124 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 422. 



close by the bridge is "thai curious tree from the Jerseys" 

 (Hackberry, Celtis occidentalis); near the west door a 

 "Sugar-tree'' and Horse-chestnut: the latter, perhaps, the 

 one that Bartram believed to have been the first to blossom 

 in America. 



The house is built of heavy gray stone blocks, mortar- 

 covered on the older western part and on the gabled ends. 

 The front, which is of a later date, is built of still heavier 

 blocks, and shows some attempt at ornamentation in the 

 stone window-frames and bases and capitals of the porch 

 columns. Still later, Bartram placed over his study window 

 the panel with its inscription — 



Tis God alone Almyty Lord 

 The Holy One by me adored 

 John Bartram 1770. 



That a great part of the house is the work of Bartram's own 

 hands we know from that letter to Jared Eliot, where he 

 describes his method of quarrying and working stone, and 

 says : "I had been used to split rocks to make steps, door- 

 sills, window-frames, pig and water troughs. I have split 

 rocks seventeen feet long and built four houses of hewn 

 stone, split out of the rock with my own hands." 



The woodwork over the porch and stone and brick 

 addition on the south were added in this century. The 

 western doorway was the original entrance, and through 

 it one steps down into the house. The rooms are, with one 

 exception, small, and are floored with the original heavy 

 oak boards. In one of the rooms a cupboard in the wall 

 beside the chimney is shown as the place where Bartram 

 kept his seeds. This is doubtful, when the great quantity 

 he kept on hand is considered, and, in spite of the thickness 

 of the wall, this cupboard must have been a rather warm 

 place. 



The little "study" is an indisputable fact; from it one 

 can pass out to the enclosed porch, with its stone floor, and 

 have a good view of the grounds in front. The Box-trees 

 planted about the house are of such enormous size that they 

 interfere with all views, yet one would not have them de- 

 stroyed. Near the upper corner of the house is the " Thorn " 

 sent by Collinson, and near the south end is the Pear-tree 

 of which Collinson wrote to Bartram almost a century and 

 a half ago, " It has been thy pleasure to wait, but mine to 

 hear of the delicious pear raised from Lady Petre's seed ; 

 but she, dear good woman, is gone to rest." 



From the house to the river the land falls gradually, but 

 directly in front of the house is a terrace, with remains of a 

 Box-border along its outer edge, where it is upheld by a dry 

 stone retaining-wall, pierced by two narrow flights of steps. 

 From the terrace, paths originally led by circuitous routes 

 through the ground and down to the river ; one of them 

 ran near the greenhouse, whose lines are still visible, a 

 short distance from a very beautiful Yellow-wood, Cladras- 

 tis lutea. Further down, this path runs near the great 

 Cypress, Taxbdium distichum (seep. 125), brought from 

 Delaware by Bartram, and now nine feet in diameter. 

 Later on this path joins one along the river-bank. It 

 is on this river-path that one finds the curious cider-press 

 cut by Bartram in an outcropping ledge ; and at the present 

 southern boundary of the grounds there is an effective 

 group of Beeches growing on another ledge that juts into 

 the river. 



In the southern part of the grounds are the fine Magno- 

 lias ; one of them, M. acuminata, undoubtedly that brought 

 from "up Susquehanna," and discovered on Bartram's jour- 

 ney with Conrad Weiser to the Five Nations' Council ( 1 743)- 

 Near by grows the "Rose Bay," as they first called the 

 Rhododendron, and a noble Mossy-cup Oak, one of the 

 finest trees on the place. 



Not many years before his death, Bartram, probably in 

 acknowledgment of the courtesy of a life-membership pre- 

 sented him by the trustees forty years earlier, gave the 

 "Philadelphia Library Company" some of his most valua- 

 ble books, several of them presentation copies from the 

 authors ; among these latter is the fine edition of Dillenius' 

 Historia Muscorum, of which he savs, " I take this work to 



be the completest of the kind that ever was wrote, for Solo- 

 mon did not write of any plants lower than Hyssop, .so 

 we may conclude he knew as little of mosses as of 

 America." It is the intention of those now in authority to 

 collect, if possible, relics from their present owners and 

 form a Bartram museum in one of the rooms of the house. 

