Letter 1068

Morton thanks Sloane for the English agate and Philosophical Transactions. He discusses working on the late Dr Hooke’s papers. He asks when the next Transactions are to be printed, for he believes such knowledge will make his subscribers more eager for his book. Morton dug up some urns ‘wherein sea-shells are log’d.’ John Morton was a naturalist who was in correspondence with Sloane from roughly 1703 to 1716. Morton contributed nearly one thousand specimens (fossils, shells, bones, teeth, minerals, rocks, man-made artifacts, etc.) to Sloane’s collection (Yolanda Foote, Morton, John (16711726), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19364, accessed 2 July 2013]).