76 
tion, has an excellent herbarium to which I have added the 
generic names." "When you have an hour of leisure or so by 
will you honor him by calling in." "He is an original and 
honest man, but suspicious with a stranger." 
Kin was not seen in Germantown "after the year 1816," 
and he died in the year 1825. Quoting Prof. Thomas 
Meehan, "Melchior Meng had a fine garden, and shared 
with Kurtz his friendship for Kin and his seeds. The im- 
mense Linden tree that stood in front of his place was 
certainly planted by him, as probably were many other of the 
large trees which stood there. Meng's garden was much 
larger than Kurtz's, and while the latter paid the most 
attention to chrubs and plants, the former boasted of his 
very fine lot of trees which at that time was inferior to very 
few collections in the country. There is one thing about 
Meng's garden that is particularly gratifying. While Kurtz 
has almost entirely disappeared, and most of the specimens 
of rare trees and most other old "arboretums" in the country 
are fast being lost, with no friendly hand to replace them 
with younger ones, or to add new ones, this property has 
fallen into hands which know how to care for them. That 
part of Meng's property lying north of his home, which was 
nearly the whole of it, was purchased by the late John Wister, 
who added to, and resided in the ample building, and who 
called the place "Vernon." This property is now in posses- 
sion of the city of Philadelphia and is known as "Vernon 
Park." Thomas Meehan, the writer of the foregoing was 
the leader of the movement which secured this acquisition to 
the citizens of Germantown, and the suggestor of "Vernon" 
for a public park, it should be remembered was Horace 
Ferdinand McCann, the owner and editor of the German- 
town Independent-Gazette. 
The late Col. T. Ellwood Zell, a descendant of John 
Melchior Meng, thus wrote of a visit to "Vernon" in 1892, 
"The old house built and occupied by Mr. Melchior Meng 
or at least a part thereof, is still standing, soon to be removed, 
used by a Mr. Pollard, who keeps a tin store there. The old 
