warfare in the vernacular, so as to broaden its appeal, especially among “wyse knyghtes that be expert in the sayde thynges of armes” — such as those who provided Christine with the detailed, practical information regarding the arms and provisions needed for the siege of a fortress “sette of one parte upon the see or upon a bygge ryvere, grete, stronge, and ryght dyffycyle to be taken” which she included in Part 2 — but did not read Latin.
   Before being printed a half-century later, Christine’s Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie circulated widely among the wealthy nobles of France and Burgundy as a scribal publication (“Christine was one of the first vernacular authors who supervised the copying and illuminating of her own books”). Heralding “the reappearance of professionalism in Western warfare after more than a millennium,” Christine’s book remained popular for centuries, with three printed versions in French and English, the last in France appearing in 1527.
   Englishmen were still studying Christine’s The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry well into the 17th century. E.g., the British naval official, Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), owned a “nearly perfect” copy of Caxton’s The Boke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chyvalrye (1490), which Pepys had rebound “with a MS. of Vegetius, translated into French by Jean de Vignay, together with several short poems and tracts, including the ‘Visio Philiberti,’ a dialogue between the body and soul” for his library. And the English herald painter, Randle Holme (1627–1700), cites Christine’s authoritative Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie in his encyclopedic book of heraldry, The Academy of Armory, or, a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon (1688).
   Indeed, her modern editor (Charity Cannon Willard) notes that Christine’s sophisticated “observations on the art of warfare have been remembered far longer than those of most of her contemporaries.”

Clarke, Samuel. A true, and faithful account of the four chiefest plantations of the English in America. To wit, of Virginia, New-England, Bermudus, Barbados. With the temperature of the air: the nature of the soil: the rivers, mountains, beasts, fowls, birds, fishes, trees, plants, fruits, &c. As also, of the natives of Virginia, and New-England, their religion, customs, fishing, huntings, &c. Collected by Samuel Clarke, sometimes pastor in Saint Bennet-Fink, London. London: Printed for Robert Clavel, Thomas Passenger, William Cadman, William Whitwood, Thomas Sawbridge, and William Birch, 1670.

Clayton, John. “Mr. John Clayton, rector of Crofton at Wake-Field, his letter to the Royal Society, giving a farther account of the soil, and other observables of Virginia.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London 17.206 (Dec. 1693): 978–98.

Letter 4 of 5 (in the published series of letters on the natural history of Virginia). Clayton’s letter is postmarked 17 August 1688, and so was written at least 5 years before publication in the Royal Society’s journal.

Clayton, John. “A continuation of Mr. John Clayton’s account of Virginia.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London 18.210 (May 1694): 121–35.

Letter 5 of 5 (in the published series of letters on the natural history of Virginia). This letter of Clayton’s, also postmarked 1688, was written about 6 years before publication in the Royal Society’s journal.

Comenius, Johannes Amos. Joh. Amos Commenii Orbis sensualium pictus. Hoc est, omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum, & in vita actionum, pictura & nomenclatura. Joh. Amos Commenius’s Visible world. Or, a picture and nomenclature of all the chief things that are in the world; and of mens employments therein. A work newly written by the author in Latine, and High-Dutch (being one of his last essays, and the most suitable to children’s capacities of any that he hath hitherto made) & translated into English, by Charles Hoole, teacher of a private grammar-school in Lothbury, London. For the use of young Latine-scholars. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non priùs fuit in sensu. Arist. London: Printed for J. Kirton, at the Kings-Arms, in Saint Paules Church-yard, 1659.

Comenius’s bilingual primer — first published in Latin and High Dutch (Noribergae: M. Endter, 1658), and translated into English within a year of its publication by the English schoolmaster Charles Hoole (1610–1667) — combined the “Universal Language” of pictures with Latin and vernacular text set in parallel columns, resulting in what John Evelyn described as a “Hieroglyphical Grammar” (J. Evelyn, Sculptura, 1662, 139) intended by its author to teach not just Latin vocabulary, but also the arts and sciences, moral and natural philosophy, to boys and girls alike.
   Crafted by Comenius as a children’s “Encyclopaedia of all intelligible, and memorable things that either are, or have ever been in rerum Natura” (J. Evelyn, Sculptura, 1662, 141), the pansophical Orbis Sensualium Pictus was an immediate success and universally popular. It was translated into most European and some of the Oriental languages (Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Mogul), continuing as a textbook of the German schools for nearly 200 years, despite vocal detractors during the Enlightenment who were increasingly at odds with Comenius’s brand of pansophy, the ultimate goal of which was a millennial recovery of the knowledge that mankind had lost when expelled from the Garden of Eden.
   The last English edition of Orbis Sensualium Pictus appeared in 1777, and was reprinted in the United States in 1812. So Comenian pedagogy also made its way across the Atlantic, and was influential in the Americas as well as in Europe. Indeed, the New England Puritan, Cotton Mather, recorded in his Magnalia that Comenius had at one point even been solicited to become President of Harvard College (subsequent to the resignation of President Dunster in 1654): “That brave old man, Johannes Amos Commenius, the fame of whose worth has been Trumpetted as far as more than three languages (whereof everyone is indebted unto his Janua) could carry it, was indeed agreed withal, by one Mr. Winthrop in his travels through the Low Countries, to come over to New England, and illuminate their Colledge and Country, in the quality of a President, which was now become vacant. But the solicitations of the Swedish Ambassador diverting him another way, that incomparable Moravian became not an American.” (C. Mather, qtd. in The Orbis Pictus of John Amos Comenius, ed. by C. W. Bardeen, 1887, ii) Comenius’s great design of a Pansophic Institute, or College of the Sciences, held real appeal for Americans with advanced views such as John Winthrop, looking to reform the organization of human affairs in the new world in order “to ensure that a right philosophy, religion, and politics could lead to harmony and enlightenment, rather than division and chaos.” (M. Greengrass, ODNB entry for Johannes Amos Comenius, n. pag.)

Conway, Anne. The principles of the most ancient and modern philosophy concerning God, Christ and the creatures, viz. of spirit and matter in general; whereby may be resolved all those problems or difficulties, which neither by the school nor common modern philosophy, nor by the Cartesian, Hobbesian, or Spinosian, could be discussed. Being a little treatise published since the author’s death, translated out of the English into Latin, with annotations taken from the ancient philosophy of the Hebrews; and now again made English. By J. C., Medicinæ Professor. [London]: Printed in Latin at Amsterdam, by M. Brown, 1690, and reprinted at London, 1692.

Conway’s text was written, in English, c.1672–1673, but was left unpublished at her death in 1679; her manuscript was translated into Latin and published posthumously (Principia Philosophiae Antiquissimae et Recentissimae) in 1690 in Francis Mercury van Helmont’s Opuscula Philosophica (Amsterdam: by M. Brown, 1690); this was then retranslated back into English by “J. C., Medicinaea Professor” and published at London, under its original title, in 1692.
   Henry More and Francis Mercury van Helmont oversaw the initial translation of Conway’s unpublished MSS. into Latin (it has been suggested that More himself may have done the translating), and Helmont took the Latinized text to Amsterdam for initial publication “in Latin, that thereby the whole World might be in some sort benefitted, and so the same become of Publick Good” (Publisher, “To the Reader”, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, 1692, A2v).
   The identity of the English translator “J. C.” is uncertain. Some have speculated that he was Jacobus Crull; or Jodocus Crull, M.D. (d. 1713/14); or John Clark, M.D., who in 1694 translated Van Helmont’s Seder Olam. It seems to me more likely that the initials were those of John Chandler, who Englished J. B. van Helmont’s Physick Refined in 1662 and J. B. van Helmont’s Works in 1664.
   Publication costs for the English edition were offset, at least in part, by medical advertising. The following ad was prefixed to the 1692 edn. of Anne Conway’s The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy by its anonymous publisher:
   “Having the care of the Publication of this Piece committed to my Charge, I thought, for the Good of the Publick, to give them the knowledge of the following Elixir, &c.
   “The Elixir Proprietatis (so highly commended by the Renowned Paracelsus and Helmont) it resisteth all Putrefaction of the Blood, strengtheneth the Digestive Faculty. Its Excellent Virtues are prevalent in Curing of continual Fevers, Quotidian and Tertian Agues, Small Pox, and Measles, or Swine Pox, with other Pestilential Distempers; as also the Palsy, Apoplexy, Falling-Sickness, Asthma’s, Tabes, or Consumption of the Lungs. Its Dose is from 10 to 20, 30, or 40 drops in a Glass of Sack. This Noble Elixir is Philosophically prepared, by John Spire, Chymico Medicus, at four Shillings the Ounce. Who hath, by his Labour and Study in the Chymical Art, attained unto several secret Arcanums, (not vulgarly known) particularly a Soveraign Remedy for the Gout. If any one is desirous thereof, or the aforesaid Elixir Proprietatis, Let them apply themselves to my Friend, Mr. Dorman Newman, at the King’s Arms in the Poultry, and the Author at his House in Horsly-down-Fair-street, Southwark; or at his Country House, at the upper end of Twitnam, near the Sign of the White-Hart, in Middlesex.” (Advertisement, A1v)

Cranz, Galen. The chair: rethinking culture, body, and design. 1998; rpt. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.

DailyMail.com website. “Are pigeons like children? Birds identify objects in the same way as infants learning words.” Posted 5 February 2015.

“They may only have a brain the size of a thimble, but it appears pigeons can categorise and name objects in the same way as human children learn new words.  ¶  A new study from the University of Iowa has shown that the birds are capable of learning to categorise 128 different photographs into 16 basic categories.  ¶  Scientists taught three pigeons to attribute different breeds of dog or types of shoe, for example to a particular symbol in exchange for a reward.” (n. pag.)
   “Professor Bob McMurray, another psychologist who took part in the study, said the results showed that human learning is not as unique as was previously believed.” (n. pag.)
   For more reporting on this, see below citation for The Times of India website.

Davis, J. C., and J. D. Alsop. “Winstanley, Gerrard (bap. 1609, d. 1676), author and Digger.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, September 2014.

Dunton, John. The life and errors of John Dunton late citizen of London; written by himself in solitude. With an idea of a new life; wherein is shewn how he’d think, speak, and act, might he live over his days again: intermix’d with the new discoveries the author has made in his travels abroad, and in his private conversation at home. Together with the lives and characters of a thousand persons now living in London, &c. Digested into seven stages, with their respective ideas. He that has all his own mistakes confest, stands next to him that never has transgrest, and will be censur’d for a fool by none, but they who see no errors of their own. Foe’s Satyr upon himself, P.6. London: Printed for S. Malthus, 1705.

Needing to collect the £500 that was owed to him by colonial customers after “there came an Universal Damp upon Trade, occasion’d by the Defeat of Monmouth in the West” the bookseller John Dunton (1659–1732) spent much of 1686 in North America (traveling between Boston, Cambridge, Salem, and Ipswich in Massachusetts for business and pleasure). He documented his impressions of the country and its indigenous and immigrant populations, along with the New England book trade, in Part 1 of The Life and Errors.

Durand, ---. Voyages d’un Francois exilé pour la religion avec Une description de la Vergine & Marilan dans l’Amerique a la Haye. Imprimé pour l’autheur, 1687.

