Letter 4038

Morton thanks Sloane for his favours and for his ‘favourable representations of me, and my poor collection, to the Royal Society’. He will do his best to honour them. Morton is busy describing ‘Fossil Teeth and Bones’ and would like to speak about them with a particular member of the Royal Society. He believes a specimen he examined previously is ‘the Grinder of an Elephant’ and would appreciate the opportunity to confirm that opinion. Morton asks Sloane to send the latest Philosophical Transactions. He promises to pay for them. He has more questions on ‘Books & Curiosities’, but does not want to burden Sloane any further. 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]).