Letter 1939

Blair informs Sloane that the universities of St Andrews and Aberdeen have acknowledged his ‘Natural History of Scotland’. He wants further recommendations before it is published. Blair requests issues of the Philosophical Transactions and asks that Sloane return the books he borrowed. 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]).