An English edition, entitled A Frenchman in Virginia: Being the Memoirs of a Huguenot Refugee in 1686, was prepared by an anonymous “Virginian” in the early-20th century (n. p.: Privately Printed, 1923).
   “A Virginian” introduces Durand’s “little book” as “one of the rarest items of bibliographic Americana.... The only clew to the identity of the author is his own statement that he was born in Dauphiné ‘of the ancient and noble’ Huguenot family of Durand.” (A Frenchman in Virginia, 5)
   Fleeing France in 1685 after the Edict of Nantes (1598) — which had given to French Calvinists liberty of religion and a “state within a state” — was revoked, Durand, enticed by the “broadsides which he had read at home, depicting, on behalf of the Proprietors, the joys and opportunities of residence in Carolina,” determined to emigrate to America, and took passage on a London ship bound for Charles Town in 1686. Disabled by a storm, and battling contrary winds, the ship adjusted course for the Virginia capes, arriving in North River of Mobjack Bay in October 1686. While the ship was refitting, Durand travelled through the surrounding countryside, recording his observations on “the present state of Virginia” in 1686–87.
   Among other notes, Durand remarked on the “prodigious quantity of birds” in Virginia. “Beginning with the largest, the wild turkeys weigh from 30 to 40 pounds. One sees on the shores of the sea and on the banks of the rivers wild geese in troupes of more than 4,000 at a time. They are as big as our domestic geese, but almost black. Ducks appear in flocks of more than 10,000. There are also doves and thrushes. Partridges are so plentiful and so tame that they come into the barnyards. They are smaller than those of Europe, but of the same taste. All these birds have different plumage from ours in Europe; indeed, I saw none of similar plumage except the crows and black birds. There are quantities of shore birds available for game, but the hunters despise them and never even waste powder on the ducks unless assured of killing three or four at a shot.” (--- Durand, Une Description de la Vergine & Marilan dans l’Amerique a la Haye [1687], Eng. trans., 1923, 118–119)
   Like other European commentators, Durand marveled at the tiny, but valuable Virginian hummingbird: “... others, not larger than a big fly, have a plumage like the rainbow. This little bird lives only on dew and the nectar of the odoriferous flowers. It has itself so agreeable an odor that they told me the English prize them highly for that quality, wherefore the Virginians dry them in the ovens and sell them in England at a price of eight pounds sterling apiece.” (--- Durand, Une Description de la Vergine & Marilan dans l’Amerique a la Haye [1687], Eng. trans., 1923, 119–120)
   Cf. Blome’s The Present State of His Majesty’s Isles and Territories in America (1687), for his secondhand account of the hummingbird, also noting its divine scent.

Edmond, Mary. “Davenant [D’Avenant], Sir William (1606–1668), poet, playwright, and theatre manager.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Oct. 2009.

Evelyn, John. Sculptura: or the history, and art of chalcography and engraving in copper. With an ample enumeration of the most renowned masters, and their works. To which is annexed a new manner of engraving, or mezzo tinto, communicated by his Highness Prince Rupert to the authour of this treatise. London: Printed by J. C. for G. Beedle, and T. Collins, at the Middle-Temple Gate, and J. Crook in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1662.

Frost, J. William. “Logan, James (1674–1751), colonial official and scholar.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Sept. 2012.

Gan, Carole. “When it comes to breast cancer, common pigeon is no bird brain.” University of California News website, posted 18 November 2015.

SUMMARY: “If pigeons went to medical school and specialized in pathology or radiology, they’d be pretty good at distinguishing digitized microscope slides and mammograms of normal vs. cancerous breast tissue, a new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of Iowa has found.” (C. Gan, n. pag.)

Geiter, Mary K. “Penn, William (1644–1718), Quaker leader and founder of Pennsylvania.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Jan. 2007.

Greene, Sean. “They have the tools and talent: crows hard at work with devices they made are caught on camera for first time.” Los Angeles Times, 25 December 2015, A9.

“Two species on Earth are known to use hook-shaped tools: humans and New Caledonian crows. ... There are crows all over the world, but the species on New Caledonia, a forested island in the South Pacific, are renowned for their ability to make and use tools. Among other things, they fashion sticks into sharp poking instruments and use them to ‘fish’ for wood-boring larvae hiding in dead wood or tree trunks.” (S. Greene, A9)
   “Other bird species are known to use tools. For instance, the Galapagos woodpecker finch uses cactus spines and twigs to hunt for insects, and the Egyptian vulture bangs stones against ostrich eggs to crack them open.  ¶  But the New Caledonian crow actually fashions its tools into a hook shape, which is unheard of for any non-human species. This gives the crows access to food sources that are hard to reach by using only their beaks.” (S. Greene, A9)
   “... Rutz hopes his videos can provide some insight into bigger questions about how tool using evolved and why it’s so rare in nature.  ¶  ‘That seems to be an evolutionary puzzle,’ he said. ‘Why do so few animals use tools, and why are we humans so good at it?’” (S. Greene, A9)

Greengrass, M. “Comenius, Johannes Amos [Jan Amos Komenský] (1592–1670), theologian and educationist.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Oct. 2007.

Hansen, Lawrence. Op-ed, “Lab experiments on dogs are cruel and unnecessary.” San Diego Union-Tribune (16 December 2016): B7.

Lawrence Hansen, a professor of neuroscience and pathology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, concludes his impassioned op-ed: “Experiments on dogs aren’t scientifically ‘necessary,’ especially when we have superior research technologies like human organs-on-chips to model diseases and test drugs.  ¶  Unfortunately, like the old-school medical student dog labs, these taxpayer-funded experiments [e.g., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “continues to dedicate nearly half of its $32 billion research budget to animal research”] on dogs are a bad habit that’s hard to break. Constantly developing, testing, discarding and retooling doomed animal ‘models’ of human ailments has become a perpetually blooming money tree for government employees and the companies that sell them puppies to infect, cut up and kill. The NIH’s forced heart attack experiments on dogs alone have received just shy of $6 million since 2011.” (L. Hansen, B7)
   For more on the 17th-century origins of this hideous legacy of modern science, click/tap here.

Hariot, Thomas. A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia of the commodities there found and to be raysed, as well marchantable, as others for victuall, building and other necessarie uses for those that are and shalbe the planters there; and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants: discovered by the English colony there seated by Sir Richard Greinvile Knight in the yeere 1585. which remained under the government of Rafe Lane Esquier, one of her Majesties Equieres, during the space of twelve monethes: at the speciall charge and direction of the Honourable Sir Walter Raleigh Knight, Lord Warden of the stanneries; who therein hath beene favored and authorised by her Majestie and her letters patents: directed to the adventurers, favourers, and welwillers of the action, for the inhabiting and planting there: by Thomas Hariot; servant to the abovenamed Sir Walter, a member of the Colony, and there imployed in discovering. London: [By R. Robinson], 1588.

1st English edn. (1588, old-style dating). Hariot’s Report, a little quarto volume privately printed in February 1589 N.S., was in fact an “epitome” (akin to an executive summary) of a much more detailed Chronicle documenting his experience and survey of the area then known as Virginia (present-day North Carolina, into Virginia), conducted in that Algonquian country from June 1585 to June 1586.
   The Report was rushed into print to defend Sir Walter Ralegh’s interest from those who “woulde seeme to knowe so much as no men more,” and who “had little understanding, lesse discretion, and more tongue then was needful or requisite.” With such slanders abroad, there was an urgent need to promote the Virginia enterprise, since the Assignment of Ralegh’s Charter was set to expire by the limitation of six years on 24 March 1590 if no colonists had been shipped or plantation attempted.
   Hariot intended to follow up his summary Report with publication of the entire Chronicle, but never quite got around to it (self-promotion by way of publication was never a priority for Hariot, leaving many of his scientific colleagues frustrated that so little about his research, discoveries, and inventions was known to the learned world).
   Unfortunately, Hariot’s original Virginia MS. is lost. Hariot’s summary Report was reprinted by Richard Hakluyt in his The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589), and reissued in a lavishly-illustrated edition by Theodore de Bry in 1590 (reprinted many times thereafter), but “all the fruits of our labours” documented in Hariot’s Chronicle of pre-Anglo-Virginia will probably never be known.

Hariot, Thomas, and Theodore de Bry. A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants. Discovered by the English colony there seated by Sir Richard Greinvile Knight in the yeere 1585. Which remained under the governement of twelve monethes, at the speciall charge and direction of the Honourable Sir Walter Raleigh Knight lord Warden of the stanneries who therein hath beene favoured and authorised by her Majestie and her letters patents: This fore booke is made in English by Thomas Hariot servant to the abovenamed Sir Walter, a member of the Colony, and there imployed in discovering. Cum gratia et privilegio Caes. Matis Speciali. Francoforti ad Moenum: Typis Joannis Wecheli, sumtibus vero Theodori de Bry anno M D XC. Venales reperiuntur in officina Sigismundi Feirabendii, [1590].

3rd English edn. (1590) of Hariot’s Virginia narrative of 1588, issued by Theodore de Bry, of Frankfort-on-the-Main.
   De Bry’s edition of Hariot’s Report was printed in four languages (English, French, German, and Latin), and was illustrated with a map and a series of 22 plates expertly engraved by de Bry, after the original watercolors made in Virginia by Hariot’s companion, John White, expedition artist for Ralegh’s Roanoke voyages.
   Each plate is accompanied by a brief description, apparently by Hariot (although some scholars have attributed these to White), with the gloss “translated out of Latin into English by Richard Hackluit,” as explained by de Bry on the divisional title-page (sig. E1r) introducing the new section of “true pictures” appended to his illustrated edn. of Hariot’s Report.
   N O T E :  On 6/3/2018, PBS NewsHour Weekend aired a powerful piece, “This Street Artist Portrays Navajo Life with Large Scale Murals,” about “Chip Thomas, a physician and street artist who has lived on the Navajo Nation for three decades, [and] shares the stories of his indigenous neighbors with large scale murals in cities from Oakland, California, to Phoenix, Arizona. His work under the name Jetsonorama has drawn attention to the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo people. This story was produced by KQED Arts in San Francisco.” (n. pag.)
   Like John White and Theodore de Bry and Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Dr. Thomas has produced an iconic visual record of contemporary tribal life in North America (this time, focused on the “Four Corners” region, rather than the southeast corridor) in large-scale murals that “reflect back our everyday life” as understood by an artist who “gets it, he understands it” and, through his art, pays tribute to the resilience of a proud people who “realize they’ve not been treated fairly, but they still live in a way that honors creation, the earth.” (n. pag.)
   “[CHIP THOMAS:]  I was invited to take part in the show to bring awareness to the legacy of uranium mining on Navajo lands. The majority of the uranium that went into nuclear bombs, that ore came from this land.  ¶  As early as the ’50s, scientists, public health workers, knew of the dangers of radiation exposure. Finally, in 1967, on the front page of The Washington Post, there was an article, talking about the dangers of working with uranium. But even still, very little was being done, on the reservation, to tell workers about these dangers and to protect them. [...] I realized one thing I could bring to the show that was different was my work in the clinic with uranium miners. [...] Then Cyndy, with whom I’ve worked for 16 years, she reminded me that her father was a uranium miner.
   “[CYNDY BEGAYE, DAUGHTER OF URANIUM MINER:]  He worked close to 20 years in the mines, not knowing the effects, years on down the road that this would have on them and us. He had good intentions to provide for his family. But the cancer that he was diagnosed with was directly related to working in the mines.
   “Cyndy’s father, Kee Roy John, died in 2001 after the cancer in his lungs spread to his brain.” (n. pag.)

Hill, Christopher. The world turned upside down: radical ideas during the English revolution. New York: The Viking Press, 1972.

Holme, Randle. The academy of armory, or, A storehouse of armory and blazon. Containing the several variety of created beings, and how born in coats of arms, both foreign and domestick. With the instruments used in all trades and sciences, together with their terms of art. Also the etymologies, definitions, and historical observations on the same, explicated and explained according to our modern language. Very usefel [sic] for all gentlemen, scholars, divines, and all such as desire any knowledge in arts and sciences. By Randle Holme, of the city of Chester, gentleman sewer in extraordinary to his late Majesty King Charles 2. And sometimes deputy for the kings of arms. Chester: Printed for the author, MDCLXXXVIII [1688].

Hulton, Paul. America, 1585: The complete drawings of John White. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and British Museum Publications, 1984.

Hutton, Sarah. “Conway [née Finch], Anne, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh (1631–1679), philosopher.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Sept. 2010.

Ignelzi, R. J. “UCSD doctors refute studies condoning drinking during pregnancy.” San Diego Union-Tribune website, posted 22 June 2012.

“[Christina] Chambers pointed out the overwhelming evidence of more than 30 years of research supporting the conclusion that alcohol, especially alcohol consumed in a binge pattern, can be harmful to the developing baby.  ¶  ‘Individual women metabolize alcohol differently, and vary in terms of how susceptible they may be to having an affected child,’ Chambers said. ‘Although we do not want to alarm women who find out they are pregnant and realize that they have consumed low levels of alcohol before they knew they were pregnant, we emphasize that a “safe” amount of alcohol that any individual woman can drink while pregnant is impossible to establish. The best advice continues to be that women should avoid alcohol entirely during the nine months that she is carrying the baby.’” (Ignelzi, n. pag.)

