TJir. BcginniJiirs of American Snciice. 4^7 



In- him in the South l)efore- the RevoUition, 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 kinsmen, and the former his neighbor, were 

 constantly with him at Kingsessing and drew much of their inspiration 

 from his conversation. Many birds wdiich 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 ^ 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 vol- 

 ume, 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 Ele- 

 ments 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 Fl34rap: 



Admirable are the properties of the extraordinary Dionea muscipula! See the 

 incarnate lobes expanding, how gay and sportive they appear ! ready on the spring 

 to intrap incautious, deluded insects ! What artifice ! There ! behold one of the 

 leaves jiist 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 a moment to confess that vegetable beings are endowed with some sensible 

 faculties or attributes, similar to those that dignify animal nature; they are organ- 

 ical, living, 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 liv- 

 ing near Philadelphia, and in 1879 published Observations on the Native 

 Silk Worms of North America, and Humphrey Marshall [1722-1801], 

 the farmer-ljotanist, had a botanical garden of his own, and in 1785 pub- 

 lished The American Grove — Arbustrium Americanum — a treatise on 

 the forest trees and shrubs of the United States, which was the first 

 strictly American botanical book, and which was republished in France 

 a few years later, in 1789. 



Gotthilf Muhlenberg [b. 1753, d. 18 15], a Lutheran clergyman, living 



' Elliott Cones, Key to North American Birds, 1SS7, p. xvii. 

 -Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, III, 185 1. 

 •'' Nicholson's Journal, 1805. 



■* Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, 1794, 

 p. xiii. 



NAT MUS 97, PT 2 27 



