that this object should receive the attention of the Englishry of the province as one of his letters indicates. I remember [he said in 1753 in a letter to Richard Jackson] when they [the Germans] modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in Droves and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties. Few of their Children in the Country learn English. They import many Books from Germany; and of the six Printing-Houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English. They have one German Newspaper, and one half-German. Advertisements, intended to be general, are now printed in Dutch and English. The Signs in our Streets have Inscriptions in both Languages, and in some places only German. They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Instruments in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so increases, that there is continued need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few Years they will also be necessary in the Assembly to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say.[13] As we are said to be indebted to Jefferson for the introduction into America of the Lombardy poplar so it is said that we are indebted to Franklin for the domestication of the yellow willow so useful in the manufacture of wicker-work. The story is that his observant eye noted the sprouts, which a willow basket from abroad had put forth, when refreshed by the water of a creek into which it had been tossed, and that he was at pains to plant some of them on a lot in Philadelphia. Apparently, he was the first person, too, to introduce the rhubarb plant into America. He obtained seed of the broom-corn on one of his visits to Virginia, and took care to disseminate it in Pennsylvania and other Colonies. When the Pennsylvania farmers were skeptical about the value of plaster, he framed in that substance on the surface of a conspicuous field the words: "THIS HAS BEEN PLASTERED," which were soon rewritten in vegetation that rose legibly above the general level of its surroundings. One of his suggestions was an "office of insurance" on the mutual assessment plan against losses from storms, blights, insects, etc., suffered by farmers. Among his essays is a concise but highly instructive one on Maize, or Indian Corn, which was well calculated to make known to the world a plant now hardly less prized by the American for its general usefulness than the date-palm is by the Arab. John Adams informs us in his _Diary_ that, on one occasion, when in Massachusetts, Franklin mentioned that Rhenish grape-vines had been recently planted at Philadelphia, and had succeeded very well, whereupon his host, Edmund Quincy, expressed the wish that he could plant some in his own garden.