Letter 2296

Woodward informs Sloane that Breyne has requested a copy of ‘Morton’s Natural His. of Northamptonshire’. Woodward would like a copy of ‘Grotis Excerpta ex Tragaediis et Comediis’ to satisfy a suspicion of his. 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 (1665/1668-1728)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29946, accessed 17 June 2011]).