Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/860

838 by liis brotlier Jolin, who took William into a partnership which lasted many years. After this arrangement terminated, William continued to assist his brother till the death of the latter, in 1812. The garden then descended to John's daughter Anne, the wife of Colonel Robert Carr, in whose family William resided from that time until his death. He was never married. In 1782 William Bartram was elected Professor of Botany in the University of Pennsylvania, but declined the position on account of ill health. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1786, and was elected to other learned societies in both Europe and America. He was an ingenious mechanic, and, as before intimated, was skillful in drawing and painting. Most of the illustrations in Prof. Barton's Elements of Botany were from his drawings. His botanical labors brought to light many interesting plants not previously known. But this was not his only field. He made the most complete and correct list of American birds before Wilson's Ornithology, and, in fact, his encouragement and assistance were largely instrumental in making that work possible. Among William Bartram's scientific correspondents were the Rev. Henry Muhlenberg and F. A. Michaux, to whom he furnished seeds. A manuscript diary of William Bartram, presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1885, by Mr. Thomas Meehan, is rich in ornithological and botanical notes, and contains also weather notes and records of personal experiences which are of great interest. His death occurred suddenly from the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, July 22, 1823, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. Besides his Travels, William Bartram was the author of Anecdotes of a Crow, and Description of Certhia. In 1789 he wrote Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, which was published in 1851, in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. III.

In the old stone-house the great fireplace has been filled up, but few other changes have been made. The building is full of curious turns and cubby-holes. Connected with a cupboard in the sitting-room is a recess running behind the chimney, which furnished a safe depository in winter for specimens that frost could injure. Back of the sitting-room, in the wing of the building, is an apartment with large windows looking toward the south which was the botanist's conservatory. Here were reared such plants as could not stand a Pennsylvania winter—gathered in Florida or the Carolinas, or sent from Europe. In the grounds close to the river is a great imbedded rock, hewn flat, in which is cut a wide, deep groove. This is the nether stone of John Bartram's cider-mill. The Botanic Garden remained in the possession of Colonel Carr till about 1850, when it became the property of Mr. A. M. Eastwick. This gentleman had derived much