(Excerpt from Natural History of New York
Nance of the ci...)
Excerpt from Natural History of New York
Nance of the civil authorities; but the constitution of the United States guarantees to the state security against invasion and domestic insurrection. There are four departments of the government: the legislative, executive, administrative and judicial. The legislative power is absolute, except as restricted by the federal and state constitutions. A senate and an assembly constitute the legislature. The senate is composed of thirty-two members, who are elected by the people in eight equal senatorial districts, and remain in office four years. One senator is annually elected in each district. The assembly consists of one hundred and twenty-eight members, who are elected by the people in counties, each of which is represented in proportion to its population. The lieutenant-governor, elected by the people, presides and has only a casting vote in the senate. A speaker freely elected by the assembly presides in that body. Bills originate in either house, and become laws when passed by both houses and approved by the gover nor, or when they receive the votes of two-thirds of the members present not withstanding the executive veto. Laws to create or alter corporations require.
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Zoology of New-York, or the New-York Fauna, Vol. 1: Comprising Detailed Description of All the Animals Hitherto Observed Within the State of New-York; Mammalia (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Zoology of New-York, or the New-York Fauna, ...)
Excerpt from Zoology of New-York, or the New-York Fauna, Vol. 1: Comprising Detailed Description of All the Animals Hitherto Observed Within the State of New-York; Mammalia
Genus enhydra, Fleming. Embraces the Sea Otter, and characterized by having six incisors above, and but four beneath. Cheek teeth 12 38. Body very long; legs and tail very short.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
James Ellsworth De Kay was an American naturalist and author. Throughout his life his relationships with literary men seem to have been more intimate than those with physicians or scientists.
Background
James Ellsworth De Kay was born on October 12, 1792; the eldest son of George and Catherine (Colman) De Kay and brother of Commodore George Colman De Kay.
His birthplace was probably Lisbon, Portugal, where his father, an American sea captain, had lived for many years, and had married a girl of Irish parentage. George De Kay took his family to New York in 1794, died when James was ten years old, and was survived only four years by his widow. The senior member of an orphaned family, the boy grew up in and near New York City.
Education
Most of De Kay's formal schooling was obtained in Connecticut, but the name and location of the school have not been preserved. De Kay early showed bookish proclivities and was also a keen observer and student of nature. At nineteen he was a medical student, spending at least one summer at Guilford, Connecticut, in reading to fit himself for that profession. De Kay went to Europe in the spring of 1818 and for a year was in attendance as a student of medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1819.
Career
Botany and zoology attracted De Kay more than medicine, however, while in his early twenties he became closely associated with a group of young writers in New York. It was he who brought together Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake. He was one of the five men to whom was entrusted the secret of the Drake-Halleck authorship of the papers of “Croaker & Co. ” in the Evening Post.
He stood with Halleck at Drake’s death-bed and was probably among the first to read, in manuscript, the lines beginning, “Green be the turf above thee”—long regarded as one of the most exquisite epitaphs in the language.
Returning to New York from Edinburgh, he interested himself in the activities of the Lyceum of Natural History, which had been recently organized by Samuel Latham Mitchill and others and was known as the fourth institution of its kind to be founded in the United States. De Kay served the Lyceum in various capacities. He edited the first two volumes of its transactions, acted as librarian, building up a collection of scientific works that was remarkable for its day, and helped in assembling a museum. After marriage, for several years he seems to have toyed with the thought of a writer’s career.
Henry Eckford at one time had a controlling interest in a New York political journal, the National Advocate, and proposed to install De Kay as editor, but nothing came of the suggestion.
Later De Kay himself offered to start a literary magazine, with Halleck as editor. This dream also failed to materialize. After his father-in-law had sustained severe business losses and had been commissioned by the Sultan of Turkey to take charge of the Turkish navy yard, De Kay sailed with him to Constantinople in a corvette built by Eckford for the Sultan and temporarily commanded by Commodore George C. De Kay.
The group remained in Turkey for several months in 1831-32. Eckford died there. On returning to the United States, De Kay published anonymously Sketches of Turkey by an American (1833), his impressions of Turkey and the Turks.
So far as these were favorable to the Turkish people, they were displeasing to the strong pro-Greek partisans who had sympathized with the recent revolution; but they undoubtedly were in accord with the matured opinions of such American observers as Dr. William Goodell, the missionary, and Commodore David Porter, then serving as United States Minister to the Porte, with both of whom De Kay had conversed.
While in Turkey De Kay had made a special study of the Asiatic cholera, about which little was known in America.
After his return to New York the research was continued and in epidemics that later swept large regions in this country De Kay did what he could as a physician to stem their ravages. But, like several of his contemporaries among the scientific men of New York who had been educated in medicine, much of the time he took only a secondary interest in his profession. There was pioneer work to be done in natural science and he was always eager to have a part in it. An unexampled opportunity came to him in the form of a commission from the State of New York to prepare the zoological section of the elaborate Natural History Survey to be published by that state.
This undertaking occupied him for nearly eight years, and resulted in the Zoology of New York. He described 1, 600 species of animal life, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, molluscans, and crustaceans.
As the work was intended for popular use, he introduced the common names of species so far as possible. His researches demanded much travel and personal investigation.
The remainder of his life was passed at Oyster Bay, Long Island, where he died on November 21, 1851, about two months after the death of James Fenimore Cooper, his friend of many years’ standing.