Jinner, Sarah. An almanack or prognostication for the year of our Lord 1658, being the second after bissextile or leap year. Calculated for the meridian of London, and may indifferently serve for England, Scotland, and Ireland. By Sarah Jinner student in astrology. London: Printed by J. Streater for the Company of Stationers, [1658].

Jinner’s protofeminist preface to the reader advocates for women’s education, with Jinner assuring detractors, as would Bathsua Makin after her, that she does not aim at over-turning male supremacy; rather, she recommends (and supplies) learning for women that is profitable, useful, and “tending to good Houswifry. It is not my intention, to advise our Sex to be unprofitable, no, but to be meet helps [helpmates].” (S. Jinner, B1v) Both Jinner and Makin admit that particular men will face unwelcome competition from newly-educated women, but they think the ensuing social struggle will be good for men in general (by forcing them to up their game), good for the nation, and good for the world at large. Both women would no doubt be disheartened to learn that, 3.5 centuries later, we are still enthralled in this debate, as documented by Surjit Bhalla in his book The New Wealth of Nations (2018). There has been at least one advancement, however: 21st-century feminists no longer feign interest in preserving male prerogative. (For more on Bhalla’s research and book, see our What’s Blooming news page under the entry first posted 5/9/2014.)
   Wrote Jinner, c.1657: “You may wonder to see one of our Sex in print especially in the Celestial Sciences: I might urge much in my defence, yea, more then the volume of this Book can contain: in which I am confined, not to exceed ordinary bulk: But, why not Women write, I pray? have they not souls as well as men, though some witty Coxcombs strive to put us out of concert of our selves, as if we were but imperfect pieces, and that Nature intending a man, when the seminal conception proves weak, there issues a woman. But know that Aristotle affirms, that woman doth contribute to formation matter as well as place. Mankind is preserved by woman: many other rare benefits the world reapeth by women, although it is the policy of men, to keep us from education and schooling, wherein we might give testimony of our parts by improvement: we have as good judgement and memory, and I am sure as good fancy as men, if not better. We will not boast of strength of body, let Horses and Mules do that. What rare things have women done? What Cures in Physick, which great Doctors have left? How many Commonwealths have been managed by woman, as the Amazones? Did not Semiramis set the Babylonian Kingdom in great glory? Tomyris cut off the head of Cyrus, Nay, let me tell you, we have had a Pope of our sex, named Pope Joan, which the best Historians do not deny. When, or what Commonwealth was ever better governed than this by the vertuous Q. Elizabeth? I fear me I shall never see the like again, most of your Princes now a dayes, are like Dunces in comparison of her: either they have not the wit, or the honesty that she had. Somewhat in the matter that things do not judge so well! well, no more of that. To our business again, What rare Poets of our sex were of old? and now of late the Countess of Newcastle. And, I pray you, what a rare Poem hath one Mistris Katherine Philips near Cardigan writ, it is printed before Cartwrightes Poetes, who, if her modesty would permit, her wit would put down many mens in a Masculine strain. I could tell you of many more, that have been famous in Philosophie and Physick, as the Countess of Kent, and others. And lastly, of Cunetia, a Germane Lady, that lately did set out Tables of the Planets Motion: therefore, why should we suffer our parts to rust? Let us scowre the rust off, by ingenious endeavouring the attaining higher accomplishments: This I say, not to animate our Sex, to assume or usurp the breeches: No, but perhaps if we should shine in the splendor of vertue, it would animate our Husbands to excell us: so by this means we should have an excellent World.” (S. Jinner, “To the Reader,” An Almanack or Prognostication for the Year of our Lord 1658 ..., 1658, B1r-B1v)
   Curiously, Jinner’s list of exemplary women who inspired and influenced her includes Margaret Cavendish, here listed as a “rare Poet” rather than among those women “that have been famous in Philosophie and Physick” — a characterization of her work, even in 1658, which I expect would have dismayed the duchess of Newcastle who, desirous of receiving everlasting “Homage as the Queen of Sciences,” strove for pre-eminence in this area. For her part, Cavendish was dismissive of such a popular and utilitarian genre as the almanac, opining that some women “may have a rational capacity to most Sciences, yet conceive nothing of Natural Philosophy, as if the first Matter, or innated Matter, or Motions, or Figures, or Forms, or Infinites, or Spirits, or Essences, or the like; nay, for the most part they conceive little further than an Almanack to know the time by, of which I am ignorant, for I understand it not.” (M. Cavendish, “An Epistle” to A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life, in Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, 1st edn., 1656, 365)

Josselyn, John. New-Englands rarities discovered: in birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, and plants of that country. Together with the physical and chyrurgical remedies wherewith the natives constantly use to cure their distempers, wounds, and sores. Also a perfect description of an Indian squa, in all her bravery; with a poem not improperly conferr’d upon her. Lastly a chronological table of the most remarkable passages in that country amongst the English. Illustrated with cuts. By John Josselyn, gent. London: Printed for G. Widdowes at the Green Dragon in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1672.

Josselyn spent time in New England from 1638–9 and again in 1663–1671, arriving at Boston, and then residing with his brother at Black Point, Scarborough, Maine for almost 8.5 years. His New-Englands Rarities Discovered was noticed by the Royal Society, and Josselyn dedicated his second work, An account of two voyages to New-England: wherein you have the setting out of a ship, with the charges ... A description of the countrey, natives and creatures, with their merchantil and physical use; The government of the countrey ... A large chronological table of the most remarkable passages, from the first discovering of the continent of America to the year 1673 (1st edn., 1674), to the president and fellows of the Royal Society.
   The appended “perfect description of an Indian squa” referred to in the full title of New-Englands Rarities Discovered was unusual in admiring the wit & beauty of American women of color over that of the white Englishwoman, whose rosy cheeks (to which Josselyn refers in line 16 — “In flattery of White and Red:” — of his poem) embodied anglicized culture’s idea of physical perfection. Indeed, tributes to the incomparable beauty of English women had become a literary commonplace, as captured in the proverb, “Anglia Mons, Pons, Fons, Ecclesia, Foemina, Lana, / For Mountains, Bridges, Rivers, Churches fair, / Women, and Wool, England is past compare” (qtd. in R. B., Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, & Wonders in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1st edn., 1682, 3).
   Others before Josselyn had remarked on the beauty of indigenous North American women: “... and to conclude, according to the opinion of an English traveller, whose relation I herein follow; Foure things are here [Mexico City] remarkable for beauty, their apparell, their women, their horses and their sticats [weapons]” (Lewes Roberts, The Merchants Mappe of Commerce, 2 pts., 1st edn., 1638, 1.56). But Josselyn’s explicit comparison of racialized beauty ideals, his celebration of the black female aesthetic, and his willingness to controvert proverbial wisdom, was a new development in colonial discourse. For an HTML transcription of Josselyn’s Perfect Description, click/tap here.
   Of note, the visual arts also yielded contradictory aesthetics of whiteness and blackness. E.g., in the visual tradition of Christian heraldry, blackness symbolizes beauty, health & well-being: “Crow. Is the Hieroglyphick of long Life; and the blacker the Bird, the more nobler the kind; and denotes pulchritude [beauty]; though I be Black, yet I am comely, Eccles. 1. 4. and 5 11.” (R. Holme, Academy of Armory, 3 vols., 1688, 2.304)
   Cf. Christine de Pisan’s late-medieval compilation on the art of warfare, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry [Le Livre des Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie, 1408–9] which closes with a discussion of the most “noble” colors used in coats of arms, which Christine describes as steeped in symbolism linked to the four elements. According to Christine, the most noble of the four elements is FIRE (represented by the color red), followed by AIR (represented by the color blue), then WATER (represented by white, known as silver in heraldry), and lastly EARTH (represented by black, known as sable in heraldry).
   In keeping with this elemental hierarchy, white is regarded as a more “noble” color than black. Christine states that white, signifying purity and innocence, is associated with Christ, as well as with the element water: “the coloure is white that men calle in armoyrye silver / the whiche coloure of white is the mooste noble of all them that folowe after [gold, “the moost ryche” of heraldic colors, because it represents the most noble light of the sun] for hit is more next to the shynyng cours / & with this hit signifyeth innocencie & clenlines / & the scripture sa[i]th that the vestement[es] of Jhesu Crist dide seme to his apostles white as snowe / & this coloure of white representeth [the] watre whiche after the ayer is most noble.” In contrast, black, signifying grief and the absence of light, is associated with the humble religious life, as well as with the element earth: “that other colour is blak that men calle in armoyrie sable / that representeth the other & betokneth sorowe for it is ferder from the lyght more than [eny] of the other be / & therfore was fou[n]de / that in token of sorowe blak rayment[es] shuld apperteyne to the sorowfull & hevy / so is hit the moost lowe & moost hu[m]ble colour that is / & therfore it was ordeyned [that] religiouse shuld reveste & clothe hemself of the same.” (Christine de Pisan, The Boke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chyvalrye, in 4 parts, trans. and printed by William Caxton, 1490, 4.17: *S4v)
   For another Christian take on the virtues of black skin color, together with a protoscientific explanation of phenotype, see below, entry for Thomas Tryon’s Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies in Three Parts (1684).

Keith, George. An exhortation & caution to Friends concerning buying or keeping of negroes. [New York: Printed by William Bradford, 1693].

A digital reissue (2014) of George Keith’s An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes (1693) is available in the Roses​.Communicating​By​Design​.com Historical Section.

Kiderra, Inga. “The birds and the b’s.” @ucsd: a UC San Diego alumni publication 3.3 (September 2006): 13.

Kiderra’s news brief describes a research project with European starlings conducted by Tim Gentner (psychology department, UCSD) and colleagues at the University of Chicago (their study was published in the journal, Nature).
   In short, Gentner et al. have demonstrated “that starlings can learn simple recursive grammar patterns — of the kind thought to be the exclusive province of humans.” “‘Recursion’ refers to the common characteristic of human grammar that allows for the creation of new utterances by inserting words and clauses within sentences. Chomskian linguists have held not only that this is a universal feature of human language but also that the ability to process it forms the computational core of a uniquely human language facility.” Gentner’s research suggests that starlings are also capable of learning the abstract patterns (grammars) behind bird songs, and then extrapolate from these basic rules to longer sequences. “The finding that starlings can grasp even these simple rules, Gentner says, suggests that humans and other animals share basic levels of pattern recognition and also hints at the likelihood of other cognitive abilities we have in common.”
   For new research into avian cognition & language processing (this time, with pigeons) which provides further evidence “that human learning is not as unique as was previously believed,” see citations (above & below) for stories posted on 2/5/2015 to the Daily Mail and The Times of India websites.

Kovel, Joel. “A materialism worthy of nature.” Capitalism, nature, socialism 12.2 (June 2001): 73–84.

Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques, and Theodor de Bry. Narrative of Le Moyne, an artist who accompanied the French expedition to Florida under Laudonnière, 1564. Translated from the Latin of de Bry, with heliotypes of the engravings taken from the artist’s original drawings. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875.

