HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART I. 



age of 1 6 years he was placed with a respectable merchant of 

 Philadelphia, with whom he continued six years ; after which he 

 went to North Carolina, with a view of doing business there as 

 a merchant : but, being ardently attached to the study of botany, 

 he relinquished his mercantile pursuits, and accompanied his 

 father in a journey into East Florida, to explore the natural 

 productions of that country ; after which he settled on the river 

 St. John's, in this region, and finally returned, about the year 

 1771, to his father's residence. In 1773, at the request of Dr. 

 Fothergill of London, he embarked for Charleston, to examine 

 the natural productions of the Floridas and the western parts of 

 Carolina and Georgia, chiefly in the vegetable kingdom. In this 

 employment he was engaged nearly five years, and made nume- 

 rous contributions to the natural history of the country through 

 which he travelled. His collections and drawings were for- 

 warded to Dr. Fothergill ; and about the year 1790 he published 

 an account of his travels and discoveries in one volume 8vo, with 

 an account of the manners and customs of the Creeks, Chero- 

 kees, and Choctaws. This work soon acquired extensive popu- 

 larity, and is still frequently consulted. After his return from 

 his travels, he devoted himself to science, and, in 1782, was 

 elected professor of botany in the university of Pennsylvania, 

 which post he declined in consequence of the state of his health. 

 In 1786 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical 

 Society, and was a member of several other learned societies in 

 Europe and America. We are indebted to him for the know- 

 ledge of many curious and beautiful plants peculiar to North 

 America, and for the most complete and correct table of Ame- 

 rican ornithology, before the work of Wilson, who was assisted 

 by him in the commencement of his Ameiican Ornithology. He 

 wrote an article on the natural history of a plant a few minutes 

 before his death, which happened suddenly, by the rupture of a 

 blood-vessel in the lungs, July 22. 182S, in the 85th year of his 

 age. {Ibid.) 



In Scotland, as we have seen (p. 48.), very little was done in 

 the way of introducing foreign trees and shrubs during the 

 seventeenth century ; though the rudiments of this description 

 of improvement were laid about the end of it, by the establish- 

 ment of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Reid, in his Scots 

 Gardener, published in 1683, mentions very few trees and 

 shrubs. The most rare of these are, the evergreen oak, the 

 cypress, and the arbutus. He says there are the Indian and 

 Spanish jasmines, myrtles, oleanders, and orange trees, which 

 some are at great pains in governing; but he adds, ''for my 

 part I would rather be in the woods, parks, &c. , measuring 

 planting, and improving." (p. 112.) Those who are curious in 

 trees and othey plants, he refers to the catalogue of the " leai'ned 



