lie sends back in return, "seeds, mosses and a hornets nest and 
some bumble bee breeding cells. ' ' 
In 1762 lie wrote, "I have searched our North America from 
New England to near Georgia, from the sea coast to Lake 
Ontario, and many branches of the Ohio, so that now there are 
very few plants in all that space of ground but what I hare 
observed, nay have most of them growing in my own garden." 
When he was almost seventy years old, under orders as 
"Botanist Royal for the British Colonies in America," he 
explored the St. Johns' River in Florida. By the time that the 
United States was a year old John Bartram's life work was 
done and he died in 1777, while the British Army was making 
its way from the Brandywine to Philadelphia. He feared 
that that Army would "lay waste his darling garden, the 
nursling of almost half a century. ' ' 
The great usefulness of the Garden began when either at 
the suggestion of James Logan or Benjamin Franklin, he sent 
his diaries to Peter Collinson in London, a man devoted to 
Science and always a friend of Pennsylvania, and in this 
correspondence for nearly fifty years these two helped each 
other and loved each other, without ever meeting face to face. 
It was Peter Collinson who engaged Lord Petre and the Dukes 
of Richmond and Norfolk to subscribe an annual allowance of 
thirty guineas to meet the expenses of Bartram in procuring 
American plants to adorn their gardens ; before that time he 
.says his "low fortune in the world lays him under a necessity 
of very hard labour for the support of his family, having now 
a wife and seven small children whose subsistence depends on 
the produce that is raised on his farm." 
In 1764 John Bartram writes to Peter Collinson, "I send 
twenty-two boxes consigned to thee — I have sent also a little box 
containing above one hundred kinds of seeds. There is a parcel 
of Chinquapines and "Willow Oak Acorns, that was missed in 
the last packet, 16 boxes, by the extreme hurry we were in for 
above two weeks day and night, first-day not excepted." What 
consignments went ! Seeds, plants, roots, cuttings, frogs, turtles, 
insects, birds, minerals, fossils and maps. 
The terrapins went to Lord Petre, and a chrysalis of 
a "Noble fine Moth." Let us hope not the brown-tail! Much 
came back in return, Tulips and Carnations, "Nails, Calico, 
Russia linen and 'the clothes for my boys.' " And the half- 
pence! Why, oh why must a ship's Captain bring him £10 
in half -pence, and again £20-10 shillings in half -pence "in a 
strong cask." 
In a letter of 1737 Peter Collinson writes, "I desire and 
do insist that thee oblige me therein, that thou make up that 
drugget clothe to go to Virginia in. and not appear to disgrace 
thyself and me — for these Virginians are a very gentle, well 