Le Moyne’s illustrated Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae Provincia Gallis Acciderunt (Frankfurt, 1591) was published as Part II of Theodor de Bry’s 13-part Historia Americae sive Novi Orbis (Frankfurt, 1590-1634). Part I of de Bry’s America, published at Frankfurt in 1590, was de Bry’s edition of Thomas Hariot’s Virginia, with illustrations after John White.
   Le Moyne’s Indian drawings and anthropological studies of the Timucuan Indians were well-known in England. Le Moyne (aka Le Moine) was brought to England in September 1565 by Captain John Hawkins, who rescued the Huguenots who had escaped massacre by the Spaniards at Fort Caroline in Florida. “Le Moine, the painter, who was commissioned by Coligny to make a description and map of the country with drawings of all curious objects, etc., remained in England, under the patronage and consulted by the Gilberts, Ralegh, the Sidneys, and others. He died in England about 1587, and not long before his death he published ‘La Clef des Champs, pour trouver plusieurs Animaux, tant Bestes qu’Oyseaux, avec plusieurs Fleurs & Fruits. Anno 1586,’ which is dedicated to Madame Sidney (Sir Philip’s mother) by her very affectionate servant, the author.” (Alexander Brown, Genesis of the United States, 2 vols., rpt. 1964, 1.5)
   Lady Mary Sidney (1561–1621), countess of Pembroke, was a patron of Le Moyne’s, and de Bry may well have first learned of Le Moyne from the Sidney family (de Bry “came to England in 1587, commissioned to engrave Thomas Lant’s drawings of Sir Philip Sidney’s funeral which had taken place in February of the previous year”). (P. Hulton, America, 1585, 17)

   Click/tap here to view a large digital facsimile (338KB) of de Bry’s engraving of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’s drawing entitled “The chief applied to by women whose husbands have died in war or by disease” (Plate 18 in Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae Provincia Gallis Acciderunt [Frankfurt, 1591]), which shows Timucuan women sitting on their heels. Le Moyne’s/De Bry’s printed gloss for Plate 18 reads in full: “The wives of such as have fallen in war, or died by disease are accustomed to get together on some day which they find convenient for approaching the chief. They come before him with great weeping and outcry, sit down on their heels, hide their faces in their hands, and with much clamor and lamentation require of the chief vengeance for their dead husbands, the means of living during their widowhood, and permission to marry again at the end of the time appointed by law. The chief, sympathizing with them, assents; and they go home weeping and lamenting, so as to show the strength of their love for the deceased. After some days spent in this mourning, they proceed to the graves of their husbands, carrying the weapons and drinking-cups of the dead, and there they mourn for them again, and perform other feminine ceremonies.” (J. Le Moyne de Morgues, Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae Provincia Gallis Acciderunt, Eng. edn., 1875, 8)

[Makin, Bathsua]. An essay to revive the antient education of gentlewomen, in religion, manners, arts & tongues. With an answer to the objections against this way of education. London: Printed by J. D., to be sold by Tho. Parkhurst, at the Bible and Crown at the lower end of Cheapside, 1673.

“Designed to recruit students and set down her philosophy of education,” Makin’s treatise on female education “comprises a lively and amusing defence of women, a catalog of learned women throughout history, an acerbic attack on the traditional humanist text Lily’s Grammar, and an enthusiastic endorsement of texts by Comenius. It is likely to have influenced Mary Astell and is certainly the first essay by an Englishwoman defending women and their abilities in the classroom.” (F. Teague, ODNB entry for Bathsua Makin, n. pag.)
   An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen was an anonymous work of textual androgyny, with its author, the renowned scholar Bathsua Makin (b. 1600, d. in or after 1675), posing as a man: “If this way of Educating Ladies should (as its like, it never will) be generally practised, the greatest hurt, that I fore-see, can ensue, is, to put your Sons upon greater diligence to advance themselves in Arts and Languages, that they may be Superior to Women in Parts as well as in Place. This is the great thing I designe. I am a Man my self, that would not suggest a thing prejudicial to our Sex. To propose Women rivals with us to Learning, will make us court Minerva more heartily, lest they should be more in Her Favour. I do verily think this to be the best way to dispell the Clouds of Ignorance, and to stop the Flouds [floods] of Debauchery, that the next Generation may be more wise and vertuous than any of their Predecessours. It is an easie matter to quibble and droll upon a subject of this nature, to scoff at Women kept ignorant, on purpose to be made slaves. This savours not at all of a Manly Spirit, to trample upon those that are down. I forbid Scoffing and Scolding. Let any think themselves agrieved, and come forth fairly into the Field against this feeble Sex, with solid Arguments to refute what I have asserted, I think I may promise to be their Champion.” (B. Makin, “To the Reader,” An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, 5)
   At least one other scholar has tied Makin’s assertions about female slavery to Margaret Cavendish’s publications, including her epistle describing women “kept like birds in cages.” But Makin was also influenced by popular accounts of AmerIndian women, which Makin used as a foil, here playing to European aspirations for advanced civilized status: “Doubtless this under-breeding of Women began amongst Heathen and Barbarous People; it continues with the Indians, where they make their Women meer slaves, and wear them out in drudgery.” (B. Makin, An Essay, 22–3)
   In her proposal, Makin applauded “The present Dutchess of New-Castle” who, “by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Gown-Men.” (B. Makin, An Essay, 10) And her reformed curriculum for female education emphasized the several branches of science — a protofeminist perspective she shared with Margaret Cavendish, as well as other educational reformers in England’s Comenian circle. Indeed, Makin adapted several Comenian innovations, boasting that she could teach “Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old” (B. Makin, An Essay, 43) Comenius’ entire Latin Janua “in six months”:
   “If any doubt how this may be done, or what Authors we shall use, that words and things may be learnt together;
   “I Answer, Comenius hath prepared Nomenclatures for this purpose. His Orbis Pictus, contains all the Primitive Latine words, and the representation of most things capable of being set out by Pictures; it may be learnt by beginners in three months, and is as a System of his Janua Linguarum.
   “This Janua Linguarum, a System of things, consists of a thousand Sentences; ten of which may be learnt in one day, fifty in a week, the thousand in twenty-six weeks; allowing one day in a week, and one week in a month for Repetition, that we may keep what we get. Thus nine months is spent, I mean by Gentlewoman, that spend but six hours in a day at their Books; the other three months may be imployed in gaining the French Tongue, which I thus demonstrate....” (B. Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, 36–7)

McDowell, Paula. “Sowle, Andrew (1628–1695), printer.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Jan. 2008.

McDowell, Paula. “Sowle [married name Sowle Raylton], Tace (1666–1749), printer and bookseller.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Jan. 2008.

Mendyk, S. “Blome, Richard (bap. 1635?, d. 1705), cartographer and bookseller.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

“Music helps people in nursing home once considered unreachable.” A PBS NewsHour segment, first aired 5 January 2018.

SUMMARY: “A California nursing home is using music therapy with residents suffering from dementia. In collaboration with inewsource news service in San Diego, Joanne Faryon reports on how music is reaching those once considered unreachable.” (n. pag.)

Nawaz, Amna. Part 1 of 2, “Fetal alcohol disorders are more common than you think.” A PBS NewsHour feature in two parts, first aired 23 July 2018 (part 1 of 2).

SUMMARY: “Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder [FASD], a possible result from mothers drinking during pregnancy, has flown under the radar for decades. Now new conservative estimates published in The Journal of the American Medical Association show that anywhere from 1.1 to 5 percent of the U.S. population is affected, meaning it could be more common than autism. Amna Nawaz reports.”
   And see the related back story “About Drinking while Pregnant that Got our Newsroom Talking,” wherein Amna Nawaz, Lorna Baldwin, and Dr. Amber Robins discuss the reporting that went into Nawaz’s 2-part feature on FASD (with symptoms that “can look a lot like ADHD,” including impulse control issues, hyperactivity and short attention span) and the people Nawaz met living with the disorder that “science has not yet figured out (because how many pregnant women would volunteer as subjects in that study?) ... And while I was baffled to learn what we don’t yet know about FASD, I was also deeply disturbed by everything we do.” (A. Nawaz, n. pag.)

Nawaz, Amna. Part 2 of 2, “Why do pregnant women get confusing guidance about alcohol?” A PBS NewsHour feature in two parts, first aired 24 July 2018 (part 2 of 2).

SUMMARY: “How much alcohol can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a difficult to diagnose condition, sometimes called an ‘invisible disability’? Doctors don’t know. While official guidelines say no amount of alcohol is safe to drink during pregnancy, women often receive mixed signals, even from their own physicians. Amna Nawaz reports.”

Norris, Courtney, and Alex D’Elia. “Trump Fast-Tracks Environmental Rollbacks to Deliver on Campaign Promises.” Posted to the PBS NewsHour website, 1 July 2020.

In 2017, the Trump administration put forth a radically new legal interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, “reducing enforcement actions brought against [big industry and major developers] and ultimately legalizing unintentional migratory bird deaths. More recently, the Fish and Wildlife Service moved forward to codify that definition, making it harder for future administrations to overturn.” (C. Norris & A. D’Elia, n. pag.)
   “And now that migratory birds have lost some of their federal protection, several states are offering their own plans to protect them.  ¶   In Virginia, construction on the South Island of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel will result in loss of habitat for 25,000 migratory birds that use it for nesting. In February, Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, announced the state will develop a bird management plan, prepare an artificial island adjacent to the construction for displaced birds, as well as recreate the original habitat when construction is complete.  ¶   ‘This plan demonstrates that infrastructure and development can and must be compatible with wildlife conservation,’ said Northam. ‘It also shows that Virginia is stepping up when federal policies change environmental protections.’” (C. Norris & A. D’Elia, n. pag.) It’s good to see that the founders’ legacy of good stewardship is still evolving in the provinces.
   See also the above citation for Matthew Brown.

Ogilby, John, ed. America: being an accurate description of the new world; containing the original of the inhabitants; the remarkable voyages thither: the conquest of the vast empires of Mexico and Peru, their ancient and later wars. With their several plantations, many, and rich islands; their cities, fortresses, towns, temples, mountains, and rivers: their habits, customs, manners, and religions; their peculiar plants, beasts, birds, and serpents. Collected and translated from most authentick authors, and augmented with later observations; illustrated with notes, and adorn’d with peculiar maps, and proper sculptures, by John Ogilby esq; master of His Majesties revels in the kingdom of Ireland. London: printed by Tho. Johnson for the author, and are to be had at this House in White Fryers, M.DC.LXX [1670].

Although the title-page for the 1st issue of Ogilby’s America is dated 1670 (old-style dating), the volume was actually published in 1671 (new-style dating), since the text includes several mentions of 1671. E.g., Ogilby’s new map of Jamaica, following p. 336 of the 1st issue, is dated 1671; and Ogilby’s write-up on Carolina includes the following reference to 1671: “The Lords-Proprietors, for the comfortable subsistence, and future enrichment of all those who shall this Year 1671. Transport themselves and Servants thither, allow every Man a hundred Acres per Head, for himself, his Wife, Children and Servants, he carries thither, to him and his Heirs for ever, paying onely one Peny an Acre, as a Chief-Rent ....” (J. Ogilby, America, 1670–1, 211)
   Ogilby’s paradisiacal description of Carolina was impugned by George Scot (d. 1685) in his treatise promoting New Jersey to Scottish emigrants: “As for Carolina, I confess it is nothing strange that any person who hath read Ogibies [Ogilby’s] description thereof in his America and Wilsons in his Treatise thereanent; Judge it in a maner [manner] a Terrestiral Paradise, but notwithstanding of all this, err you pass any judgement upon my choising rather East-Jersey, then Carolina for the seat of a Collony from this, allow me to give my Reasons why I do prefer the one to the other....” (G. Scot, The Model of the Government of the Province of East-New-Jersey, in America, 209; for more on this, see the annotated citation for George Scot’s Model of Government [1685] and the annotated citation for Samuel Wilson’s An Account of the Province of Carolina in America [1682])
   Scot’s criticism of Ogilby’s influential America is misleading, however. Yes, Ogilby presented Carolina’s government — its liberal concessions “attributable to the demands of dissentient Barbados planters who were planning to immigrate to the Carolinas” (J. E. Pomfret, 28), and not simply the brainchild of Carolina’s Lords Proprietors — as a “model,” here touting the Carolina framework as “all contriv’d and design’d for the good and welfare of the People; all which are so well put together, and in such equal proportion ballance each other, that some judicious Men who have seen it, say, it is the best and fairest Frame, for the well-being of those who shall live under it, of any they have seen or read of.” (J. Ogilby, America, 212)
   Ogilby also touted Carolina’s religious tolerance — calling attention to its relative latitude in “liberty of conscience,” which had drawn emigrants from New England, where “rigorous Imposing of, and hot Contentions about the Ceremonies and Circumstances of Religion, is an occasion of perpetual Strife, Faction and Division” — despite Carolina’s restrictions on “Atheists, or Men of no Religion,” who were prohibited by law from settling in the colony: “Atheism, Irreligion, and vicious Lives being condemn’d, as disagreeable to humane Nature, inconsistent with Government and Societies, and destructive to all that is useful to, or becoming of Mankind.” (J. Ogilby, America, 212)
   Ogilby was most disingenuous in his depiction of Carolina as “a Countrey where every one may be happy if it be not his own fault,” neglecting to mention the decidedly unhappy lot of black African slaves, many of whom were sent to Charleston by “the rich Inhabitants of Barbados and Bermudas, who are now crowded up in those flourishing Islands, ... are turning their Eyes and Thoughts this way, and have already remov’d part of their Stock and Servants thither.” (J. Ogilby, America, 211) When Ogilby marvels at “the Conveniences of this Countrey” enjoyed by Carolina’s lucky “Inhabitants,” he has in mind a select Anglo and Algonquian population, living in amiable union born of mutual respect and trust. Click/tap here for an HTML transcription of Ogilby’s portrait of indigenous Carolinians as “a merry, frollick, gay People” who competed among themselves for English plantations, offering whatever “they judg’d might allure the English to their Neighborhood.” (J. Ogilby, America, 210)
   But it was New Jersey — not Carolina — that Ogilby characterized as a “terrestrial Canaan ... where the Land floweth with Milk and Honey” for those emigrants “of an inferior rank,” in pursuit of “terrestrial happiness”: “for Tradesmen there are none but live happily there, as Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Masons, Taylors, Weavers, Shoemakers, Tanners, Brickmakers, and so any other Trade: Them that have no Trade betake themselves to Husbandry, get Land of their own, and live exceeding well.” (Ogilby, America, 181–82) Click/tap here for an HTML transcription of Ogilby’s enticing portrait of New Jersey as the land of opportunity — the idyllic locality for a working-class pursuit of happiness.

