Peter Collinson and the Eighteenth-Century Natural History Exchange

(April 15, 2009)

Elizabeth P. McLean, garden historian and Library Company Trustee (and former President), speaks about her new biography of Peter Collinson, co-authored by Jean O’Neill. Collinson — a London Quaker, a draper by trade, and a passionate gardener and naturalist by avocation — was a facilitator in natural science, disseminating botanical and horticultural knowledge. He found clients for the Philadelphia Quaker farmer and naturalist John Bartram at a time when the English landscape was evolving to emphasize trees and shrubs, and the more exotic the better. Thus, American plants came to populate great British estates as well as the Chelsea Physic Garden. Collinson was a member of the Royal Society who encouraged Franklin’s electrical experiments and had the results published, he corresponded about myriad natural phenomena, and he was ahead of his time in understanding the extinction of animals and the migration of birds. Though a man of modest Quaker demeanor, because of his passion for natural science, he had an unprecedented effect on the exchange of scientific information on both sides of the Atlantic.