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5 William Bartram and the Forms of Natural History Stephanie Volmer Let me begin with a confession: I derive more consistent reading pleasure from Bartram’s “Report to Dr. Fothergill” than from his Travels. No doubt part of my preference may be attributed to readerly idiosyncrasy, but it has prompted me to consider what the “Report” offers readers as compared to the Travels, and what the differences may mean with regard to the relationship between writing and the quest for natural knowledge. The question of how textual forms shape textual content is vital in the study of natural history because “natural history” serves as an umbrella category for a variety of textual forms, including letters, reports, natural histories, travels, observations, descriptions , journals, and promotional tracts, to name just a few. All natural history writing aims to describe the natural world, but not all of these textual forms accomplish the task in the same way, and so attending to the differences between them allows us to reach a more complex understanding of the culture of eighteenth-century natural history. I would suggest that in writing the “Report ,” William Bartram experimented with the conventions of textual forms just as he would do later—and more extravagantly—in writing the Travels. In the “Report,” however, he stayed more obviously within the bounds of certain rhetorical conventions and, as a result, the “Report” has a formal coherence that provides specific reading pleasures. The reading experience that prompted me to start thinking about these matters occurred a few years ago, when I realized that I needed to reread the Travels as part of my research on the Bartram family. By that time, the “Report”— which Bartram wrote for his patron Dr. Fothergill in London—had become widely available through the Library of America’s edition of Bartram’s writings . Since I had read the Travels before, I decided I would read the “Report” first before turning once again to the Travels. As I was reading the “Report,” 72 Volmer I was struck by a passage in which Bartram describes discovering a plant for which he had been searching. The incident begins with Bartram explaining that he and his companions— who were on a surveying tour through northeastern Georgia—had set up camp on the banks of a branch of the Broad River. As evening approached, Bartram embarked on what he calls his “Botanical excursions,” motivated in part by a desire to determine the source of a lovely and mysterious smell in the air. In the “Report,” he writes, “Observing when descending the Hills to cross the Crick, a very agreeable fragrant smell like cloves defused about us in the air, the whole company being affected by it, I immediately concluded it must arise from some Vegitable, being bruised by the horses feet[.] I therefore designed to go in quest of it as soon as we came to camp.” Bartram proceeds to describe his movements over the terrain, writing, “I cross’t the Creek and began to assend the Hills, having attained a considerable hight, the Hills pretty steep, my feet suddenly slid from under me; I catch’t hold of the sweet Calyconthus, that stretched out a friendly bow to my relief, however in the scuffle to save myself I discovered the lovely subject of my researches, by the figure of the leaf & Root took it to be a Species of Cariophylata, but as I could find no flower or part of fructification whereby to fix its tribe or family, I judged from the fragrance & clove like scent of the Root.”1 This is a brief but vivid description of a plant collector in the woods, and I thought it represented a nice example of the important role accident plays in the course of botanical investigations. Thus Bartram’s evocative and energetic description of his fortuitous discovery stayed with me. When I came upon the scene in Travels, however, I was surprised by how much the description had changed. In Travels, the account of the discovery of the aromatic plant is reduced.The passage, in its entirety, reads,“Before we left the waters of Broad River, having encamped in the evening on one of its considerable branches, and left my companions, to retire, as usual, on botanical researches , on ascending a steep rocky hill, I accidentally discovered a new species of caryophyllata (geum odoratissimum): on reaching to a shrub my foot slipped, and, in recovering myself, I tore up some of the plants, whose...

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