Oldenburg, Henry. “An accompt of some books.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London 10.114 (1675): 314–326.

Pepys, Samuel. The diary of Samuel Pepys: a new and complete transcription. Transcribed and ed. by Robert Latham and William Matthews. 11 vols. 1970–1983; rpt. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.

Pomfret, John E. The province of East New Jersey, 1609–1702: the rebellious proprietary. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.

Powell, Thomas. Humane industry: or, A history of most manual arts, deducing the original, progress, and improvement of them. Furnished with variety of instances and examples, shewing forth the excellency of humane wit. London: Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Blew-Anchor, in the Lower walk of the New-Exchange, 1661.

Ralegh, Walter, Sir. The history of the world. In five bookes. Intreating of the beginning and first ages of the same from the creation unto Abraham. Of the times from the birth of Abraham, to the destruction of the temple of Solomon. From the destruction of Jerusalem, to the time of Philip of Macedon. From the reigne of Philip of Macedon, to the establishing of that kingdome, in the race of Antigonus. From the setled rule of Alexanders successors in the East, untill the Romans (prevailing over all) made conquest of Asia and Macedon. By Sir Walter Ralegh, knight. At London: Printed by William Jaggard[, W. Stansby and N. Okes] for Walter Burre, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Crane, 1617.

Even though, according to Aubrey, “His Booke sold very slowly at first, and the Booke-seller complayned of it, and told him that he should be a looser by it,” Ralegh’s The History of the World (only the 1st part of which was ever published, most likely owing to the death in 1612 of Prince Henry, to whom the work was dedicated) soon found its audience. “Everybody enjoyed Ralegh’s book except King James” (who thought Ralegh was “too saucy in censuring princes,” and tried to suppress further issues of his History in early 1615). The first folio edition of Ralegh’s History, “which cost between twenty and thirty shillings, was published in two issues, the errata of the first being corrected in the second. It was quickly sold out. Two more editions were printed in 1617, and there were in all ten editions of the work in the seventeenth century. Princess Elizabeth took a copy with her to Prague, where it was captured by the Spaniards in 1620, and recovered by the Swedes in 1648. John Hampden read it with delight and for instruction. John Milton admired Ralegh’s prose, and made notes from the History. Oliver Cromwell read it and told his son Richard to read it. Ralegh’s view of history as God’s instrument for the moral improvement of man was acclaimed by many of the men of Parliament who were to lead the rebellion against the King. It is one of the more ironical paradoxes of Ralegh’s life that the writings of such a convinced supporter of the monarch should have had such an appeal for republicans, and that the man who was accused of causing Essex’s death should be a source of such comfort and instruction for Puritans. Ralegh was the archetypal Elizabethan, but he survived into the seventeenth century, and was not out of place in it. His writings, and especially his History, had an important influence on the intellectual and moral arguments which led up to the Civil War. He was so often called an atheist. Yet it was in his philosophies that men found some of the moral justification they needed to be able to resist, and eventually to behead, their King in the name of their God. It was an irony that Ralegh himself would have appreciated.” (J. Winton, Sir Walter Ralegh, 289–90)

Reeve, Christopher. “Beale [née Cradock], Mary (bap. 1633, d. 1699), portrait painter.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, Oct. 2008.

Roberts, Lewes. The merchants mappe of commerce: wherein, the universall manner and matter of trade, is compendiously handled. The standerd and currant coines of sundry princes, observed. The reall and imaginary coines of accompts and exchanges, expressed. The naturall and artificiall commodities of all countries for transportation declared. The weights and measures of all eminent cities and townes of traffique, collected and reduced one into another; and all to the meridian of commerce practised in the famous citie of London. By Lewes Roberts, merchant. Necessary for all such as shall be imployed in the publique affaires of princes in forreigne parts; for all gentlemen and others that travell abroad for delight or pleasure, and for all merchants or their factors that exercise the art of merchandizing in any part of the habitable world. At London: Printed by R. O. for Ralph Mabb, MDCXXXVIII [1638].

This important work by Lewes Roberts (Latinized Lodovicum Roberts, 1596–1641) both responded and contributed to unprecedented commercial expansion in an era of globalization.
   “While the vast scale of England’s commercial expansion can be discerned numerically — ‘modern’ facts such as the tonnage of London shipping trebling between 1582 and 1629, customs revenues at chief English ports more than quintupling from 1614 to 1687, or the pound value of London imports nearly trebling between 1621 and 1700 — we can also glimpse the increasingly global purview of English trade by juxtaposing two texts offering practical advice to overseas merchants and their factors: The marchants avizo (1589), by the Bristol-based merchant John Browne, and The merchants mappe of commerce (1638), by Levant and East India merchant Lewis Roberts. In the fifty years or so separating the first editions of these texts, we move from Browne’s slender quarto volume of seventy pages aimed at the ‘sons and servants’ of merchants venturing ‘to Spain or Portingale or other countries’ (Browne title page) to Roberts’s hefty folio of nearly 700 pages presented to ‘all Merchants or their Factors that exercise the Art of Merchandizing in any part of the habitable World’ (Roberts title page). Roberts echoes this sweeping promise to encompass the entirety of the ‘habitable world’ in his dedicatory epistle to ‘the merchants of England in General.’ He claims to offer an exhaustive account of ‘all the fit instruments and materials as at this day is [sic] found practised in the Art of Merchandizing in all parts of the habitable world’ (sig. A5v). Admiration for the global scope of Roberts’s tome — which includes five lavishly illustrated maps, 450 pages of prose surveying general trade topics and commodities and conditions around the globe, almost 200 pages of currency conversion tables, and a detailed alphabetical list of the latitude and longitude of the principal cities he surveys — is uttered repeatedly in the commendatory verses that preface the first edition. One admirer says that readers shall ‘live indebted that thou has brought hither / To us, the Trade of all the World together’ (sig. A2v). Another marvels that ‘here that Massy Ball and all its traffique / At once is scene, as through a perfect optique’ (sig. A4v). Yet another celebrates how Roberts ‘bringst us traffique home from every Coast ... from every forreigne Soyle’ (sig. A5r). Awed by the prospect of such a global commercial vista and the potential profit it entails, Roberts’s admirers express a debt of gratitude for his labors in bringing the world of trade home. For this discourse community, at least, the influx of the foreign on English soil is anything but maligned or reviled.” (Barbara Sebek, “Global Traffic: An Introduction,” in Global Traffic: Discourses and Practices of Trade in English Literature and Culture from 1550 to 1700, ed. Barbara Sebek and Stephen Deng, 2008, 1–2)
   Although Roberts’ comprehensive guide to global trade was generally well received (being reissued in “corrected and much enlarged” editions in 1671, 1677, and 1700), there was at the same time a growing chorus of complaint over the practices and consequences of early-modern globalization — “writers who register the cultural ambivalence, if not outright condemnation, prompted by the period’s unprecedented commercial expansion” (B. Sebek, 2). Sebek and Deng’s Global Traffic is a good introduction to the 500-year-old “‘ambivalent conception of transnationality that works to naturalize the global even as it stigmatizes the foreign’” (B. Sebek, 2).

Rous, John. A warning to the inhabitants of Barbadoes, who live in pride, drunkennesse, covetousnesse, oppression and deceitful dealings; and also to all who are found acting in the same excess of wickedness, of what country soever, that they speedily repent, and [return ?] from the evil of their wayes, and no longer make a sport of wickedness, but seek the Lord while he may be found, least the Lord destroy them in his fury, and take them away in his anger, and give them their portion in utter darkness, (who now spend the day of their visitation carelesly, out of the fear of the Lord) where shall be weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth for ever. Also, something to the rulers of Barbadoes, that they rule rightly, and do justice on the wicked, who are peace-breakers and transgressors of the pure law of God. Written by one who waits for the redemption of the seed of God, and the destruction of the wicked one, the man of sin; written by a friend of truth and righteousness, John Rous. [London: s.n., 1656].

Scot, George. The model of the government of the province of East-New-Jersey in America; and encouragements for such as designs to be concerned there. Published for information of such as are desirous to be interested in that place. Edinburgh: Printed by John Reid, and sold [by] Alexander Ogston stationer in the Parliament Closs., Anno Dom. 1685.

George Scot’s cheaply-printed promotional tract, with its “manifold errors in orthography and punctuation,” was designed to recruit emigrants for his ill-fated New Jersey expedition of 1685. Although Scots were interested in colonial ventures in North America, covenanters were reluctant to sign up for a project associated with episcopal or Quaker proprietors, so this was a hard sell for Scot, who ended up transporting somewhat more than 100 settlers and indentured servants to East New Jersey in 1685 — a group of Scots described by one contemporary “as a mixture of political prisoners, persons distressed by poverty and debt, ‘whoores or prodigal wasters,’ and some holding ‘phaniticall principles and dissatisfied with the government.’” (J. E. Pomfret, The Province of East New Jersey, 197)
   To promote New Jersey as “the most desirable spot of ground upon the continent of America,” Scot had to counter “specious pretences” about the province of Carolina which “flie abroad ... and be received by such who are not concerned, to enquire further, then to hear-say,” such hearsay then enjoying wide circulation in the English-speaking world thanks to works such as John Ogilby’s America (1670–1) and Samuel Wilson’s An Account of the Province of Carolina in America (1682). (G. Scot, Model of Government, 214 and 211)
   Scot had several reasons for voyaging to New Jersey rather than Carolina, including matters of public health: after 20 years of settlement, “Experience also teacheth that the Clymate of Jersey, is far more suitable to our Constitutions, then that of Carolina; You find in all the Letters come from Jersey, this one particular specially marked, That it is a very healthfull Air; no complaints of sickness there, whereas in the few Letters from our Countrey men settled in Carolina; You have an accompt [account] of the death of the greatest part who went hence to that place.” (G. Scot, Model of Government, 210–11)
   But most appealing to Scot — himself a covenanter and “irreconcilable” who suffered multiple bouts of imprisonment in Scotland for attending conventicles and consorting with religio-political rebels and fugitives — was East New Jersey’s liberty of religion and of property, as guaranteed by its Fundamental Constitutions. In New Jersey, noted Scot, “no taxes could be levied or laws enacted touching any man’s liberty except by the great council, in which the [Scots] inhabitants were fully represented. To prevent the settlers ‘from lording over one another’ no proprietor was allowed to own more than one full propriety or one twenty-fourth of the country. Moreover, no proprietor could share in the governance of the province unless he owned one fourth of a propriety. The proprietors were determined that ‘dominion may follow Property, and [thus] the inconvenience of a Beggarly Nobility and Gentry [as in Scotland] may be avoided.’ Scot praised the institution of equal justice with its jury system and the fairness with which jurors were chosen. He noted that proprietors, like anyone else, were liable to trial by jury. The boon of religious freedom, too, was praised. To be a planter, one needed only to acknowledge one Almighty God; and to be a proprietor, only a simple profession in Jesus Christ was required, ‘without descending into any of the other differences among Christians.’ These were the Fundamentals, not alterable save by the unanimous vote of the great council.” (J. E. Pomfret, The Province of East New Jersey, 150)
   This was, to Scot’s mind, a fairer and more just form of government than emigrants would find in Carolina, which Scot, in opposition to Ogilby and Wilson, portrayed as a plutocracy, with limited opportunities for meritocratic advancement: “The Offices of Honour and Trust ... are all Heretably [hereditably] annexed to the Proprietors ... Money here makes you capable of Preferment, which neither Vertue, Merit, nor parts can do! Can there be a greater discouragement to any person of Spirit or Honour, than to go subject himself to a Government where he sees himself debarred of any Trust or Preferment, how ever deserving he may be? unless he hath money in a manner to buy it with. Both in this Kingdom and our Neighbour Nations, we see mean Persons have by their Parts and Merit raised themselves to places of the highest Preferments in the Kingdoms, and have discharged that Trust conferred upon them with Honour and Applause; So that when I have this consideration before my Eyes, I must conclude any who subjects themselves to that model of Government, are either ignorant of the Constitutions thereof, or of very mean Spirits, to settle themselves in a place where Vertue nor Merit can neither raise them, nor their Posterity!” (G. Scot, Model of Government, 211–12)
   Moreover, in hierarchical Carolina, the system was rigged such that the proprietors were above the law, “So that be their Actings never so Illegal, or unjust; if any these eight Proprietors should commit Murders, or Rapes, or any other Act of Oppression, they cannot be challenged upon accompt thereof in any Judicatory in Carolina” (G. Scot, Model of Government, 213).
   Of note, the supreme “privilege of the people” championed by Scot turned East New Jersey into “a rebellious colony. There were many reasons for its intransigent attitude toward authority.... The insistence of the proprietors upon collecting quitrents caused unending strife under whatever proprietor or governor. East Jerseymen were as allergic to quitrents as were the settlers of Pennsylvania under the benevolent William Penn, and whenever possible the colonists ignored them. East Jerseymen also disliked paying for the expenses of government. Their reaction to taxes was identical with that of West Jersey and Pennsylvania settlers. All pleaded speciously that the country was too poor to support any system of taxation.” (J. E. Pomfret, The Province of East New Jersey, vii)

