12 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



with the University of Pennsylvania is interesting.* "So 

 far as now appears, Dr. Adam Kuhn, a pupil of Linnaeus, 

 was the first botanical professor in Philadelphia, or in the 

 country, being appointed in the year 1768. There is, how- 

 ever, no record of any important work connected with his 

 name. As early as the year 1800, Dr. Benjamin Smith 

 Barton was teaching botany in Philadelphia, and num- 

 bered among his pupils in 1803-04, at the University of 

 Pennsylvania, William Darlington, who subsequently 

 became known as one of the most learned and exact 

 botanists of his day in this or any other country. Dr. 

 Darlington says of his preceptor, 'that he did more than 

 any of his contemporaries in diffusing a taste for the 

 natural sciences among the young men who then resorted 

 to that school.' He also published in 1 803 ' the first 

 American elementary w^ork on botany, at Philadelphia.' " 



" The minutes of a trustee meeting held April 7, 1812, 

 show that ' a letter was received from Dr. Barton request- 

 ing the use of one of the rooms in the University to 

 deliver his lectures on natural history and botany in.' The 

 request could not be granted. In July, 1813, Dr. Barton 

 resigned his professorship of materia medica, a position 

 which does not appear to have been a bed of roses. He was 

 succeeded by Dr. Chapman. The following minute appears 

 of a trustee meeting of November 7, 1815 :" 



" Whereas, the Le;^islature of Pennsylvania, by their 

 Act passed the 19th March, 1805, granted to the trustees of 

 this institution out of the moneys due to the State, the sum 

 of three thousand dollars, for the purpose of enabling them 



* I have drawn largely at this point on Dr. J. T. Rothrock's sketch of the 

 Biological School, published in the Circular of Information Bureau of Education, 

 entitled, "Benjamin Franklin and the Universitj' of Pennsylvania " (1893). 



