i68 PETER COLLINSON AND JOHN BARTRAM CH. 



them remain, having braved the winter storms of a 

 century and a half. 1 



The letters of Bartram and Collinson contain many 

 thoughts and speculations on natural history. The 

 migration of birds, and the motives for the varying flight 

 of different species ; the balance that is maintained 

 between the vegetable and the animal creation ; and the 

 effects of climate upon the forms of life, so that beasts 

 are apt to decrease in size as they extend northward 

 such were some of their topics. In one of his boxes 

 Bartram sent some eggs of a turtle (water tortoise ?), 

 which by a lucky chance were matured on the very day 

 (October 20, 1737) that Collinson received them from 

 the ship. He was able to watch fifteen little tailed 

 creatures, " how artfully they disengaged themselves 

 from the shell, and then with their fore-feet scratched 

 their eyes open " ; the first ever hatched in England, 

 though unhappily they soon perished. A great " mud 

 turtle, much hunted for to feast our gentry withal," was 

 another gift in 1755. It had a " mouth wide enough to 



1 Of these trees, which grow in a thin dry soil on the chalk, 139 remained 

 in 1837, and the highest measured 60-70 ft. In 1914 the largest was 100 ft. 

 high, with a girth at 3 ft. of 28J ft., and a spread 468 ft. in circum- 

 ference. The charming wooded slopes, which rise above Goodwood House to 

 the downs, are also said to have been planted under Collinson's advice. 

 The present Duke of Richmond and Gordon, K.G., has been so kind as to 

 furnish the writer with information, as well as his head gardener, Mr. F. 

 Brock. See also Loudon, Arboretum, iv. 2414 ; J. Kent, Records of Good- 

 wood ; and the Earl of March, A Duke and his Friends ; three letters from 

 Collinson are printed in the latter work. Many letters from the second and 

 third dukes are in the Collinson correspondence at the British Museum, 

 and one (1762) respecting the cedars was sold at Sotheby's, December 5, 1916. 



Collinson left a memorandum substantially as follows : "In token of the 

 love and friendship which has for so many years subsisted between myself 

 and my dear friend John Hanbury and his family, I desire that one guinea 

 may be given to Osgood Hanbury to purchase of Gordon two cedars of Lebanon 

 to be planted in the new part of the park. Let the occasion be registered in 

 the Great Bible at Coggeshall that succeeding generations may know our 

 friendship. P. Collinson." The original letter is preserved at Holfield Grange, 

 Coggeshall, Essex, now in the possession of Mr. Reginald D. Hill, who informs 

 the author that the two cedar trees are still standing, on the north and south 

 sides of the house respectively. John Hanbury, who died in 1758, was a 

 Virginia tobacco merchant in Tower Street, London, in partnership with his 

 cousin Capel Hanbury of Mark Lane. He took some part in planning the 

 settlement of the countries on the Ohio, and the extension of trade beyond 

 the mountains. His son, Osgood Hanbury, succeeded him at Coggeshall. 

 See Gent. Mag. 2nd ser. iv. 579 ; The Hanbury Family, by A. A. Locke, 1916, 

 ii. 299 ff. 



