Letter 1715

Fuller sends the bird he found near his house, as promised. He kept it in his garden pond for ‘a fortnight’. Fuller believes the beak is designed ‘for the wrenching open of whole Fish’. The bird had lost its ability to fly. Fuller suggests it may be ‘a Common Sea Bird’. Sloane will know more, as Fuller is unfamiliar with birds. Some of his relations claim to have seen a similar birds ‘upon our Coasts’. John Fuller, Senior married Elizabeth Rose, daughter of Fulke and Elizabeth Rose of Jamaica, in 1703. He managed the family sugar plantations in Jamaica and in 1705 took control of the family furnace where he became an ironmaster and gunfounder. His wife’s mother later married Sir Hans Sloane, making Sloane Fuller’s stepfather-in-law (J. S. Hodgkinson, Fuller family (per. c.16501803), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47494, accessed 2 July 2013]).