men to them, excited admiration of the wonderful secret dis- 

 closed, and was among the very first to foresee and proclaim 

 Franklin's undying renown. 



He did more than any man living to help to make John 

 Bartram what he became, and without his aid Bartram could 

 never have accomplished one half his wonderful achievements. 

 Dr. Fothergill goes so far as to say, " That eminent naturalist, 

 John Bartram, may almost be said to have been created such 

 by my friend's assistance," ' constantly exciting him to perse- 

 vere in investigating the plants of America, which he has exe- 

 cuted with indefatigable labour through a long course of years, 

 and with amazing success." 



It is an interesting fact, that it should have been reserved 

 for our own time and for our own country, to bring to light far 

 more than was before known of the life, history, and scientific 

 habits and correspondence of that eminent and excellent man, 

 who was a London merchant, and who died about the middle of 

 the last century. True, the English themselves acknowledge, 

 that it was an American who first told them what they wanted 

 to know about Sebastian Cabot. The Edinburg Reviewers, 

 even before that, had found out that " they should soon learn to 

 love the Americans if they sent them many more such books," 

 as one which Robert Walsh had written about France. 



The recent work by Dr. Darlington, a Pennsylvanian, has 

 awakened deep interest in England, with regard to one of their 

 own sons collaterally introduced, and is equally well spoken of 

 on both sides of the water. It is entitled, "Memorials of John 

 Bartram and Humphry Marshall ;" but nearly one half of its 

 five hundred and ninety-five pages of fair, large, open type, is 

 occupied with the letters of Peter Collinson. No Philadelphian 

 can read it without feeling that the next statue erected in the 

 city of brotherly love after those of Penn and Franklin, and 

 that contemplated in honour of Washington, should be one to 

 perpetuate the memory of what she owes to Peter Collinson. 

 Whoever reads it will find interesting matters of colonial 

 history; minute particulars illustrating the character of the 

 intercourse between this country and the old for fifty years 

 before the Revolution, which he sees nowhere else. 

 But to return to Peter Collinson since sounding his praises 



