Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/851

Rh accompanying picture. The year of its erection is shown by a stone in the wall on which is cut Another inscription on a stone over the front window of his study reads:

 Tis God alone, Almighty Lord, The Holy One, by me adored.

That the building was a labor of love is attested by the care bestowed upon the carved stone-work around the windows and doors and the pillar under the porch. John Bartram must have been a good stone-cutter and mason, for this was one of four stone houses that he built in his lifetime.

Nearly all the extant information concerning the lives of the two Bartrams has been embodied in the Memorial of John Bartram, by William Darlington, published in IS-IO. This volume contains the sketch of John Bartram by his son William, with some additions by the editor, and over four hundred pages of correspondence. About a fourth of these letters are from his friend Peter Collinson; the others are from eminent botanists in Europe and America, and from Bartram to these various correspondents. Darlington also reprinted a sketch of John Bartram, which appeared in the Letters from an American Farmer, by J. Hector St. John, published in London soon after Bartram's death. The "letter" describing Bartram purports to be written by a Russian traveler, who is evidently a myth, although in all imj)ortant respects the account represents the botanist as he was. As to how Bartram's interest in botany was aroused, the "Russian gentleman" has a very pretty story, telling of a sudden conversion after the botanist had married; but Bartram himself is better authority, and he writes to Collinson, May 1, 1764, "I had always since ten years old a great inclination to plants, and knew all that I once observed by sight, though not their proper names, having no person nor books to instruct me."

He was encouraged to study systematically by James Logan (founder of the Loganian Library, in Philadelphia), who gave him several botanical works. In order that his explorations, begun at his own expense, might be extended, Bartram's friends prompted him to seek the patronage of some wealthy and influential person in the mother-country. Accordingly, a quantity of his specimens and a record of some of his observations were sent to Peter Collinson, a Quaker merchant in England, who was greatly interested in horticulture. Bartram's consignment secured his interest, and led to a correspondence, which lasted nearly fifty years. The first letter in Darlington's collection is from Collinson, under the date January 20, 17;54-'35, and refers to letters from Bartram of the preceding November; hence this correspondence probably