179 
native plants of Coldenham, and sent this to Linnaeus, who pub- 
lished it in the proceedings of the royal society of Upsala. This 
was the earliest local flora of any part of the present state of New 
York. The daughter, Jane Colden, commenced the preparation 
of a remarkably accurate flora of New York, of which the com- 
Pleted portion is Lene in iat in the Department of 
Botany of the British Museu 
Banister, oe and Colden, as well as other early workers 
on the flora of North America, such as Catesby, Garden, Kalm, 
Vernon, and Kreig, were all Europeans by birth. The first 
native American botanist was John Bartram, a Quaker, who was 
born near Philadelphia in 1699. He published but little, and 
that little furnishes very slight evidence of his botanical attain- 
ments; but he was a correspondent of Collinson, Gronovius, 
and other famous European botanists of his day, and by the 
number and accuracy of the observations contained in his letters 
seems to have deserved their admiration. He traveled through- 
out eastern North America, from New York to ‘Plone collect- 
ing particularly seeds for his Old-World correspondents ; but he 
is best remembered from the fact that he established, near Phila- 
delphia, about 1730, the first botanic garden in America, and into 
this garden he gathered representatives of the se sai 
number of native American plants. It was a small affair (the 
entire property comprised only five acres), and a part of re lim- 
ited space was occupied by the house, built by his own hands ; 
but the garden was a remarkable project indeed for those days, 
and is known to have contained many choice specimens. 
William Bartram, son of John, is perhaps better known as a 
botanist, because of the fact that his account of his extended 
travels in the southern Atlantic states was published, and con- 
tains many important observations upon the plants of the regions 
explored by him. He maintained the garden established by his 
father, and after his death the property remained in the hands of 
owners who were deeply concerned in its preservation, for many 
years. During a short period of neglect, serious damage was 
done to the old garden, but within the past twenty years it has 
become the property of the city of Philadelphia, and is now a city 
