Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/855

Rh a page and a half of hearty commendation, saying among other things: "We owe to him the knowledge of many scarce plants, which he first found, and which were never known before. . . . I likewise owe him many things, for he possessed that great quality of communicating everything he knew. I shall, therefore, in the sequel frequently mention this gentleman." On nearly every one of the next twenty pages credit is given to Bartram for information.

In 1751 Benjamin Franklin and D. Hall published at Philadelphia an American edition of Dr. Thomas Short's Medicina Britannica, "with a Preface by Mr. John Bartram, Botanist, of Pennsylvania, and his Notes throughout the work; . . . and an Appendix, containing a description of a number of Plants peculiar to America, their uses, virtues, etc." The notes told where the plants were found in America, and how they differed from the English varieties.

John Bartram's son William begins to figure in his father's correspondence when about fifteen years old. At that time Bartram sent some of William's drawings of natural objects to Collinson, and took him on a trip to the Catskills. In 1755 Bartram writes: "I design to set Billy to draw all our turtles with remarks, as he has time, which is only on Seventh days in the afternoon, and First-day mornings; for he is constantly kept to school to learn Latin and French." This attention to the languages indicates that Bartram was determined that his son should not suffer from the lack that had limited his own reading of works on natural history. William was then attending the old college in Philadelphia.

The same passage shows also that Bartram's ideas about Sunday occupations were somewhat unusual for that generation, and in fact it is stated that he was excommunicated by his brother Quakers about this time for his independent religious views. The question of an occupation for William now came up, and in the letter just quoted his father asks Collinson's advice in the matter. "My son William," he writes, "is just turned of sixteen. It is now time to propose some way for him to get his living by. I don't want him to be what is commonly called a gentleman. I want to put him to some business by which he may, with care and industry, get a temperate, reasonable living. I am afraid that botany and drawing will not afford him one, and hard labor don't agree with him. I have designed several years to put him to a doctor, to learn physic and surgery; but that will take him from his drawing, which he takes particular delight in. Pray, my dear friend Peter, let me have thy opinion about it." Franklin offered to teach William the printing trade, but Bartram was not quite satisfied with the prospects for printers in Pennsylvania, and