Six years ago, the general assembly of Pennsylvania made some provision for such an institution: By a law passed the 19th of March, 1807, towards the close of Governor M‘Kean’s administration, three thousand dollars were granted to the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, “out of the monies they owe the state; for the purpose of enabling them to establish a Garden for the improvement of the science of Botany, and for instituting a series of experiments to ascertain the cheapest and best food for plants, and their medical properties and virtues.” But no application of this fund has yet been made, to the purposes contemplated by the legislature in their appropriation of it. Mr. John Bartram, F. R. S. a distinguished botanist, though self-taught, is understood to have been the first anglo-American who executed the design of a Botanic Garden in this country. He laid out, and planted with his own hands, on his farm, pleasantly situated on the west bank of the Schuylkill and about four miles below Philadelphia, a garden of five or six acres; which he furnished with a great variety of curious, useful and beautiful vegetables, exotic as well as American. He acquired the greater part of the latter, in travelling through many parts of the continent, from Canada to the Floridas. His proficiency in his favourite science was, at a pretty early period, so great, that Linnæus pronounced him, in one of his letters, to be the greatest natural botanist in the world. This Garden is now in the tenure and under the management of his son, the ingenious Mr. William Bartram, a well known cultivator of Natural History and Botany. Although this respectable man is above seventy years of age, he continues the most sedulous attention to his favourite pursuits. For a further account of Mr. John Bartram, see Dr. Barton’s _Medical Journal_. Mr. Bartram was born near Darby, in the (then) county of Chester, Pennsylvania, in the year 1701. He held the appointment of Botanist, for America, to King George III. until his death, which occurred in September, 1777, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Footnote 262a: Since deceased. Footnote 262b: Academus was an Athenian hero, from whom the original Academists, or that sect of philosophers who followed the opinion of Socrates, as illustrated and enforced by Plato, derived their name; Plato having taught his disciples in a grove, near Athens, consecrated to the memory of that hero. Footnote 262c: The Ilyssus is a rapid, but, when not swollen by rains, a small stream, of pure and limpid water, in the vicinity of Athens; and near the margin of which, in a vale at the foot of Mount Hymettus, is supposed to have stood the Grove, dedicated to Academus, in which the Socratic Philosophy was taught in its greatest purity. Footnote 263: