176 JOHN BARTRAM TO [1746. 



calls a Borage, which I think hath no affinity with it, or likeness 

 to it, save only barely in the shape of a single flower ; and I be- 

 lieve is as much a new genus as any plant that ever was sent out 

 of America; and not the only one that adorns that spacious vale of 

 six hundred miles in length, S. W. by West, in which I have 

 gathered the finest of my autumnal flowers ; and where, by report 

 of the inhabitants, it is like as if Flora sported in solitary retire- 

 ment, as Sylva doth on the Katskill Mountains, where there is 

 the greatest variety of uncommon trees and shrubs, that I ever saw 

 in such a compass of ground. 



I am glad the white-berried Christoplioriana \Actcea alba, Bigel.] 

 grows with thee : but thee should have that with great blue ber- 

 ries \_Leontice~], which is much the finest plant. There is abun- 

 dance of it growing by Rappahannock, in Virginia ; so made no 

 question but our friend Mitchell, or Clayton, had sent it to thee 

 long ago. It grows nowhere less than fifty miles of me, that I re- 

 member.* 



April the 23d, 1746. 



Dear Peter: 



I have packed up in a box directed to thee, four of our turtles, 

 dried after their bowels were taken out, and well washed, having 

 preserved their shell, head, feet and tail, entire ; by which you may 

 observe the difference of them almost as well as if they had been 

 alive. I cannot get any other kinds ; it's too soon in the year. 

 These females had the yolks of eggs in them, almost at their full 

 bigness, but no whites nor shell to them. It is near a month to 

 their time of laying. 



I design, this summer, to collect all our kinds of turtles, with 

 the eggs belonging to them with insects and fishes and send 

 some or other by every ship that sails from here to London ; so 

 that, if some are taken, others may escape. We had extraordinary 

 luck, last year. I doubt there will but few sail from here, this 

 year. I have expected, by every ship since Hargrave came in, 

 last summer, those books Gronovius sent me. Pray what is be- 

 come of them ? All the ships that sailed from London, last year, 

 for Philadelphia, arrived safe ; yet I have no account of them. 



* J. B. was not then aware that this plant grew, abundantly, much nearer 

 to his residence; viz., on the banks of the Brandywine and Susquehanna. 