Sebek, Barbara, and Stephen Deng, ed. Global traffic: discourses and practices of trade in English literature and culture from 1550 to 1700. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Smith, John. The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: with the names of the adventurers, planters, and governours from their first beginning Anº: 1584. to this present 1624. With the procedings of those severall colonies and the accidents that befell them in all their journyes and discoveries. Also the maps and descriptions of all those countryes, their commodities, people, government, customes, and religion yet knowne. Divided into sixe bookes. By Captaine John Smith sometymes governour in those countryes & Admirall of New England. London: Printed by J. D. and J. H. for Michael Sparkes, 1624.

1st edn. of an influential work promoting Anglo-American colonization.
   “In 1624 Smith produced a folio volume giving The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: with the names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governours from their first beginning Anº: 1584. to this present 1624. Resplendent with engravings showing the rescue of the author by Pocahontas, personal encounters of the doughty captain with the Indians, war dances, and numerous scenes of Indian life, the volume was destined to excite an enormous interest. Furthermore, long lists of the names of the subscribers to the colonial ventures created a personal appeal to London tradesmen, who could here see their names immortalized in print. Michael Sparke, the stationer for whom the book was printed, seems to have anticipated a heavy demand and had a large edition prepared. New issues with fresh title-pages appeared in 1625, 1626, and 1627, and another issue with the imprint of the stationer J. Dawson was brought out in 1632. Smith knew that the work would attract the attention of London tradesmen. In the Huntington Library there is preserved a copy with a note written on a flyleaf in Smith’s own hand presenting the book to ‘The Worshipfull the Master Wardens & Societie of the Cordwayners of ye Cittie of London.’ Though Smith now proudly signs himself ‘Admirall of New England,’ he is still mindful of the friendship of his brother-tradesmen: ‘Not only in regard of your Courtisie & Love, Butt also of ye Continuall use I have had of your Labours, & the hope you may make Some use of mine, I salute you with this Cronologicall discourse, ...’ And he prays the Cordwainers to give his work ‘Lodging in your Hall freelie to be perused for ever, in memorie of your Noblenesse towards mee, ...’ For professional reasons, the Cordwainers should read his book and encourage colonies in a region where the oyster beds have been destructive of shoes, the author hints, reminding them of ‘how many thousand of shooes hath bin transported to these plantations, ... what vent your Commodities have had & still have, ...’
   “In plan, Smith fell back on the previous compilers. He drew from other explorers such material as fitted into his work and embroidered upon it his own tales and observations. Purchas encouraged him and composed a prefatory page of execrable verse in commendation ‘of his friend Captaine John Smith,’ who was likewise commended by John Donne, George Wither, and numerous others less well known. The Admiral of New England had now arrived at the port of popular literature.” (L. B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England, 1935, 541–2)

Smith, Virginia. “Tryon, Thomas (1634–1703), vegetarian and author.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Southwell, Robert, Sir. “The method the Indians in Virginia and Carolina use to dress buck and doe skins; as it was communicated to the Royal Society by the honourable Sir Robert Southwell, Knt. their president.” Ed. by Edmond Halley. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 16.194 (July–Sept. 1691): 532–533.

The Spectator. London: Printed for Sam. Buckley, at the Dolphin in Little Britain; and sold by A. Baldwin in Warwick-Lane, 1711–12.

The Spectator was initiated on 1 March 1711 and closed on 6 December 1712, at which point the paper “had gone through 555 issues, had regularly sold up to 4000 copies (indeed even larger figures for a few numbers), and had transformed periodical writing in English.”
   Its essays were among the most widely read documents in the English language through the end of the 19th century, giving it enormous cultural influence on both sides of the Atlantic (e.g., Benjamin Franklin was an avid reader), and the journal deliberately targeted women readers, as well as men, intent on cultivating women’s education while informing public opinion.
   Of note, this initial run of The Spectator was co-published by a woman: Abigail Baldwin (née Mulford; bap. 1658, d. 1713), widow of the whig bookseller Richard Baldwin (d. 1698). Like Tace Sowle, “Mrs. Baldwin in Warwick-lane” was a formidable businesswoman, with superior book-keeping skills noted by John Dunton: “Mrs. A. Baldwin (in a Litteral Sence) was an AN HELP-MEET, and eas’d him [her husband, Richard] of all his Publishing Work; and since she has been a WIDOW might Vye with all the Women in Europe, for Accuracy and Justice in keeping Accounts, and the same I hear of her Beautiful Daughter, Mrs. Mary Baldwin, of whom her Father was very Fond” (J. Dunton, The Life and Errors of John Dunton Late Citizen of London ... Together with the Lives and Characters of a Thousand Persons Now Living in London ..., 2 pts., 1705, 1.342–43).
   Abigail Baldwin published a wide range of pamphlets and periodicals by whig authors such as Daniel Defoe, on issues ranging from social welfare to the standing army, including the economic journal, British Merchant of Commerce Preserved, and the notorious Female Tatler. She and her husband are considered key figures in the history of publishing: “Responding to the political pressures of their time, their business evolved pragmatically and influentially beyond the mandate of traditional ‘bookselling’. Perhaps most renowned as agents of whig propaganda, they also influenced the developing role of newspapers and periodicals within the popular literary culture of the early eighteenth century.”
   Joseph Addison’s paper for Spectator No. 99, ruminating on cultural constructs of gender, is transcribed and discussed at length in the Introduction to our HTML transcription of Margaret Cavendish’s essay on female education, “Of Gentlewomen that Are Sent to Board Schools”.

Sreenivasan, Hari. “Talking to dogs isn’t so far-fetched: Researchers translate canine with computer science.” A PBS NewsHour segment, first aired 9 December 2014.

SUMMARY: “Researchers at North Carolina State University are inventing technology to decode dog talk. Hari Sreenivasan visits a computer science lab that has designed a harness to monitor physiological and emotional changes and send wireless commands through vibrations, which could be used with guide animals or search and rescue dogs.”

Stanley, Autumn. Mothers and daughters of invention: notes for a revised history of technology. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1993; rpt. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Stanley’s encyclopedic work questions cultural stereotypes that separate women from machines, leading most historians of technology to ignore women’s mechanical inventiveness, along with “women’s contributions to ‘important’ machines,” and to dismiss “women’s acknowledged mechanical inventions by classing them as ‘domestic.’” (A. Stanley, 284)
   It is advertised as the “first broadly focused compensatory history of technology” which includes not only “women’s contributions but begins the long-overdue task of redefining technology and significant technology and to value these contributions correctly. Stanley traces women’s inventions in five vital areas of technology worldwide — agriculture, medicine, reproduction, machines, and computers — from prehistory (or origin) forward, profiling hundreds of women, both famous and obscure. The author does not ignore theory. She contributes a paradigm for male takeovers of technologies originated by women.” (Publisher’s blurb)
   As regards innovations in music therapy, Stanley recognizes 6 other women (a music therapist, a Shiatsu therapist, composers, and/or teachers), besides Laurel Elizabeth Keyes, working in this area as of 1980. The 6 are: Ruth Anderson, Jeriann Hilderley, Annea Lockwood, Jean Mass, Ann McGinnis, and Pauline Oliveros. (A. Stanley, Mothers and Daughters of Invention, 577–78)

Stanley, Thomas. “Medicine by musick.” In The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect. Illustrated with the effigies of divers of them. By Thomas Stanley, Esq;. The second edition. 4 vols. in 1. London: printed for Thomas Bassett, at the George in Fleetstreet, Dorman Newman, at the Kings Arms, and Thomas Cockerill, at the Three Leggs in the Poultery, MDCLXXXVII [1687]. 534–535.

Click/tap here for our HTML transcription of Stanley’s 17th-century commentary on Pythagorean “Medicine by Musick” from the 1st edn. of The History of Philosophy (vol. 3, 1660).
   Another long-standing use of Pythagorean-style musical medicine in obstetrics & gynecology is mentioned by Thomas Tryon in his Averroeana: Being a Transcript of Several Letters from Averroes ... to Metrodorus ... Also Several Letters from Pythagoras to the King of India ... (1695). Here, Tryon records that upper-caste (Brahman or Brahmin) women in India “use music, taught to them by priests, to regulate (moderate and compose) their passions” during pregnancy and childbirth (qtd. in a Roses webessay on another of Thomas Tryon’s tracts pressing for social reform, A Dialogue Between an East-Indian Brackmanny or Heathen-Philosopher, and a French Gentleman Concerning the Present Affairs of Europe [1683]).

Stockwell, Norman. “‘We need both equity and rights’: Felicia Wong of the Roosevelt Institute on how to reclaim FDR’s vision for America.” The Progressive 84.2 (April/May 2020): 61–63.

Strachey, William. The historie of travell into Virginia Britania. The Percy Ms., c.1612. Transcribed and edited by Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund. Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., no. 103. London: Hakluyt Society, 1953.

William Strachey (1572-1621) — whose encounter with a hurricane and accounts of being shipwrecked in the Bermudas for almost a year, 1609–10, as well as his impressions of the settlement at Jamestown in Virginia, were immortalized by Shakespeare in The Tempest (written c.1610-11, 1st pub. 1623) — became the Virginia Company’s secretary to the colony in 1609 when the previous secretary for that company of merchant-adventurers drowned.
   In 1611, Strachey returned to London where he wrote his manuscript report, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, which had been commissioned (and was later suppressed) by the Virginia Company. “Although Strachey provided an eyewitness account of life in early Virginia, his manuscript borrowed heavily from the work of earlier authors, including Richard Willes, James Rosier, and John Smith. He completed the first version of his work [aka the Percy manuscript], which was dedicated to the earl of Northumberland [Henry Percy (1564–1632), 9th earl of Northumberland], in 1612, and during the next six years produced two more versions of his Historie. Strachey’s Historie was as critical of Virginia as the report he wrote in 1610, and for that reason the Virginia Company refused to publish it. The work was first published in 1849 by the Hakluyt Society.” (B. Wood, ODNB entry for Strachey, n. pag.)

