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, polypody, white mullein, priest's shoe,
garden and sea-beach orach, water germander, tower-mustard,
sweet flag, sassafras, crowfoot, platain, shepherd's purse,