Letter 0449

Du Bois apologizes for not sending Sloane the enclosed account earlier. It was composed by ‘a Jew of Amsterdam book keeper to the East India Company of Holland’. Du Bois explains that gold may be exported from Japan, but only via the Dutch. Charles du Bois was a botanist working as the cashier-general of the East India Company. He became acquainted with other natural historians like James Petiver, William Sherard and Sloane, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1700 (B. D. Jackson, Dubois, Charles (bap. 1658, d. 1740), rev. P. E. Kell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8113, accessed 8 July 2013]).