Teague, Frances. “Makin [née Reginald], Bathsua (b. 1600, d. in or after 1675), scholar and teacher.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

In the Introduction to her modern edition (1998) of Bathsua Makin’s An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673), Teague questions “the assumptions previous scholars, including myself, have made about [Makin’s] life, her world, and her work.” Feminist critics have “generally dismissed” Bathsua Makin “as a woman who compromised her position to escape censure.” But Teague came to reject this reading (as do I), noting instead: “I shall argue that [Makin] was neither conventional nor weak. She did innovative work in areas that we no longer value highly or understand well: she created synthetic language and knowledge systems that she hoped would alter the way that people learned. She had power, but not the sort that we recognize today, for she had little money or social status. Instead, she had ‘great acquaintance’ that gave her influence over others and allowed her to create networks through which support could pass. Finally, her history helps illuminate the histories of other early modern women, if only to demonstrate how various they were.” (Frances N. Teague, Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning, Bucknell University Press, 1998, 25 and 97)
   This is readily apparent when we compare Makin’s An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673) with an earlier essay on female education published in 1655 by Margaret Cavendish, later duchess of Newcastle. Both women advocated improved schooling for girls that would build character and intellect, but Cavendish recommended against public instruction for the very “persons of higher quality” — “Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old” — Makin taught in her “School ... for Gentlewomen at Tottenham-high-Cross, within four miles of London, in the Road to Ware” (B. Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, 26 and 42–43).
   With a royalist’s misplaced emphasis on the nobility of the sovereign self, Cavendish believed that upper-class girls were best “bred singly, carefully, and industriously one by one,” “at most two or three, but it is too much for one [teacher] to breed up many, as for one Woman to breed up twenty young Maids.” (M. Cavendish, “Of Gentlewomen that Are Sent to Board Schools”, The Worlds Olio, 1st edn., 1655, 61–62)
   But Bathsua Makin was not your typical 17th-century schoolteacher. She had outstanding credentials as “sometimes Tutoress to the Princess Elisabeth, Daughter to King Charles the First” (B. Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, closing advertisement, 42), whom she instructed in languages and mathematics. Under Makin’s tutelage, the princess learned to read and write Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Italian before she was 8 years old, and throughout the course of her short life (1635–1650), Princess Elizabeth was known and celebrated for her many “learned accomplishments.” Makin had also tutored several members of the nobility (including Lucy Davies, later Lucy Hastings, countess of Huntingdon, and her children), and brought the wisdom gained from these tutorial activities (Cavendish’s preferred method of instruction) with her into the classroom.
   By 1673, the year Cavendish died, Makin was an experienced educator (thought to have kept a school at Putney around 1649, as well as the new school she kept at Tottenham around 1673), whose progressive Comenian curriculum would have been approved by the duchess of Newcastle. Whether that would have been enough to change the duchess’s mind about the dangers of group education for girls growing up under the condition Cavendish named “the Female Slavery” is unclear. Her own bashful disposition, and privileging of the singular, sovereign self, may have prevented Cavendish from seeing the advantages for girls of all classes in Makin’s model of group instruction.

Thompson, Megan. “How a Hawaiian island is fighting invasive parakeets.” A PBS NewsHour Weekend segment, first aired 6 August 2017.

SUMMARY: “On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, rose-ringed parakeets, which are often kept as pets, have bred in the wild, destroying farms and bothering residents. They may also be threatening native plants. PBS NewsHour Weekend’s Megan Thompson reports on local efforts to battle the invasive birds.”
   In this epic battle of the species, it is not at all clear that human intelligence is winning out!
   “MEGAN THOMPSON: Bill Lucey says the birds are hard to control because they’re so smart. They seem to be able to recognize farmers who’ve threatened them before.
   “BILL LUCEY: They recognize their jackets, the trucks they drive. What they’ll do is send in two birds to scout the fields. They’ll look for danger. If they see someone else’s truck, that doesn’t mean they’re gonna fly away. But if they see a certain truck and they recognize it, they’ll give out an alarm call. And the birds won’t come in.
   “MEGAN THOMPSON: Wow.
   “BILL LUCEY: So people are changing their baseball hat colors. And changing their clothing.
   “MEGAN THOMPSON: They’re literally in disguise.
   “BILL LUCEY: Yeah.
   “MEGAN THOMPSON: Wow.
   “BILL LUCEY: ’Cause these birds are, I mean, you could teach parakeets and parrots to talk.” (n. pag.)

The Times of India. “Pigeons are smarter than you thought: New study.” Posted 5 February 2015.

“A new study by researchers from the University of Iowa found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and manmade objects. And, not just a few. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously.” (n. pag.)
   For more reporting on this, see above citation for the Daily Mail website.

Tiro, Karim M. “White, John (fl. 1577–1593), colonist and painter.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Todd, Janet. “Behn, Aphra [Aphara] (1640?–1689), writer.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Trinh, Minh-ha T. Woman, native, other: writing postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Trinh, a Vietnamese feminist film-maker and theorist, critiques Western ideals of clarity, as dictated by an instrumentalist rhetoric which cannot (or chooses not to) “see the suchness of things — a language as language.” When simplistically equated with correct expression, as it too often is, clarity becomes “a means of subjection, a quality both of official, taught language and of correct writing, two old mates of power: together they ... impose an order,” against which Trinh, like Margaret Cavendish before her, is in rebellion. (Trinh, 16–17)
   Trinh calls instead for “writing the body,” a style of communication which revels in “that abstract-concrete, personal-political realm of excess not fully contained by writing’s unifying structural forces. Its physicality (vocality, tactility, touch, resonance), or edging and margin, exceeds the rationalized ‘clarity’ of communicative structures and cannot be fully explained by any analysis.” (44) Drawing on Asian strains of Taoism, Zen, and the martial arts which all “postulate not one, not two, but three centers in the human being: the intellectual ..., the emotional ..., and the vital ....,” Trinh calls for a both/and style of whole-body writing which “radiates life. It directs vital movement and allows one to relate to the world with instinctual immediacy. But instinct(ual immediacy) here is not opposed to reason, for it lies outside the classical realm of duality assigned to the sensible and the intelligible.” (Trinh, 40)
   Late-20th-century feminist experiments with “writing the body” share basic themes with Margaret Cavendish’s 17th-century theorizing in natural philosophy (e.g., the duchess of Newcastle would have agreed with Trinh’s postulate that “We write — think and feel — (with) our entire bodies rather than only (with) our minds or hearts”; “we do not have bodies, we are our bodies, and we are ourselves while being the world” [Trinh, 36]).
   Indeed, Trinh herself is alert to history, aspiring to a new enlightenment grounded in early-modern scepticism: “the modernist project of building universal knowledge has indulged itself in such self-gratifying oppositions as civilization/primitivism, progress/backwardness, evolution/stagnation. With the decline of the colonial idea of advancement in rationality and liberty, what becomes more obvious is the necessity to reactivate that very part of the modernist project at its nascent stage: the radical calling into question, in every undertaking, of everything that one tends to take for granted — which is a (pre- and post-modernist) stage that should remain constant. No Authority no Order can be safe from criticism. Between knowledge and power, there is room for KNOWLEDGE-WITHOUT-POWER. Or knowledge at rest....” (Trinh, 40)
   While Margaret Cavendish was a forceful social critic who also aspired to topple her culture’s gender power structures (called “the Female Slavery” by Cavendish and other 17th-century protofeminists such as Bathsua Makin), the duchess of Newcastle was at heart a royalist who eschewed republican politics. She believed in knowledge as power, and sought more — not less — of both by writing in excess.

Tryon, Thomas. The country-man’s companion: or, A new method of ordering horses & sheep so as to preserve them both from diseases and causalties, or, to recover them if fallen ill, and also to render them much more serviceable and useful to their owners, than has yet been discovered, known or practised. And particularly to preserve sheep from that monsterous, mortifying distemper, the rot. By Philotheos Physiologus, the author of The way to health, long life and happiness, &c. London: Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle, at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway-Court in Holloway-Lane, near Shoreditch, [1684].

1st edn. (1684). In 5 chapters, described as follows in the table of contents:
   Ch. 1: “Of Horses, their Natures, Complexions, and how to preserve them from Surfeits and other Inconveniences whereunto they are subject.” Includes the following sections: “The best way to prevent Surfeits and other Diseases in Horses”; “The ill consequence of keeping Horses in close hot Stables”; “Of Horses Food”; “What Water is best for Horses to drink”; “Shewing the Difference, Nature and Goodness of River-Water, of Spring-Water, of Pump-Water, of Pond-Water.”
   Ch. 2: “Of Sheep, their Natures, and the best way to secure them from the Rot, and preserve them healthy.” Includes the following sections: “How to prevent the Scab and Mange in Sheep”; “Also the Diseases of the Gall, Jaundies, Choller, Phlegm, Blinding, Stoppages, Water in the Belly, Red-Water, Coughs, Pains in the Joynts, Lameness in the Feet, &c.”; “The Reasons in Nature what it is that is the chief occasion of the Rot in Sheep, and the Times when it is contracted, and particular directions for the certain prevention thereof”; “Of the Language of Sheep”; “Of the Excellency of a Shepherds Life, and that it is no less Innocent and Honourable than Antient”; “Of Sounds, and the Benefits Musical Harmony yields to Sheep, &c.”
   Ch. 3: “Of the Evils that attend an idle and soft Life, and the Benefits of moderate Labour and Exercise.”
   Ch. 4: “The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours and Country-men in Pennsylvania, East and West-Jersey, and to all such as have Transported themselves into New Colonies for the sake of a quiet retired Life.”
   Ch. 5: “The Complaints of the Birds and Fowls of Heaven, for the Treachery and Violence they sustain from Man.”

Tryon, Thomas. The country-man’s companion: or, A new method of ordering horses & sheep so as to preserve them both from diseases and causalties, or, to recover them if fallen ill, and also to render them much more serviceable and useful to their owners, than has yet been discovered, known or practiced. And particularly to preserve sheep from that monsterous, mortifying distemper, the rot. By Philotheos Ohysiologus, the author of The way to health, long life and happiness, &c. London: Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle, at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway-Court in Holloway-Lane, near Shoreditch, [1688].

2nd issue. A reprint of the original issue of 1684, with no changes to the text.

Tryon, Thomas. Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies in three parts. I. A brief treatise of the most principal fruits and herbs that grow in the East & West Indies; giving an account of their respective vertues both for food and physick, and what planet and sign they are under. Together with some directions for the preservation of health and life in those hot climates. II. The complaints of the negro-slaves against the hard usages and barbarous cruelties inflicted upon them. III. A discourse in way of dialogue, between an Ethiopean or negro-slave, and a Christian that was his master in America. By Philotheos Physiologus. [London]: Printed by Andrew Sowle, in the year 1684.

This is a reissue, with cancel title-page, of the editio princeps, also published in 1684 with a title-page misprint (Friendly Advcie to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies in Three Parts).
   For more about Tryon’s documentation of traditional African healers and Anglo-America’s long, ignominious history of unequal medical care for African-Americans, see this website’s introductory essay on the polymath physician who served briefly in Jamaica, Henry Stubbe (1632–1676) — a radical Independent & republican polemicist, author of one of the earliest appreciations in English of Islam, and the first writer on human-induced climate change to be published (1667) in a scientific journal.
   As he did in his Planter’s Speech (1684), Tryon ridicules racism in his Friendly Advice (also published in 1684), raising issues of blackness vs. whiteness (as did John Josselyn a decade earlier) in the process: “As for the blackness of our Skins, we find no reason to be ashamed of it, ’tis the Livery which our great Lord and Maker hath thought fit we should wear; Do not you amongst Furs, prize pure Sables as much as Ermins? Is Jett or Ebony despised for its Colour? Can we help it, if the Sun by too close and fervent Kisses, and the nature of the Climate and Soil where we were Born, hath tinctur’d us with a dark Complexion? Have not you variety of Complexions amongst your selves; some very White and Fair, others Brown, many Swarthy, and several Cole-black? And would it be reasonable that each sort of these should quarrel with the other, and a man be made a Slave forever, meerly because his Beard is Red, or his Eye-brows Black? In a word, if our Hue be the only difference, since White is as contrary to Black, as Black is to White, there is as much reason that you should be our Slaves, as we yours.” (T. Tryon, Friendly Advice, 1684, 115–116)
   A digital edn. of Tryon’s Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies in Three Parts (1684) is still planned for this website. In the meantime, you can find more quotes from this very interesting anti-slavery tract, and a bit of introduction to it, in the second-window aside re. Thomas Tryon’s A Dialogue Between an East-Indian Brackmanny or Heathen-Philosopher, and a French Gentleman Concerning the Present Affairs of Europe (1683).

