PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 83 



from great natural strength of mind and long practice, he has much 

 acquaintance with the specific characters ; though his knowledge 

 is rude, inaccurate, indistinct, and confused, seldom determining 

 well between species and varieties. He is, however, alert, active, 

 industrious, and indefatigable in his pursuits."* 



Fothergill says in his Memoir of Collinson " that the eminent 

 naturalist, John Bartram, may almost be said to have been created 

 by my friend's assistance." 



The foregoing remarks concerning the elder Bartram are sim 

 ply for the purpose of calling attention to his proper position 

 among the American naturalists of his day. It is not that I esteem 

 Bartram the less, but that I esteem Garden, Clayton, Mitchell 

 and Golden more. The name of Bartram brings up at once that 

 of his friend and patron, Peter Collinson, just as that of Garden 

 reminds us of John Ellis. 



Collinson and Ellis were never in America, yet if any men de 

 serve to be called the fathers of American natural history it is 

 they. For a period of thirty years or more, that period during 

 which Linnaeus was bringing about those reforms which have 

 associated his name forever with the history of the classificatory 

 sciences, these enlightened and science-loving London merchants 

 seem to have held the welfare of American science in their keep 

 ing and to have faithfully performed their trust. I know few 

 books which are more delightful than Darlington's "Memoir of 

 Bartram" and Smith's "Correspondence of Linna3us," made up 

 as they are largely of the letters which passed between Collinson 

 and Ellis and their correspondents in America, and with Lin 

 naeus, to whom they were constantly transmitting American 

 notes and specimens. f 



Humphrey Marshall [b. 1722, d. 1801] was a farmer-botanist 

 of the Bartram type, and the author of " The American Grove," 

 a treatise upon the forest trees and shrubs of the United States, 



* SMITH : Correspondence of Linnceus, i, p. 537. 



t DARLINGTON : Memoirs of Bartram and Marshall. 



