Letter 3297

Bradley informs Sloane that he possesses a ‘saffron kiln of the best sort In London’. He is keeping it in the ‘Warehouse belonging to the Wellington Wagon’. Sloane is to ask for the kiln in Bradley’s name at the appointed place of storage should he want it. He is to pay Mr Fowler, a mathematical instrument maker. Arrangements have already been made for delivery if Sloane purchases it. Bradley thinks it will be a great acquisition for the Royal Society ‘for those who Cultivate saffron in the west of south’. He wants to ‘gett out of the Booksellers hands’ and focus on natural history. Richard Bradley (1688?-1732) was a scientific author, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Professor of Botany at Cambridge (Frank N. Egerton, “Bradley, Richard (1688?-1732)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3189, accessed 10 Nov 2012]).