PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 21 



was an admirable contribution to ethnography, and his general 

 observations were of the highest value. 



In the introduction to his " Travels," and interspersed through 

 this volume, are reflections which show him to have been the 

 possessor of a very philosophic and original mind. 



His "Anecdotes of an American Crow " and his " Memoirs 

 of John Bartram "* were worthy products of his pen, while his 

 illustrations to Barton's " Elements of Botany " show how 

 facile and truthful was his pencil. 



His love for botany was such, we are told, that he wrote a 

 description of a plant only a few minutes before his death, a 

 statement which will be readily believed by all who know the 

 nature of his enthusiasm. Thus, for instance, he wrote of the 

 Venus's Fly Trap : 



"Admirable are the properties of the extraordinary Dionaea mus- 

 cipula ! See the incarnate lobes expanding ; how gay and sportive 

 they appear ! ready on the spring to entrap incautious, deluded in- 

 sects ! What artifice ! There ! behold one of the leaves just closed 

 upon a struggling fly ; another has gotten a worm ; its hold is sure ; 

 its prey can never escape carnivorous vegetable ! Can we, after 

 viewing this object, hesitate for a moment to confess that vegeta- 

 ble beings are endowed with some sensible faculties or attributes 

 similar to those that dignify animal nature? They are living, or- 

 ganical. and self-moving bodies ; for we see here in this plant 

 motion and volition. "f 



Moses Bartram, a cousin of William, and also a botanist, was 

 also living near Philadelphia, and in 1879 published ^Observa- 

 tions on the Native Silk Worms of North America," and Hum- 

 phrey Marshall [1722-1801], the farmer-botanist, had a botanical 

 garden of his own, and in 1785 published " The American 

 Grove Arbustrium Americanum " a treatise on the forest trees 

 and shrubs of the United States, which was the first strictly 



* Nicholson's Journal, 1805. 

 f Travels, 1793, p. xiv. 



