Letter 1957

Blair’s friends urged him to solicit the Royal Society’s blessing before publishing his work on the natural history of Scotland, even though he received encouragement from the universities of St Andrews and Aberdeen. He will send an outline of the treatise for Sloane to review. 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]).