Letter 1855

Blair thanks Sloane and the Royal Society for publishing his work. He would like to know what he should charge for copies of his other treatises. He is currently research elephants’s ears and producing copper plates of them. Blair asks Sloane to send the books from Leiden that he had requested. Mr Petiver told him the Royal Society is considering making him a Fellow. Patrick Blair was a botanist and surgeon whose papers were published in the Transactions. In 1715 Blair joined the Jacobite rebellion as a battle surgeon but was captured and condemned to death. He was visited by Sloane in prison in the hopes the latter might secure a pardon. Sloane was successful and the pardon arrived shortly before Blair’s scheduled execution (Anita Guerrini, Blair, Patrick (c.16801728), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2568, accessed 31 May 2011]).