1768.] TO JOHN BART RAM. 443 



DOCTOR BENJAMIN GALE- TO JOHN BARTRAM. 



Killingworth, 3d January, 1768. 



Dear Sir : 



I have not bad the pleasure of a line from you for a long time ; 

 and had I not accidentally seen in one of the public papers, you 

 was set out to visit Pensacola, or "West Florida, I should have 

 been inclined to think you either had lost all remembrance of me, 

 or that you had taken your leave of this world, and called to have 

 acted your part in some happier state of existence. But, by the 

 favour of a visit from my good friend, Captain Smitii, I am in- 

 formed you are still alive and well, and that you, not long before, 

 was inquiring for an opportunity to write me. 



I should be infinitely delighted to spend one evening with you 

 (I mean a winter evening), to hear the journal of your travels into 

 that southern part of America, and the just remarks you must have 

 made, in your tour. 



I want to know whether, in any of your travels, either in the 

 Alleghany Mountains, or elsewhere, you have ever found any evi- 

 dent traces of the Deluge, or monuments of antiquity. If there 

 ever was an universal Deluge, I cannot but think it must have left 

 some evident traces of it, yet to be seen, in every part of the 

 globe. 



Have they any animals, serpents, or beasts of prey, in those 

 southern Colonies, not common to us ? Have you ever had such a 

 description of the Cortex Peruvianus, as that you would know the 

 tree from whence it is taken ? I have heard much of the stones, 

 made use of to extract the poison of vipers ; are those stones natu- 

 ral, or factitious ? 



I wrote you some time since whether ever you received it, or 

 not, am not able. to say to request of you, whether ever you have 

 met with the Cicuta, of Doctor Stork, or the Meadow Saffron. 

 A description of the latter, I now inclose you. If but one half of 

 the virtues, he ascribes to it, are in the plant, I should think it a 



* Benjamin Gale graduated at Yale College, in 1733. He was an eminent 

 physician and agriculturist; and was deeply concerned also in politics. He 

 invented the drill plough ; wrote a Dissertation on the Prophecies : and published 

 a Treatise on Inoculation for the Small-pox. He died at KiRingworth, the town 

 in which he first settled, in 1790, aged seventy-five. Blake's Biogr. Diet. 



