ns,
cranes, herons, bitterns, multitudes of pigeons resembling ringdoves,
but a little smaller; quails, merlins, thrushes, shore-runners, but in
some respects different from those of the Netherlands. There are other
small birds, some of which sing, but the names of most of them are
unknown to us, and would take too long to enumerate. Water fowl are
found here of different kinds, but all very good and fit to eat; such
as the swans, similar to those in Netherlands and full as large; three
kinds of geese, gray geese, which are the largest and best, bernicles
and white-headed geese, ducks of different kinds, widgeons, divers,
coots, cormorants and several others, but not so abundant as the
foregoing.

The river fish are almost the same as in the Netherlands, comprising
salmon, sturgeon, twelves, thirteens,(1) shad, carp, perch, pike, trout,
roach, thickhead, suckers, sunfish, eel, nine-eyes or lampreys, both
much more abundant and larger than in the Netherlands, besides many
other valuable fish which we are unable to name.

(1) Striped bass and drum-fish.

In the salt water are caught codfish, haddock, weakfish, herring,
mackerel, thornbacks, flounders, plaice, sheepshead, blackfish,
sea-dogs, panyns and many others; also lobsters, crabs, great cockles,
from which the Indians make the white and black zeewant, oysters and
muscles in great quantities with many other kinds of shell-fish very
similar to each other, for which we know no names, besides sea and land
tortoises.

The venomous animals consist, for the most part, of adders and lizards,
though they are harmless or nearly so. There are snakes of different
kinds, which are not dangerous and flee before men if they possibly can,
else they are usually beaten to death. The rattlesnakes, however, which
have a rattle on the tail, with which they rattle very loudly when they
are angry or intend to sting, and which grows every year a joint larger,
are very malignant and do not readily retreat before a man or any other
creature. Whoever is bitten by them runs great danger of his life,
unless great care be taken; but fortunately they are not numerous, and
there grown spontaneously in the country the true snakeroot, which is
very highly esteemed by the Indians as an unfailing cure.

The medicinal plants found in New Netherland up to the present time,
by little search, as far as they have come to our knowledge, consist
principally of Venus' hair, hart's tongue, lingwort,