82 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



queathed by him to the nation, became, upon his death in ^753, 

 the nucleus of the British Museum. 



Another naturalist of the same general character was Mark 

 Catesby, [b. 1679, d. 1749], who lived in Virginia, 1712 to 1721, 

 collecting and making paintings of birds and plants ; in the Caro- 

 linas, 1722 to 1725, and a year also in the Bahamas. His mag 

 nificent, illustrated work upon the Natural History of Carolina, 

 Florida, and the Bahamas,* is still of great value to students of 

 natural history. 



The name of John Bartram, the Quaker naturalist of Philadel 

 phia, is possibly better remembered than those of his contempo 

 raries. This is no doubt due to the fact that he left behind him 

 a lasting monument in his botanic garden on the banks of the 

 Schuylkill. He was the earliest native American to prosecute 

 studies in systematic botany, unless Jefferson's statement concern 

 ing Clayton proves to be true. Linnaeus is said to have called him 

 "the greatest natural botanist in the world," and George III. 

 honored him in 1765 with the title of " Botanist to his Majesty 

 for the Floridas," and a pension of fifty pounds a year. Bartram 

 was a most picturesque and interesting personage, and a true 

 lover of nature. He did great service to botany by supplying 

 plants and seeds to Linnaeus, Dillenius, Collinson, and other Euro 

 pean botanists. He was a collector, however, rather than an 

 investigator, and his successes seem to have been due, in the 

 main, to the patient promptings and advice of his friend Collin 

 son in London. Garden, whom he visited at Charleston, in 

 1765, after his appointment as King's Botanist, wrote of him to 

 Ellis : 



44 I have been several times into the country with him and have 

 told him the classes, genera, and species of all the plants that oc 

 curred which I knew. I did this in order to facilitate his en 

 quiries, as I find that he knows nothing of the generic characters 

 of plants and can neither class nor describe them, but I see that, 



* London, 1754-71. 



