Editors^ Letter- Box. 59 



We are in receipt of a copy of the address of D. Rodney King, Esq., Presi- 

 dent of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, at the dedication of the new 

 hall of the society just erected in Philadelphia. Mr. King reviews the progress 

 of botanical investigation in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, and gives a 

 sketch of the progress of the society. We extract the following mention of 

 distinguished botanists : — 



" Philadelphia and vicinity claim the honor of having given the earliest and 

 strongest impulses to the study and practice of the sciences of botany and horti- 

 culture in this country. 



" Long before the Revolution, and as early as 1728, John Bartram established 

 a botanic garden and arboretum on the banks of the Schuylkill, which is still in 

 existence. He and his son William, and his cousin Humphrey Marshall, col- 

 lected, and introduced into England, more than a thousand new species of plants 

 and trees, besides a great number of varieties belonging to species already 

 known. More than a hundred and forty years ago, John Bartram established on 

 the banks of the Schuylkill a botanic garden and arboretum, in which he and 

 his son William cultivated many of the plants and trees collected by them dur- 

 ing their travels through the Carolinas and Florida, then a howling wilderness. 



" In 1768, Dr. Adam Kuhn of this city was appointed the first professor of 

 botany in the college here. 



"In 1777, John Jackson of Loudon Grove, Chester County, Penn., com- 

 menced another botanic garden, which is still in existence ; and, in 1779, two 

 brothers, Joshua and Samuel Pierce, of East Marlborough, Chester County, 

 Penn., planted an arboretum, principally of evergreens or conifers, which is 

 probably at the present time one of the most complete in the United States. 



" In 1803, Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton of this city published the first ele- 

 mentary work on the study of botany in this country. 



" In the year 1800, Andre Michaux, and in 1810 his son F. Andre Michaux, 

 two distinguished French botanists, visited this country ; and both found in this 

 city congenial minds among the members of the American Philosophical Society ; 

 and, in gratitude for the many kind attentions received by the younger Michaux 

 from the members of that society, he bequeathed a large share of his fortune to 

 it on the death of his widow, who is now quite aged, in trust, for the formation of 

 a botanic garden and aboretum. I hope most sincerely that this may form the 

 nucleus of an institution of that kind, and that our city authorities may second 

 the excellent institution of this learned foreigner by appropriating one of the 

 public parks — Hunting Park for instance — for the purpose. In 18 18, a former 

 president of the society, Zaccheus Collins, together with John Vaughan, William 

 Maclure, and Joseph Corea de Serra, contributed to a fund to enable that re- 

 markable and self-taught genius, Thomas Nuttall, to make a botanical tour of the 

 western part of the then United States and Territories, and afterwards of Califor- 

 nia, and the British possessions on the Pacific, by the way of Cape Horn. Besides 

 those already mentioned were many other botanists scarcely less distinguished ; 

 and among them I may name James Logan, Dr. Henry Muhlenberg, Reuben 

 Haines, Frederic Pursh (formerly gardener to William Hamilton, at the Wood- 

 lands), and the lamented Dr. W. Darlington ; and, among the many distinguished 



