Letter 2287

John Woodward to Hans Sloane – August 5, 1718


Item info

Date: August 5, 1718
Author: John Woodward
Recipient: Hans Sloane

Library: British Library, London
Manuscript: Sloane MS 4045
Folio: ff. 138-139



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Transcription

Woodward sends Scheuchzer’s new book with fossils and amber. He discusses a ‘Paper of the Crocodile digd up in Saxony’. Woodward was a physician, natural historian and antiquary who expounded a theory of the earth in which fossils were creatures destroyed by the biblical flood. This embroiled him in a controversy in which he was opposed by John Ray, Edward Llwyd, Martin Lister, and Tancred Robinson (J. M. Levine, Woodward, John (1665/16681728), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29946, accessed 17 June 2011]).




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