Letter 1639

Yonge asks whether he did something to offend Sloane because some time has elapsed since he last heard from him. Yonge mentions a small experiment, the effects of which he could not reproduce. He describes a tale he heard from a gentleman of a hare that had ‘two fully grown young ones among the Bowels; but almost rotten: and three immature embryos in the throat.’ Yonge thanks Sloane for the ‘Aldrovandus de Serpentibus’. James Yonge was a surgeon and physician of Plymouth with experience as a ship’s surgeon. He was a prominent citizen in his native Plymouth and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1702 (Ian Lyle, Yonge, James (16471721), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30225, accessed 20 May 2011]).