Letter 1358

Molyneux thanks Sloane for addressing his papers in the Philosophical Transactions. He would like to see an account of Dr Wall’s experiments on the production of light by friction. He tried to make a mixture of gunpowder as Sloane suggested, but it did not work. Molyneux asks for advice that might be useful for the army in the West Indies. He will be travelling to northern Ireland and would like to know if Sloane would like any curiosities or information from there. Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728) was an astronomer and politician. He studied optics and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1712 (A. M. Clerke, Molyneux, Samuel (16891728), rev. Anita McConnell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18925, accessed 4 July 2011]).