Letter 2268

Barham forwards a list of 34 seeds, which he had sent to the ‘Physick Garden’ in Chelsea. He is pleased that some of the seeds have matured and are successfully ‘brought to perfection in Great Brittain’. His new book is about American plants. He has tentatively titled it the ‘Hortus Americanus Medecinalis’. Henry Barham (1670?-1726) was a botanist. He lived in Jamaica and corresponded with Sloane on the plant and animal life of the island. Parts of Barham’s letters to Sloane appeared in the latter’s Natural History of Jamaica (T. F. Henderson, Barham, Henry (1670?1726), rev. Anita McConnell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1374, accessed 13 June 2011]).