Letter 2465

Richardson sends ‘a large Corneouse Excrescence which grew upon the thigh of a Crow consisting of lammas’ as well as ‘the Tumour […] and Stone which was drawn out of a Womans Anus’. He mentions brass instruments recorded in ‘Hearns Antoninus’ and a fossilized tree that has its bark removed and used as fuel. He speculates as to how the tree came to have the properties of fuel. Richardson was a physician and botanist who traveled widely in England, Wales, and Scotland in search of rare specimens. He corresponded and exchanged plants with many well-known botanists and naturalists (W. P. Courtney, Richardson, Richard (16631741), rev. Peter Davis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23576, accessed 31 May 2011]).