86 PETER COLLINSON [1736-7. 



When they are ripe, a knowing person in grapes should ride the 

 woods where they grow, and select out those that have good 

 qualities, as good bearers, best-flavoured fruit, large berries, close 

 bunches, early ripeners, and mark the trees, so as to know 

 them again ; and from these take cuttings for a vineyard. In all 

 wild fruits, there is a remarkable difference. When these come to 

 be cultivated (as all fruits were once wild, and have been improved 

 by culture), who knows but you may make as pretty a wine fit 

 for your own drinking, and to serve your West India neighbours 

 as Madeira, or any other particular country wine ? 



I am pleased to hear the Medlar grows. It is the great sort, 

 from Naples. 



Please to remember, as I formerly desired, to get some strong 

 plants, of your Ivy, or Bay [Kalmia latifolia, L.], that thee sent 

 me some specimens of, and plant in a box, to stand a year, or two, 

 or three, till it flowers in the box ; and some of your shrub, white 

 and red, Honeysuckles. These are ticklish plants to keep here. 



I now come to answer thy kind letter of September 9th, per 

 Budget. I am pleased to hear thee art acquainted with Dr. Witt 



5 



* For the following account of Dr. Witt, the editor is indebted to John F. 

 Watson, Esq., author of the interesting "Annals of Philadelphia." It -was fur- 

 nished in a letter, dated Gercnantown, May 8, 1848. 



"Dr. Christopher Witt was a character in his day; and, as such, has been 

 duly noticed in my Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, vol. ii., pp. 22, 32, 

 to wit: He was born in England (Wiltshire) in 1675, came to this country in 

 1704, died in 1765, aged 90. He was a skillful physician, and a learned man; 

 was reputed a Magus or diviner, or, in grosser terms, a conjurer; was a student 

 and a believer in all the learned absurdities and marvellous pretensions of the 

 Eosicrucian philosophy. The Germans of that day and indeed many of the 

 English practised the casting of nativities ; and, as this required mathematical 

 and astronomical learning, it often followed, that such a competent scholar was 

 called a 'fortune-teller.' Dr. Witt 'cast nativities,' and was called a conjurer; 

 while Christopher Lehman, who was a scholar, and a friend of Witt, and could 

 cast nativities, and did it for all of his own nine children, but never for hire, was 

 called a notary public, a surveyor, and a gentleman. 



"Dr. Witt accumulated or owned considerable property in Germantown. He 

 built the first three storied house ever erected in the place, and it was large in 

 proportion. It is still standing ; was the residence, for many years, of the Rev. 

 Dr. Blair ; is the same now owned by Colonel Alexander, and called the ' Congress 

 Hall,' and is just now to be opened by Mr. Howell, as a superior boarding- 

 house. Dr. Witt left all his property to a family of the name of Warmer, he 

 saying they had been kind to him, on his arrival, in bestowing him a hat in place 

 of his, lost on shipboard. 



"His remains now rest in a family ground, walled up by the Warmers, and 

 now situate on the premises of Ann W. Morris." 



