20 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The name of Philip Syng is also -mentioned in connection 

 with the Philadelphia experiments, and it would be well if some 

 memorials of his work could be placed upon record. 



William Bartram [b. 1739, d. 1823] was living in the famous 

 botanical garden at Kingsessing, which his father, the old King's 

 botanist, had bequeathed. him in 1777. He was for some years 

 professor of botany in the Philadelphia college, and in 1791 

 printed his charming volume descriptive of his travels in Flor 

 ida, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The latter years of his life 

 appear to have been devoted to quiet observation. William 

 Bartram has been, perhaps, as much underrated as John Bar- 

 tram has been unduly exalted. He was one of the best observ 

 ers America has ever produced, and his book, which rapidly 

 passed through several editions in English, and French, is a 

 classic and should stand beside White's u Selborne " in every 

 naturalist's library. Bartram was doubtless discouraged early 

 in his career by the failure of his patrons in London to make any 

 scientific use of the immense botanical collections made by him in 

 the South before the Revolution, which, many years later, was 

 lying unutilized in the Banksian herbarium. Coues has called 

 attention very emphatically to the merits of his bird work, which 

 he pronounces " the starting-point of a distinctly American 

 school of ornithology." Two of the most eminent of our early 

 zoologists, Wilson and Say, were his pupils ; the latter his kins 

 man, and the former his neighbor, were constantly with hin\ at 

 Kingsessing and drew much of their inspiration from his conver 

 sation. " Many birds which Wilson first fully described and 

 figured were really named and figured by Bartram in his 

 Travels, and several of his designations were simply adopted 

 by Wilson."* 



Bartram's " Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians "f 



* COUES : Key to North American Birds, p. xvi 

 t Trans. Am. Ethnological Society, iii, 1851. 



