Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/351

 THOMAS JEFFERSON IN RELATION TO BOTANY 345

��THOMAS JEFFERSON' IN RELATION TO BOTANY

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WE are all familiar with Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Dec- laration of Independence and the first great American radical leader, but we are less familiar with the fact that amid the political tempests which raged aronnd him he never ceased to live the life of an ardent lover of the world of living things. In the volumes of his cor- respondence there appear not only letters dealing with the momentous questions of national life, neutrality, peace or war, slavery or no slavery, government by the people or only government for the people, but also many to men of science dealing with the various questions that agitated their world a hundred years ago. Systems of classification, identity of doubtful plants, problems of the cultivator in field and green-house, the introduction of new and useful kinds, and the best apportionment of time to be given to the several sciences found in the college cur- riculum are among the subjects of consideration both with American and with European correspondents. Jefferson was interested in all useful branches of science, and since his conception of utility was very broad, few lines of research that had developed in his day failed to receive some attention from this tireless man. The name of our great scientist-statesman, Benjamin Franklin, will occur to all minds in this connection. Undoubtedly Franklin's work on electricity was one of the greatest achievements yet credited to America. It is doubtful, however, whether he was. in touch with so wide a range of scientific in- terests as was Jefferson.

Before we undertake a more detailed consideration of Jefferson's relations to botany, let us try to put him in his botanical setting by re- calling some of the chief landmarks set up in that science during the years of Ms long life. Bom in 1743, Jefferson as a four-year-old boy might have known Dillenius at the time of his death. He was six years old when Mark Catesby, the author of the famous *' History of Caro- lina, etc.,'' passed away. He was two years old when Qronovius pub- lished Clayton's ** Flora of Virginia." The chief botanical figures of the period covered by Jefferson's youth were Jussieu, the eldest; Philip Miller, of the "Gardener's Dictionary"; Peter CoUinson, the witty English Quaker botanist and correspondent of Linnaeus; John Bartram, of Philadelphia, likewise a Quaker; Dr. Alexander Garden, of Charles- ton, and the great LinnsBus himself. That this youth knew nothing at this time of these men is most probable. Although destined in a few

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