Letter 2290

Scheuchzer is expecting a letter from Sloane. Woodward reminds Sloane of a box of ‘Things’ Breyne sent to them some years before. ‘Mr. Hen. Walters, Land Surveyor’ has purchased some of the items from Breyne’s box. Woodward was a physician, natural historian and antiquary who expounded a theory of the earth in which fossils were creatures destroyed by the biblical flood. This embroiled him in a controversy in which he was opposed by John Ray, Edward Llwyd, Martin Lister, and Tancred Robinson (J. M. Levine, Woodward, John (1665/16681728), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29946, accessed 17 June 2011]).