 As yet the precise lines upon which this will be formed are 

 unknown, but a mere collection of relics will only be inter- 

 esting to those who know something of Bartram's lifework. 

 It is to be hoped that the collection will include copies of 

 the "Letters" and the " Observations on the Inhabitants, 

 Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions (Animals and other mat- 

 ters worthy of notice) made by Mr. John Bartram in his 

 travels from Pennsylvania to Onondago, Oswego and the 

 Lake Ontario." Printed by J. Whiston and B. White, Fleet 

 Street, 1751. 



Then, if a collection of portraits (old engravings prefer- 

 ably) of Bartram's correspondents could be hung in one of 

 the rooms, and a series of charts of his journeys arranged 

 in chronological order, there would, no doubt, soon be an 

 understanding and appreciation of the work of this remark- 

 able man. 



Of nearly forty correspondents, all were men of distinc- 

 tion in their time, and some of them for all time. Hisjour- 

 neys began with botanical trips in his own neighborhood, 

 grew in distance and wealth of observation, and culmi- 

 nated when he was nearly seventy, in the exploration of 

 four hundred miles of the St. John's River, Florida. Outofhis 

 great but unfulfilled desire to explore the Mississippi 

 Valley grew that idea of exploring the Missouri country, 

 discussed immediately after the Revolutionary War, by 

 Franklin, William Bartram and the Marshalls. This discus- 

 sion and hope became almost a reality ten years afterward, 

 when Dr. Wistar wrote to one of the Mar.-halls that " Mr. 

 Jefferson and others are much interested . . . and think 

 they can insure a thousand guineas to any one who under- 

 takes the journey, and can bring satisfactory proof of hav- 

 ing passed across to the south Sea. If thee can come to town 

 and converse with Mr. Jefferson, I am confident no small 

 matter will stop them." 



Something happened, for ten years later, when the expe- 

 dition started in 1803 that was to give us the Oregon coun- 

 try as proof of having reached the South Sea, we know it 

 was led by Lewis and Clarke, but Jefferson's instructions to 

 them read like extracts from Bartram's letters. 



If some of this may be learned in the house where Bar- 

 tram wrote and pondered it will lift the work of protection 

 and restoration, now in progress, far above the plane of 

 mere preservation of an historic place. 



Ann Harbor, Mich. 



M. L. Dock. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Pycnostachys urticifolia. — Flowering specimens of this 

 beautiful Labiate plant have lately been received at Kew 

 from a garden in Rotherham, where they were grown from 

 seeds imported from south Africa. The plants grew to a 

 height of three feet in a year under greenhouse treatment 

 and produced terminal spikes of rich blue flowers, of the 

 same shade as the flowers of Salvia patens. The species 

 was first described and figured in The Botanical Magazine 

 in 1863 (t. 5365), where it is said to have been raised and 

 flowered by Messrs. Backhouse, of York, from seeds sent 

 by Dr. Livingstone, who collected it on Mount Zomba, 

 near Lake Nyassa. It flowered with Messrs. Backhouse in 

 January. It is well worthy of cultivation, and would 

 probably thrive out-of-doors in summer. The genus is 

 allied to Plectranthus and Coleus. Pycnostachys urticifolia 

 has nettle-like green leaves, and the flower-spikes are from 

 four to six inches long. Sir William Hooker anticipated 

 for it great favor as a garden-plant, but it appears to have 

 gone out of cultivation. Its reintroduction from Living- 

 stone's country is therefore satisfactory. 



Pentapterygium serpens. — This is a Himalayan ally of 



