1746.] TO JOHN BART RAM. 331 



novius's packet, with Linn^us's Fundamenta Botanica, Critica 

 Botanica, and Gronovii Flor. Virg., 1st and 2d parts, and his 

 Index suppellect. I have likewise sent away my letters for him 

 and Mr. Collinson ; therefore, when you write to Doctor Gro- 

 novius, tell him that I received, the 8th of November, those books, 

 and his letters dated the 6th of August, and 3d of October, 1743, 

 after I had wrote to him. 



Coldengham, May 9th, 1746. 



Dear Mr. Bartram : 



You must excuse my not answering your kind letter of the 25th 

 of January sooner. It was above two months in coming to my 

 hand ; and since that time, I have had my head so much set on a 

 certain affair, that I could not think of anything else. 



I return inclosed to you Doctor Gronovius's letter to you, and 

 am obliged to you for the perusal of it. That part of learning of 

 which it treats, I am so little acquainted with, that if I were to 

 translate what he writes, it is probable I may make nothing but a 

 series of blunders ; but for your satisfaction, I shall turn the first 

 sentence the best I can, as it is to show the manner in which he 

 intends to publish what you send him ; viz. 



" We must now pass to such stones as have a resemblance of 

 some animal, or of its shell or covering, and which authors com- 

 monly call petrifactions, and which they make no doubt in pro- 

 ducing them as proofs of the ancient deluge. This excellent man 

 [John Bartram] observed these, variously situated on the ground; 

 some on the surface of the earth, others sunk deep ; for what he 

 found in the southern parts of Pennsylvania, towards the great 

 Lakes of Canada [is not this a mistake ?], lay on the surface of 

 the ground ; and in a journey which he made of some hundreds of 

 miles, he found them scattered everywhere."* 



Your account of the Indian grave, is so far from requiring any 

 excuse for writing it, that I am much pleased with your account, 

 as it discovers how long bread and corn may be preserved, when 

 kept in dry sand from the air ; and shows that the Indians did not 

 get their Indian corn from the Europeans. 



* For the original of this paragraph, see the letter of Gronovius to John Bar- 

 team, dated Leyden, 25th of July, 1744. The query in brackets is Doctor Col- 

 den's. Southern is evidently a mistake for northern. 



