LETTER IV.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

BETHLEHEM, 3d April, 1816.

MY DEAR FRIEND.--With Captain Mann, of your city, I send David Zeisberger’s Grammar of the Language of the Lenni Lenape, (otherwise called the Delaware Indians.) As the book is not mine, but left by will, to be placed in the Library at Bethlehem, I can do no more than send it for perusal; or, if wished for, to have a copy taken from it, which, indeed, I myself would cheerfully have done for you, were it not that I must spare my weak eyes as much as possible.

I believe I have closed my last letter to you, without answering to the question you put to me, respecting, “wild animals and the native plants of our country.” On this head I do not know that I could be of any service, since the animals that were in this country on the arrival of the Europeans must be pretty generally known; and respecting the native plants, I do not consider myself qualified to give any information, as all I have attended to, has been to collect plants for botanists, leaving it to them to examine and class them. But my friend Dr. Kampman of this place, who is, I believe, one of the most attentive gentlemen to botany, has promised me for you a copy of the botanical names of those plants which he, and a few others of his friends, have collected, within a great number of years, in the Forks of Delaware, with some few from New Jersey, to the number (he thinks) of about five hundred; all of which plants are in nature carefully laid up by him. Probably in two or three weeks, I shall have the pleasure of transmitting to you this promised catalogue.

I am, &c.