24 



correspondence, in the "Acta Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Up- 

 saliensis," in 1749, and here Jane grew up and acquired that taste 

 for natural history of which her father wrote in the oft-quoted 

 letter to Gronovius. The portions of this letter which refer to 

 Jane are here printed as copied from the original draft:* 



"To Dr. John Frederic Gronovius 



Senateur de la Villa de Leiden. 



New York Oct. ist, 1755. 



* * * "I (often) thought that Botany is an amusement which may 

 be made greater to the Ladies who are often at a loss to fill up their time 

 (& that) it could be made agreable to them (it would prevent their 

 employing so much of their time in trifling amusements as they do). 

 Their natural curiosity & the pleasure they take in the beauty & variety 

 of dress seems to fit them for it (far more than men). The chief 

 reason that few or none of them have hitherto applied themselves to 

 this study I believe is because all the books of any value are wrote in 

 Latin & so filed with technical words that the obtaining the necessary 

 previous knowledge is (attended with) so (much) tiresome and disa- 

 greable that they are discouraged at the first set out & give it over 

 before they can receive any pleasure in the pursuit. 



" I have a daughter, who has an (natural) inclination to reading & 

 a curiosity for natural philosophy or natural History, & a sufficient 

 capacity for attaining a competent knowledge. I took the pains to 

 explain Linnaeus's System (for her), and to put it in English for her 

 use by freeing it from the Technical terms, which was easily done by 

 useing two or three words in place of one. She has now grown very 

 fond of the study, and has made such progress in it that as I believe 

 would please you if you saw her performance, tho' perhaps she could 

 not have been persuaded to learn the terms at first, she now under- 

 stands in some degree Linnaeus' characters, notwithstanding that she 

 does not understand Latin. She has already a pretty large volume in 

 writing of the Description of plants. She was shown a method of 

 taking the impression of the leaves on paper with printers ink, by a 

 simple kind of rolling press which is of use in distinguishing the spe- 



* Colden MSS. in the New York Historical Society. For permission to examine 

 some of these MSS. I am indebted to the librarian of the Xew York Historical 

 Society. 



This letter is somewhat differently printed in " Selections from the Scientific Cor- 

 respondence of Cadwallader Colden with Gronovius, Linnaeus, Collinson and other 

 Naturalists," Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts 44 : 133. 1843. 



