Letter 3952

Ferguson heard Sloane was one of the great men of the age and would have a noteworthy legacy. He asks Sloane to recommend some books. Ferguson has copies of Ray’s Synopsis and Morton’s Physiologia. He asks Sloane to send ‘the best microscopes for herbs’ for ‘Mr Shered of Oxford’. Ferguson needs the advice of ‘Sam. Smith or some Ingenious man’ who knows mosses to help him classify a collection, which included specimens from the Rhine, Flanders, Savoy, Piedmont, Hungary, and Ireland. He will pay any of the debts accrued by Robert Lenox during his travels. Ferguson also noted that working in the King’s hospital had led him to contract an illness that nearly cost him his life.

Victor Ferguson (d. 1729) was a physician of Newtown, near Belfast (Toby C. Bernard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649-1770 (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003), ch. 5; “Fergusons of Belfast” URL: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~colin/FergusonsOfIreland/Belfast.htm).