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, 1723 to 172^, 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. Linmeus is said to have called him 

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

 honored him in 176^ 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 Linmeus, 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: 



" 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- 



