William Peck was born at Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on May 8, 1763. He is sometimes known as America’s first native entomologist, as those preceding him were immigrants from Europe. Peck graduated from Harvard University in 1782 and though he aspired to be a physician, he entered business, an occupation he found to be unsatisfactory. He and his father (a naval architect who also was discontented) moved to a small farm at Kittery, Maine, were he spent the next 20 years isolated but studying nature. He became an authority on plants, birds, fishes, and insects. In 1794 he published the first American paper on systematics, a description of four fishes. He began writing on insects in 1795 and won a prize from the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture for his publication on cankerworm in 1796. In 1805 he became a professor of Natural History at Harvard University and he went to Europe to study botanic gardens in preparation for establishment of a botanic garden at Harvard. There...