1740.] TO JOHN BAR TRAM. 319 



MARK CATESBY* TO JOHN BARTRAM. 



4 



London, May 20, 1740. 



Mr. Bartram : 



Your kind remembrance of me, in the three plants you sent me 

 with those of Mr. Collinson, encourages me to give you further 

 trouble, though not without an intention of retaliation. 



As I have the pleasure of reading your letters, I see your time 

 is well employed ; therefore, in what I propose, I shall be cautious 

 of desiring anything that may much obstruct your other affairs. 

 But, as you send yearly to our good friend Mr. P. Collixsox, the 

 same conveyance may supply me ; which I shall confine to as nar- 

 row a compass as may be, for I find my taste is agreeable with 

 yours, which is, that I regard most, those plants that are specious 

 in their appearance, or use in physic, or otherwise. The return 

 that I propose to make you, is my book ; but it will be first neces- 

 sary to give you some account of it. The whole book, when 

 finished, will be in two folio volumes, each volume consisting of 

 an hundred plates of Animals and Vegetables. 



This laborious work has been some years in agitation ; and as 

 the whole, when finished, amounts to twenty guineas, a sum too 

 great, probably, to dispose of many, I chose to publish it in parts : 

 viz., twenty plates with their descriptions, at a time, at two gui- 

 neas. By this easy method, I disposed of many more than I 

 otherwise should. Though I shall set a due value on your labours, 

 the whole book would be too considerable to send you at once ; 



* Mark Catesbt, an English naturalist, born about the latter end of the 

 year 1679. He visited Virginia in 1712, where he remained seven years, collect- 

 ing the various productions of the country, and occasionally transmitting seeds 

 and specimens of plants to his correspondents in England, and particularly to 

 Doctor William Sherard. On his return to England in 1719, he was encouraged 

 by Sir Haxs Sloaxe, Doctor Sherard, and others, to return to America, with the 

 professed design of describing, delineating, and painting, the more curious objects 

 of nature. He arrived in Carolina, which was selected as the place of his resi- 

 dence, in 1722. Having spent nearly three years on the Continent, he visited the 

 Bahama Islands, residing in the Isle of Providence, until he returned to England, 

 in 1726. His Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, was 

 completed in 1748, in 2 vols., folio, with coloured plates. It was republished in 

 1754, and 1771. He died in London, in 1749, at the age of seventy. Rees's 

 Cyclopaedia. 



