62 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



valuables. Passing down a short flight of steps from the 

 sitting-room, we stand upon the floor of an airy apartment, 

 looking towards the south, with three large windows, two 

 looking into the garden, and one facing the river. From 

 this room there is a doorway leading out into the garden. 

 This apartment, it is said, was once the conservatory where 

 rare plants and gaudy lilies bloomed. 



We next enter the room which John Bartram occupied. 

 It is, perhaps, the smallest apartment in the house, with one 

 door leading to the sitting-room and another opening on 

 the front porch. It has a large window facing the river, and 

 a small window, which has been pasted over with wall paper 

 looking into the conservatory. It was in Bartram 's room, 

 in later years it is said, that Alexander Wilson, the noted 

 ornithologist, wrote the first pages of his great work on our 

 American birds, under the patronage and aided by the sug- 

 gestions of William Bartram, the son and successor of John 

 Bartram. 



The old staircase which leads to the second floor is still 

 in existence, but Mr. Eastwick removed the original balus- 

 trade and substituted a modern one. However, he left on 

 the first landing a fragment of the original balustrade made 

 by Bartram, which would be a sufficient guide to duplicate 

 the whole. The rooms on the upper floor are, no doubt, 

 exactly as they were in Bartram's day, with the exception 

 that the old-fashioned fire-place has been boarded up and 

 the walls papered, and that the porch has been converted into 

 a sleeping room. In one room the visitor is particularly 

 impressed with the incongruous appearance of a modern 

 iron register built into one of the walls to furnish the room 

 with heat from a stove below. There are some of the 



