Letter 4286

Brewer has ‘collected all the Birds Eggs & Insects [he] can in the North & all the Plants Mosses & other curiosities […] in Wales’. He is willing to exchange specimens with Sloane. Brewer is organizing his bird collection. He is staying at Ben Bartlet’s residence in Bradford. Bartlet is an apothecary. Sloane can reach him at Mr Dixon’s ‘at the Unicorn near the exchange’. Brewer asks where he is to send the moss specimens and includes a list of those he can offer. Samuel Brewer (bap. 1669, d. 1743?) was a botanist. He discovered several plant species that were included in the third edition of John Ray’s ‘Synopsis’, which was published in 1724 (John Martin, ‘Brewer, Samuel (bap. 1669, d. 1743?)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3366, accessed 8 Aug 2014]).