Cadwalladei' Colden with Peter Collinson, Sfc. 113 



Pray have you thought, or can you give a conjecture how Amer- 

 ica was peopled, or was it a separate creation ? Most of your 

 vegetables and many of your animals are different from ours, and 

 yet you have some exactly like ours, of which I have specimens 

 by me ; for I have a large collection, considering my years and 

 station, of natural varieties, and some artificial, from most parts 

 of the world, which I am obliged to my distant curious friends 

 for sending me. They afford me great entertainment at my leis- 

 ure hours ; and in the country, if I may boast, my garden can 

 show more of your vegetables than perhaps any in this island, 

 which I have been collecting some years from seeds, and growing 

 plants sent me by my friends in your world ; so that I am no 

 stranger to America, being pretty well acquainted with most of 

 its productions, whether animal, vegetable, mineral or fossil, per- 

 haps beyond what you can imagine. The uses 1 make of them 

 is to admire them for the sake of the great and all-wise Creator 

 of them, to enlarge my ideas of his almighty power and good- 

 ness to mankind, in making so many things for his profit and his 

 pleasure. I reason on their natures and properties, so far as I am 

 or can be informed ; I compare them with ours ; in short, I esteem 

 the regard I pay them as a piece of adoration due to their great 

 Author. 



Thus, my dear friend, you see I open all my mind to you, and 

 tell you how I employ all my leisure hours, I may say minutes, 

 from business. I hate to be idle, and think all time sadly lost 

 that is not usefully employed ; for which reason, clubs, taverns, 

 and coffee-houses, scarcely know me. Home is the most de- 

 lightful place to me, where I divide my hours in business, in in- 

 nocent amusements, and in the dear society of a tender, kind, 

 good woman, a boy and a girl. I may now say with Milton, I 

 have now brought you to the state of earthly bliss, and sincerely 

 wish all mankind as happy. 



I had a letter from J. Bartram :* he much laments the disap- 

 pointment of not seeing you. I am persuaded you would have 



* In a former letter, Mr. Collinson thus introduces the earliest native American 

 botanist to Mr. Colden's notice. 



" If an ingenious man, and a great searcher into nature, named John Bartram 

 of Pennsylvania, should wait on you, please to give him what information you 

 can in those things. He has been a considerable traveller in the world, and is 

 employed by a set of noblemen and others to collect seeds and curiosities for 



Vol. xliv, No. 1.— Oct.-Dec. 1842. 15 



