September, 1905 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



185 



A Small Section of the Garden 



The original subscribers seem to have assumed no responsi- 

 bility to sustain the noble enterprise they had founded, and 

 no means were at hand for the adequate support of the work. 

 The manner of supplying the Garden with new specimens 

 was admirably simple and neighborly: Cambridge gentlemen 

 having greenhouses presented the Garden with new plants 

 " as they happened to acquire them." Living exotic plants 

 could then be purchased by applying to the gardener, and 

 the meager receipts were further increased by a charge of 

 twenty-five cents levied upon each visitor. " Strangers of dis- 

 tinction, clergymen and those connected with Harvard " seem 

 to have been the only people admitted gratis in the early days. 

 After Professor Peck's death, in 1822, funds were at such 

 low ebb that his chair was allowed to remain vacant. But 

 this interregnum period is by no means barren of interest, 

 inasmuch as Thomas Nuttall, 

 the distinguished botanist, 

 who had been several years 

 in the country, was appointed 

 curator of the Garden, and 

 gave such instruction in nat- 

 ural history as was at that 

 time demanded. Nuttall was 

 a good deal of a " char- 

 acter." In England he had 

 been a compositor in a print- 

 ing office; but, a passion for 

 travel having seized him, he 

 abandoned this peaceful oc- 

 cupation and came to Amer- 

 ica to explore the sources of 

 the Missouri and the Ar- 

 kansas. Captured in Phila- 

 delphia by Boston friends, 

 Nuttall was brought on and 

 established in Cambridge, 

 where he remained for sev- 

 eral years, troubling himself 

 little with students, but 

 doing a valuable service to 

 natural history, nevertheless, 

 through his " Manual of the 

 Ornithology of the United 



States," a work remarkable 

 for the close knowledge it 

 reflects of the habits, man- 

 ners and affinities of our 

 birds. The preface to this 

 book is generally admitted to 

 be one of the most admirable 

 essays in the literature of 

 ornithology — a classic for 

 which Boston may well 

 enough claim the credit, inas- 

 much as the book was incited 

 by Mr. James Brown, who 

 was one of the founders of 

 the Boston publishing firm 

 of Little & Brown. Mr. 

 Brown was himself a lover 

 of ornithology and a good 

 friend of Nuttall. Evi- 

 dently he was one of the few 

 whom the naturalist per- 

 mitted to share in his hermit- 

 like life. So desirous was 

 Nuttall indeed of avoiding 

 his fellow creatures, that he 

 never used the stairs of his 

 house adjoining the garden, 

 but reached his sleeping apartments by means of a trap-door 

 and stepladder. A panel hung on hinges in the door which 

 connected with the kitchen served for the passage back and 

 forth of a tray upon which his daily food was handed 

 through. 



After ten quiet years in Cambridge, Nuttall was seized 

 by another attack of his old Wanderlust, and departed sud- 

 denly for the Sandwich Islands, returning by way of the 

 Cape of Good Hope in the vessel which had for one of its 

 crew the author of " Two Years Before the Mast." After 

 a sojourn in Philadelphia, the eccentric naturalist went back 

 to live and die in England. He had been here long enough, 

 however, to do a great work for ornithology and to supply 

 Cooper with the Dr. Battius of his prairie life novel. Nut- 

 tall is further interesting as the precursor of Ernest Thomp- 



The Palm Houses 



