Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/353

 THOMAS JEFFERSON IN RELATION TO BOTANY 347

have known and studied with, was already a boy of sixteen, while his distinguished associate. Dr. John Torrey, was a young man of thirty years.

Having now established Jefferson's location in botanical chronology, let ns turn to the man himself and, during the time remaining to us, examine his relations to our science and its progress during his time. It seems clear, from the evidence at hand, that, interested as he was in all lines of progress, Jefferson felt himself especially attracted to bot- any. Indeed, he may have come by such a leaning honestly enough through his mother, Jane Randolph. She was the daughter of Isham Bandolph of Goochland county, Virginia, whose interest in plants was known in his lifetime beyond the bounds of the American colonies.

Peter CoUinson, the English Quaker botanist, commemorated by Linnaeus in the generic name, ColUnsonia, wrote in February, 1739, to his friend, John Bartram, the Quaker botanist of Philadelphia, who was about to undertake a tour of scientific investigation into Virginia :

Then when thee proceeds home, I know no person who will make thee more welcome than Isham Randolph. He lives thirty or forty miles above the falls of the James Biver, in Goochland — above the other settlements. Now I take his house to be a very suitable place to make a settlement at — ^f or to take several days' excursions all around, and to return to his house at night.

His further advice to Friend Bartram is hardly botanical in its subject matter, but since it sheds light on Jefferson's grandfather and on his way of living in that remote frontier settlement, I may perhaps be per- mitted to quote a few lines further.

One thing I must desire of thee, and do insist that thee oblige me therein; that thou make up that drugget clothes, to go to Virginia in, and not appear to disgrace thyself or me; for though I should not esteem thee the less, to eome to me in what dress thou will, — ^yet these Virginians are a very gentle, well-dressed people — and look, perhaps, more at a man's outside than his inside. For these and other reasons, pray go very clean, neat, and handsomely dressed to Virginia. Never mind thy clothes, I will send more another year."

He met Isham and found him all that CoUinson had promised. Moreover, Bartram found Isham able to guide him to an interesting conifer which Bartram later pronounced "much the finest Arborvitae, surpassing one he had obtained from Gadwallader Golden from Hud- son's Biver.''

However it came about, by inheritance or otherwise, we may be as- sured that Jefferson's interest in botany was unusually keen. Writing in November, 1808, to his son-in-law. Colonel Thomas Mann Ban- dolph, concerning the education of his grandson, Thomas Jefferson, then President at Washington, says:

For a seientifio man in town nothing can furnish so convenient an amuse- ment as chemistry, because it can be pursued in his cabinet; but for a country gentleman, I know no source of amusement and health equal to botany and

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