122 



Clement Weaver lived to one hundred and ten years, his 

 wife being one hundred years old. This man to the last 

 year of his life, could carry a bushel of wheat to the mill, 

 the distance being above two miles. Dr. Mather remarks, 

 "I do not find by any of these relations, that the persons 

 observed any regularity or method in their manner of diet, 

 exercise, or the like." In regard to the fruitfulness of New 

 England, he says, in the letter, it is no rare thing to have 

 an aged gentlewoman see many more than one hundred of 

 her offspring. He mentions " one woman that had twenty- 

 three children, of which nineteen lived to man's estate. 

 Another had twenty-seven ; another twenty six, of which 

 twenty-one were sons, one whereof was Sir William Phipps ; 

 another had thirty-nine children." 



■ It is well known that Cotton Mather and his father Dr. 

 Increase Mather were very desirous of writing the natural 

 history of New England, but neither of them possessed the 

 qualities of mind necessary for a natural historian, nor would 

 they have been willing to spend the time requisite to an ex- 

 amination of our natural productions. Cotton Mather 

 probably never saw the skin of a fox, except in a furrier's 

 shop of some of his parishioners, at the North End, in Boston. 



Eev. C. C. Beaman offered a few remarks in defence of 

 Mather, thinking he was actuated by a pure desire to diffuse 

 information, being a pioneer in this newly settled country. 

 He said the clergymen of New England were the first to in- 

 troduce the cultivation of flowers, probably obtaining the 

 idea in England. In many places on Cape Cod this was par- 

 ticularly the case, and at Eastham there are the relics of a 

 very ancient garden called the Minister's Garden, and it is 

 well known that the celebrated Eev. Dr. Griffin, wherever 

 he went, carried with him a taste for horticulture, and in 

 his writings there are frequent allusions to the study of 

 nature. In visiting West Gloucester, a year or two since,, 

 on the occasion of one of the Field Meetings of the Essex 

 Institute, his attention was directed to the remains of an old. 

 garden laid out by a former minister of the place, who died 



