132 Selections from the Correspondence of 



P. S. I thank good Providence I have lived to see a pair of 

 your great Moose-Deer's horns sent to the Duke of Richmond : 

 there is not a pair in the British Museum, which is a great loss 

 to that grand collection, which is the wonder of the world. 



It was always said the great Deer's horns found in the bogs in 

 Ireland, some ten feet from tip to tip, was the same as the great 

 Moose-Deer's of New England and Canada. But this pair shows 

 there is no affinity ; but your Moose horns are very like the Elk 

 of Germany and Russia ; so that the animal that produced the 

 Irish horns is not now known to exist in all your discovered 

 world, and it is not in our own parts ; but possibly it may have 

 being in Terra Australis, or no where : but that is not agreeable 

 to the plan of Providence. 



We have no room left for the letters of Dr. Garden of South 

 Carolina ; which, however, are for the most part so much occu- 

 pied with private and colonial affairs, that they do not possess 

 the same scientific interest as his published correspondence with 

 Ellis and Linnaeus. The following letter gives an account of 

 his visit to the elder Bartram, at his well-known garden near 

 Philadelphia. 



Dr. Garden to Dr. Colden. 



Philadelphia, Nov. 4, 1754. 



Honored Sir — I cannot help, once before leaving Philadel- 

 phia, begging permission to intrude on a philosophic hour, in 

 troubling you with the perusal of a few lines, according to my 

 promise when I had the pleasure of seeing you at New York. 

 Since my leaving that place I have met with very little new in 

 the botanic way, unless your acquaintance Bartram, who is what 

 he is, and whose acquaintance alone makes amends for other dis- 

 appointments in that way. I first waited on him with Gov. Tinker 

 and Dr. Bond, whom he received with so much ease, gaiety and 

 happy alacrity, and invited to dine with so much rural vivacity, 

 that every one were agreeably pleased and surprised. Unluckily 

 Gov. Tinker had engaged some company to be with him that 

 day, else we should have taken part of his botanic treat, which 

 he seems fully designed to have some day this week. 



One day he dragged me out of town, and entertained me so 

 agreeably with some elevated botanical thoughts, on oaks, ferns, 



