Letter 3003

Blair is glad Sloane was pleased with the dedication for his new book. He offers a treatise on natural history and asks that Sloane send him rare seeds from abroad. He will communicate his observations on seeds to the Royal Society. Blair will take any specimens that can be spared from the Chelsea Physic Garden. He recommends the bearer, Mr Martyn. Patrick Blair was a botanist and surgeon whose papers were published in the Transactions. In 1715 Blair joined the Jacobite rebellion as a battle surgeon but was captured and condemned to death. He was visited by Sloane in prison in the hopes the latter might secure a pardon. Sloane was successful and the pardon arrived shortly before Blair’s scheduled execution (Anita Guerrini, Blair, Patrick (c.16801728), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2568, accessed 31 May 2011]).