3&r&. Sarrti Eliot. 21 



button-wood tree which meafured nine yards in girth, and 

 made twenty-two cords of wood ; and of an alh, which, at 

 a yard from the ground, was fourteen feet eight inches 

 in girth. He alfo expreffes an intention to treat feparately 

 the evergreens of New England; and this treatife, which 

 was poffibly more valuable than the one juft noticed, was 

 in the poffemon of Peter Collinfon, the eminent patron of 

 horticulture, and was given by him to J. F. Gronovius; 

 but has not, that I am aware of, appeared in print. 1 



It is likely that the early phyficians of New England 

 gave fpecial attention to thofe iimples of the country, the 

 virtues of which were known to the favages; and perhaps 

 it was partly in this way that the Rev. Jared Eliot (born 

 1685), minifter of Killingworth in Connecticut, — who is 

 called by Dr. Allen "the firft phyfician of his day," — is 

 alfo designated, both by him and by Eliot, a botanift; and 

 by the latter, " the firft in New England." There is no 

 doubt he was a friend of Dr. Franklin's, and a fcientific 

 agriculturift according to the knowledge of his day; and 

 he is faid to have introduced the white mulberry into 

 Connecticut. 2 His Agricultural EfTays went through more 

 than one edition, but is now rare. Mr. Eliot died while 

 our next character, the firft native New-England botanift 

 who deferves the name, was a ftudent of Yale College. 



1 Gronov. Fl. Virg., edit. 2. In Mr. Dillwyn's (unpublished) "Account of 

 the Plants cultivated by the late Peter Collinson," from his own catalogue and 

 other manuscripts, I find Collinson quoting Mr. Dudley's paper on Plants of New 

 England, above mentioned; but not that on the Evergreens. — Horlus Collins., 

 p. 41. 



2 Eliot, Biog. Diet., and Allen, Amer. Biog. Diet., in locis. 



