PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 21 



was an admirable contribution to ethnography, and his general 

 observations were of the highest value. 



In the introduction to his •' Travels," and interspersed through 

 this volume, are reflections which show him to have been the 

 possessor of a very philosophic and original mind. 



His "Anecdotes of an American Crow " and his " Memoirs 

 of John Bartram "* were worthy products of his pen, while his 

 illustrations to Barton's " Elements of Botany " show how 

 facile and truthful was his pencil. 



His love for botany was such, we are told, that he wrote a 

 description of a plant only a few minutes before his death, a 

 statement which will be readily believed by all who know the 

 nature of his enthusiasm. Thus, for instance, he wrote of the 

 Venus's Fly Trap : 



"Admirable are the properties of the extraordinary Dioncea mus- 

 cipula ! See the incarnate lobes expanding ; hov\^ gay and sportive 

 they appear ! read}' on the spring to entrap incautious, delude J in- 

 sects ! What artifice ! There I behold one of the leaves just closed 

 upon a struggling fly ; another has gotten a worm ; its hold is sure ; 

 its prey can never escape — carnivorous vegetable ! Can we, after 

 viewing this object, hesitate for a moment to confess that vegeta- 

 ble beings are endowed with some sensible faculties or attributes 

 similar to those that dignify animal nature.? They are living, or- 

 ganical, and self-moving bodies ; for we see here in this plant 

 motion and volition. "| 



Moses Bartram, a cousin of William, and also a botanist, was 

 also living near Philadelphia, and in 1S79 published "Observa^ 

 tions on the Native Silk Worms of North America," and Hum- 

 phrey Marshall [1722-1S01], the farmer-botanist, had a botanical 

 garden of his own, and in 17S5 published " The American 

 Grove — Arbustrium Americanum " — -a treatise on the forest trees 

 and shrubs of the United States, which was the first strictly 



* Nicholson's Journal, 1805. 

 t Travels, 1793, p. xiv. 



