316 
Dr.  Christopher  Witt. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
July,  1905. 
nothing  is  known,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  his  life  in  the  Pietist 
colony.  After  the  death  of  the  magister,  Johannes  Kelpius,  in  1708, 
a  number  of  his  followers  left  the  colony  and  established  themselves 
elsewhere.  Among  these  early  dissenters  were  Christopher  Witt 
and  his  companion,  Daniel  Geissler,  who  removed  to  Germantown, 
where  the  former  entered  on  the  practice  of  medicine  and  the  latter 
attended  to  the  more  homely  duties  about  the  house  and  garden. 
This  garden  was  soon  widely  known  as  containing  not  alone  a  vari- 
ety of  medicinal  herbs  and  plants,  used  by  the  Doctor  in  the  practice 
of  his  profession,  but  also  a  large  and  varied  collection  of  indigenous 
as  well  as  foreign  plants  and  shrubs.  The  garden  itself  appears  to 
have  been  quite  extensive,  and  to  have  covered  considerable  ground. 
Unfortunately,  practically  all  of  the  information  that  we  have  of  this 
garden  and  its  founder  is  contained  in  the  still  existing  correspond- 
ence between  Peter  Collinson  and  John  Bartram.  From  these  let- 
ters it  would  appear  that  for  a  number  of  years  prior  to  1734,  the 
date  of  the  first  of  these  letters,  Doctor  Witt  had  been  a  regular 
correspondent  of  Peter  Collinson,  and  had  supplied  him  and  others 
with  interesting  specimens  of  American  plants  and  seeds. 
Advancing  years  had  evidently  made  the  Doctor  somewhat  er- 
ratic, and  it  was  to  secure  a  more  regular  supply  of  novelties,  roots 
and  seeds  that  Collinson  began  his  correspondence  with  John  Bart- 
ram, who  was  then  just  attracting  attention  for  his  knowledge  of 
botany  and  his  faculty  for  observation.  Of  the  correspondence  that 
passed  between  Christopher  Witt  and  others,  nothing  has  been  pre- 
served so  far  as  known.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  Witt 
had  supplied  a  number  ot  English  botanists  with  plants  and  seeds. 
Peter  Collinson  himself  was  closely  associated  with  Dr.  Dillenius, 
the  professor  of  botany  at  Oxford ;  Peter  Miller,  the  gardener  in 
charge  of  the  Society  of  Apothecaries'  garden  at  Chelsea;  Dr.  John 
Fothergill,  of  London,  and  a  number  of  others  more  or  less  inter- 
ested in  flowers  and  plants. 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  too,  that  this  botanical  garden  established 
by  Doctor  Witt  at  Germantown,  antedates  that  established  by  John 
Bartram  at  Kingsessing  by  at  least  twenty  years,  and  was,  if  any- 
thing, more  extensive  and  more  varied. 
That  Witt  was  a  skilled  botanist,  and  had  in  addition  an  intuitive 
sense  of  what  would  appeal  to  his  correspondents  in  Europe  is  evi- 
dent from  some  of  the  expressions  found  in  Collinson's  letters  to 
