Letter 0723

John Rastrick, a minister, is the man Sloane was asking about. Thoresby quotes Rastrick’s letter in full, which concerns the jetties of ‘the River Welland’. Many things were dredged from the bottom, including many plants. Rastrick’s letter states: ‘the Archimedean screw, or screw-like Trunk or cylinder by wch ye workmen cleard themselves of water, was very pretty.’ Thoresby asks Sloane to lend him plant specimens to which he can compare his collection. Thoresby was an antiquary and topographer. He expanded his fathers Musaeum Thoresbyanum impressively, and his collection brought him into discussion with many important political and scholarly figures (P. E. Kell, Thoresby, Ralph (16581725), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27334, accessed 27 June 2013]).