52 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Breintnall conveyed John Bartram's botanical diaries, which 

 Collinson read with extreme interest, and he opened a cor- 

 respondence with the American botanist that terminated 

 only with his life. 



" He carried on a botanical correspondence with Queen 

 Ulrica, of Sweden, sister of Frederick the Great. Indeed, 

 we may say that through John Bartram the vegetable 

 wealth of North America was communicated to Europe. 

 And not the vegetable wealth only, for he sent to his friend, 

 Collinson, American turtles, birds, animals, minerals, as well 

 as minute accounts of such things as could not be trans- 

 ported. And all was done in the most delightfully simple, 

 inexpensive, unpretending manner. Peter Collinson occa- 

 sionally sent the American botanist a pocket compass or a 

 new suit of clothes, which Bartram received with gratitude, 

 and repaid by a box of live turtles, or a case of stuffed birds. 

 Probably the immense and incalculable service which John 

 Bartram rendered Europe did not cost Europe a thousand 

 pounds sterling. 



" Peter Collinson and John Bartram, both Quakers and 

 both botanists, not only exchanged long letters by every 

 ship upon their favorite science, but seeds, roots, cuttings, 

 plants and trees. Almost every ship that left the Delaware 

 conveyed something of this nature — boxes of roots, or packets 

 of seeds — consigned to Peter Collinson in London, which 

 on arriving were tried in Collinson's own garden, and 

 distributed among noblemen and gentlemen interested in 

 botany, or in the decoration of parks and grounds. To 

 encourage Bartram to make more extensive tours, and to 

 compensate him for labors from which they derived so much 

 advantage, Collinson, the Duke of Richmond and Lord Petre 