Tryon, Thomas. Healths grand preservative: or The womens best doctor. A treatise, shewing the nature and operation of brandy, rumm, rack, and other distilled spirits, and the ill consequences of mens, but especially of womens drinking such pernicious liquors and smoaking tobacco. As likewise, of the immoderate eating of flesh, without a due observation of time, or nature of the creature, which hath proved very destructive to the health of many. Together, with a rational discourse of the excellency of herbs, highly approved of by our ancestors in former times. And the reasons why men now so much desire the flesh more than other food. A work highly fit to be persued and observed by all that love their health, and particularly necessary to the female sex, on whose good or ill constitution the health and strength, or sickness and weakness of all posterity does in a more especial manner depend. By Tho. Tryon. London: Printed for the author, and are to be sold by Langley Curtis near Fleet-Bridge, 1682.

Tryon, Thomas. Vol. 2 of The knowledge of a man’s self the surest guide to the true worship of God, and good governent government of the mind and body. In opposition to tradition, custom and bigottry, the governors of the present, and all preceding generations. Or, the third part of the Way to Long-life, health and happiness. By Thomas Tryon, gent. London: Printed for Tho. Bennet, at the Half-Moon in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1704.

Tryon, Thomas. The planter’s speech to his neighbours & country-men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey, and to all such as have transported themselves into new-colonies for the sake of a quiet retired life. To which is added, the complaints of our supra-inferior-inhabitants. London: Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle in Shoreditch, 1684.

This title has been reissued (2014) as an original Roses​.Communicating​By​Design​.com digital edition.

Tryon, Thomas. Some memoirs of the life Mr. Tho. Tryon, late of London, merchant: written by himself: together with some rules and orders, proper to be observed by all such as would train up and govern, either familes [sic], or societies, in cleanness, temperance, and innocency. London: Printed by T. Sowle, in White-Hart-Court, in Gracious-Street, 1705.

This title was brought out posthumously by Tace Sowle, with the comment, “We must here acknowledge that those Memoirs here Published, are not what he intended for the Press. We doubt not but those he intended for the Press were Exact, continued in a Series of time, from Year to Year, and enriched with a great many particulars, which would have mightily tended to the Edification of Devout, Serious and Sober-minded People. What loss then is it, that those Memoirs which were so carefully Collected, and to which he had put his last Polishing Hand, were not as carefully preserved. Those Memoirs now spoken of, were not to be found in the place where he assigned them to be; neither can we now, after Eighteen Months search, find them out, which is the Reason we now Publish these; and it is the Reason why these were not Published sooner. And hoping however, that these will contribute something to thy Satisfaction, and stir thee up likewise to Praise and Reverence thy great Creator, whose Goodness is extended over all his Creatures, and Glory and Power manifest in all his Works; shall proceed to give thee an Account of the Death of this our Author ....” (60–2)
   As such, the cobbled together title is in 4 parts: part 1 is Tryon’s autobiographical fragment, which abruptly terminates “in the middle of the Scene of his Life, at the 48th Year of his Age; an Age when Men commonly are most known, most active, and their Actions most remarkable, and best worth relating” (Publisher, 57–8); part 2 is the brief biography of Tryon, probably written by publisher Tace Sowle, focused on his excruciating death, “which he bore with greater Patience, Submission, and Resignation than is easie to express” (Publisher, 63); part 3 is entitled “Some certain Principles, Maxims and Laws, which ought to be imbraced and observed by all such as have the Government either of Families, or Societies, and would Train them up in Temperance, Cleanness, Order, and innocency of Life,” and was perhaps intended as a summa of his life and work, but while it mostly sounds a lot like Tryon, on occasion it does not, and the publisher never anywhere claims that it is “under the Warrant of his own Writing” (57), leaving this reader suspicious that it was cobbled together from MSS. in the hands of Tace Sowle; part 4 is entitled “Laws and Orders proper for Women to Observe,” and once again, is of uncertain authorship.

Tryon, Thomas. A treatise of cleanness in meats and drinks, of the preparation of food, the excellency of good airs, and the benefits of clean sweet beds. Also of the generation of bugs, and their cure. To which is added, a short discourse of the pain in the teeth, shewing from what cause it does chiefly proceed, and also how to prevent it. By Tho. Tryon. London: Printed for the Author, and sold by L. Curtis near Fleet-Bridge, 1682.

Tryon, Thomas. The way to health, long life, and happiness, or, A discourse of temperance and the particular nature of all things requisit for the life of man, as all sorts of meats, drinks, air, exercise, &c. with special directions how to use each of them to the best advantage of the body and mind. Shewing from the true ground of nature whence most diseases proceed, and how to prevent them. To which is added, a treatise of most sorts of English herbs, with several other remarkable and most useful observations, very necessary for all families. The whole treatise displaying the most hidden secrets of philosophy, and made easie and familiar to the meanest capacities, by various examples and demonstrances. The like never before published. Communicated to the world for a general good, by Philotheos Physiologus. London: Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle at the Cloaked-Billet in Holloway-Lane near Shoreditch, 1683.

1st edn. of Tryon’s best-selling The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness. This was the title celebrated by Aphra Behn in her poem, and advertised by Andrew Sowle at the back of The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ... and The Country-Man’s Companion.

Tryon, Thomas. The way to health, long life and happiness: or, A discourse of temperance and the particular nature of all things requisite for the life of man; as, all sorts of meats, drinks, air, exercise, &c. with special directions how to use each of them to the best advantage of the body and mind. Shewing from the true ground of nature, whence most diseases proceed, and how to prevent them. To which is added, a treatise of most sorts of English herbs, with several other remarkable and most useful observations, very necessary for all families. The whole treatise displaying the most hidden secrets of philosophy, and made easie and familiar to the meanest capacities, by various examples and demonstrances. The like never before published. Communicated to the world for a general good, by Thomas Tryon, student in physick. The third edition. To which is added a discourse of the philosophers stone, or universal medicine, discovering the cheats and abuses of those chymical pretenders. London: Printed for H. Newman, at the Grashopper in the Poultry, 1697.

3rd edn. of Tryon’s best-selling The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness. This was the reissue in which Aphra Behn’s prefatory verses — first published in 1685 with Tryon’s The Way to Make All People Rich: or, Wisdoms Call to Temperance and Frugality in a Dialogue between Sophronio and Guloso ... — were incorporated by Tryon.

Van Hemert, Caroline. “A sparrow’s song sheds light on being human for scientists.” Los Angeles Times op-ed, 15 March 2020, A17.

Van Hemert — a wildlife biologist in Alaska and author of The Sun Is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds (2019) — here recalls the poignant tale of a bilingual golden-crowned sparrow, studied by a bilingual ornithologist specializing in avian vocalizations, Daizaburo Shizuka, as shared at an annual meeting of the American Ornithological Society.
   Observing that “birds, like humans, have unique dialects that develop through generations of cultural evolution,” Van Hemert concludes, “The ordinary way for Shizuka to share his research would have been to describe his observations of birdsong, draw conclusions about the different populations he observed and leave it at that. The bilingual bird would have been considered an outlier, and ignored. Instead, by sharing its unique story, and its relevance to our own experiences, Shizuka taught us something about birdsong, but also so much more. In that moment, we remembered what it meant to be both scientists and humans.” (C. Van Hemert, A17)

Wheaton, Daniel. “Report on women and alcohol raises eyebrows: CDC urges women to stop drinking unless they’re on birth control.” San Diego Union-Tribune (7 Feb. 2016): A5. Retitled “CDC to women: No birth control? No drinking for online posting.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created quite a stir with its new recommendation Tuesday, calling on women of childbearing age to stop drinking unless they were on birth control.  ¶  The report says that 3.3 million U.S. women, or 7.3 percent, were at risk for having a child with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. These disorders are associated with a series of developmental and intellectual disabilities, and occur in 1 of every 3,334 births.” (Wheaton, A5)

Wilson, Samuel. An account of the province of Carolina in America. Together with an abstract of the patent, and several other necessary and useful particulars, to such as have thoughts of transporting themselves thither. Published for their information. London: Printed by G. Larkin for Francis Smith, at the Elephant and Castle in Cornhil, 1682.

As secretary (from 1678) to the Lords proprietors of Carolina, Samuel Wilson claimed to have had “frequent Opportunities of discovering the Humanity and Softness with which you Treat all Those who apply to you, your constant Endeavours for the Good of all those who come under your Government in Carolina, and the great care you have taken by your admirable Constitution of Government which you have there settled, for the lasting security, peace and well being of all the Inhabitants of your Province” (“To ... the True and Absolute Lords and Proprieters of the Province of Carolina,” A2v). Although he did not himself visit Carolina, Wilson had gathered intelligence in “Letters from thence now in my possession, and by Living Witnesses now in England” (A2r). In 1682, he compiled this information and published it as An Account of the Province of Carolina in America (reprinted twice that same year, for 3 issues total).
   Unlike the tense situation in Virginia, Wilson describes Anglo-Algonquian relations in Carolina as relatively stable: “With the Indians the English have a perfect freindship, they being both usefull to one another. And care is taken by the Lords Proprietors, that no Injustice shall be done them; In order to which they have established a particular Court of Judicature, (compos’d of the soberest and most disinteressed Inhabitants) to determine all [differences] that shall happen between the English and any of the Indians, this they do upon a Christian and Moral Consideration, and not out of any apprehension of danger from them, for the Indians have been always so ingaged in Wars one Town or Village against another (their Government being usually of no greater extent) that they have not suffered any increase of People, there having been several Nations in a manner quite extirpated by Wars amongst themselves since the English setled at Ashly River: This keeps them so thin of people, and so divided, that the English have not the least apprehensions of danger from them; the English being already too strong for all the Indians within five hundred Miles of them, if they were united, and this the Indians as well know, that they will never dare to break with the English, or do an Injury to any particular person, for fear of having it reveng’d upon their whole Nation.” (S. Wilson, An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, 14)
   Political stability was further cemented by economic interdependencies that were unique to the area: “The woods abound with Hares, Squirrels, Ratoons Possums, Conyes and Deere, which last are so plenty that an Indian hunter hath kill’d nine fatt Deere in a day all shott by himself, and all the considerable Planters have an Indian hunter which they hire for less than twenty shillings a year, and one hunter will very well find a Family of thirty people with as much Venison and Foul, as they can well eat.” (S. Wilson, An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, misnumbered 12)
   Compare John Ogilby’s description of the “happy” union of British emigrants and Native Algonquians in the Carolina province during the 1660s–1670s (for more on this, see the annotated citation for Ogilby’s America [1670]).

Winton, John. Sir Walter Ralegh. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975.

Wood, Betty. “Strachey, William (1572–1621), historian of Virginia.” Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Woodcock, George. The incomparable Aphra. London and New York: T. V. Boardman, 1948.

Wright, Louis B. Middle-class culture in Elizabethan England. 1935; rpt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958.

go to TOP of page

NOTE: This aside (or sidebar) for the Roses website is designed to open in a small, floating second window when accessed by the designated link on its calling page (our digital edition of Thomas Tryon’s 1684 treatise, The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ...).

If you have come to this 2nd Window Aside by way of a search engine, or from a link external to this website, you can load the Aside’s calling page in this window by clicking/tapping here.

To contact the author (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) about
content on this page, or elsewhere at Roses:
send us an e-mail

This Roses website is a subdomain of

 .

Copyright © 2014–2023 Communicating By Design
intellectual property. All rights reserved.

First Issued: 9 May 2014.
Substantive Revision: 25 June 2022.

This Web page was last modified on:  01/22/2023 10:40 PM.