12 



The greater part of the volume is then taken up with the 

 correspondence of John Bartram. The reminiscences of Hum- 

 phry Marshall and his correspondence occupy comparatively 

 few pages, hut all instructive and interesting. 



The letters of Peter Collinson spread over a period of thirty- 

 four years, and furnish a large portion of the materiel of which 

 the work is composed. This materiel has been reclaimed from 

 the dust, and mould, and lumber, of seventy years gone by, 

 furbished up, arranged, and presented to us in an intelligible 



worthy of the esteem and respect he everywhere received. His society 

 on shipboard was a treasure. 



" He had a daughter, whose early history was marked by passages 

 sufficiently curious and eventful to make her the heroine of a novel. She 

 married Mr. Otto, a French gentleman, who was an attache", I think, to 

 the Consular Office ; and who rose under the revolutionary government 

 of France to considerable diplomatic rank, even to the embassy to England 

 for a short time." 



The voyage above referred to is the same mentioned by Mr. Breck in 

 his interesting letter recently published, wherein he describes New York 

 as it appeared on his landing there, before we had a Constitution. 



As it cost no little effort to trace the real authorship of the letter pur- 

 porting to have been written by " a Russian gentleman/' the result is 

 here added; in a letter from the Editor of the " memorials." 



WEST CHESTER, April 17, 1851. 



Dear Sir : I think I mentioned to you, soon after the publication of the 

 Memorials of Bartram and Marshall, that I had some doubts even while 

 compiling that work, whether the interesting account of &Visit to John Bar- 

 tram, by " a Russian gentleman," named IWAN ALEXIOWITZ, was exactly 

 what it purported to be. The fidelity of the sketch I could not doubt. But 

 the failure of all my inquiries to learn any thing of such a visitor together 

 with the peculiarity of the name (which seems evidently coined for the 

 occasion,) led me to suspect that the " Russian gentleman" was a ficti- 

 tious character ; and that HECTOR ST. JOHN himself might have been the 

 writer of the narrative. This suspicion was greatly strengthened by 

 some contemporaneous criticisms of ST. JOHN'S productions, which I 

 afterwards saw in an old English catalogue of rare books, wherein that 

 gentleman was charged with the practice of writing under feigned names 

 and characters : and I have recently come into possession of an auto- 

 graph letter of ST. JOHN, which entirely confirms me in the opinion, that 

 the Visitor and Eulogist of " the celebrated Pennsylvania Botanist," was 

 no other than the amiable and enthusiastic author of the Letters from 

 an American Farmer. 



The Atitograph referred to, is a letter to the sons of JOHN BARTRAM 



