Letter 1043

Byrd left England so abruptly upon receiving news of his father’s death. As such, he did not receive the Royal Society’s commands. He asks that Sloane them their instructions to him. Byrd notes that much work needs to be done on North America’s natural history, but few people are capable of doing it. Business keeps him from making observations. He writes that there are very few diseases in America. He encloses a root used by Native Americans to cure snakebites and a description of how it is processed and applied. William Byrd was a landowner, diarist, and agent of the colony of Virginia in London from 1697 to 1704. He returned to Virginia on the death of his father and served the colony in several capacities (Paul David Nelson, Byrd, William (16741744), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/68334, accessed 2 July 2013]).