32 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



Collinson, and took him on a trip to the Catskills. In 1755 

 Bartram writes: " I design to set Billy to draw all our turtles 

 with remarks, as he has time, which is only on Seventh days in 

 the afternoon, and First-day mornings; for he is constantly 

 kept to school to learn Latin and French." This attention to 

 the languages indicates that Bartram was determined that his 

 son should not suffer from the lack of knowledge by which his 

 own reading of works on natural history had been limited. 

 William was then attending the old college in Philadelphia. 



The same passage shows also that Bartram's ideas about 

 Sunday occupations was somewhat unusual for that generation, 

 and in fact it is stated that he was excommunicated by his 

 brother Quakers about this time for his independent religious 

 views. The question of an occupation for William now came 

 up, and in the letter just quoted his father asks Collinson's 

 advice in the matter. "My son William," he writes, "is just 

 turned of sixteen. It is now time to propose some way for 

 him to get his living by. 1 don't want him to be what is com- 

 monly called a gentleman. I want to put him to some busi- 

 ness by which he may, with care and industry, get a temperate, 

 reasonable living. I am afraid that botany and drawing will 

 not afford him one, and hard labour don't agree with him. I 

 have designed several years to put him to a doctor, to learn 

 physic and surgery ; but that will take him from his drawing, 

 which he takes particular delight in. Pray, my dear friend 

 Peter, let me have thy opinion about it." Franklin offered to 

 teach William the printing trade, but Bartram was not quite 

 satisfied with the prospects for printers in Pennsylvania, and 

 Franklin then suggested engraving. But William became 

 neither printer nor engraver. At the age of eighteen he was 

 placed with a Philadelphia merchant, Mr. Child, where he re- 

 mained about four years. 



Bartram's science was largely practical. He wrote to Dr. 

 Alexander Garden, of Charleston, in 1755, suggesting a series 

 of borings on a large scale, to search for valuable mineral 

 products. He gives as another reason the satisfaction to be 

 derived from knowing the composition of the earth, and adds, 

 " By this method we may compose a curious subterranean 

 map." " This scheme of John Bartram's," says Darlington 

 " if original with him would indicate that he had formed a 

 pretty good notion of the nature and importance of a geo- 



