From:
Alexander Adair
To:
unknown recipient
Date:
15 November 1783
Source of text:
L&P/8/82, Royal Society
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Royal Society
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Offers specimens for Smith and Banks; proposed establishment of a local Linnean Society; his correspondence with Linnaeus; desiderata.
Sends letter for Banks and list of desiderata; offers exchange.
Thanks for specimens; requires "Sparrmannia" to be engraved with Tournier's portrait of Sparrman; progress of his work.
Thanks for specimens; his "Genera" completed; foundation of Linnean Society
Viborg visiting London; presents Smith with his "Genera".
The genera 'Turrea' and 'Passiflora'.
Introduces Viborg; has finished work on 'Passifloraceae'.
Requests copy of Smith's "De Generatione". Does Smith know in what [Peter Simon] Pallas published about discovering the hearing organs of crayfish. Has translated [John] Hunter's "Memoir on the Digestion" [(1728-1793), surgeon], as well received as Hunter's "Animal economy" and work on venereal diseases. Plans to publish third, fourth, and fifth volumes of his own "Annotations Anatomiques" this year.
Still awaiting the works Smith sent, in addition requests transcription of [Johan Christian] Fabricius' 1783 memoir on the hearing of insects and tracings of the plates for his own work. Congratulations on establishment of Linnean Society, gratified by invitation to join. Highlights errors in [Lazzaro] Spallanzani's [(1729-1799), Italian physiologist] work on digestion by comparing it with [John] Hunter's [(1728-1793), surgeon] memoir on same. Chair of Chemistry and Botany at University of Pavia still vacant since death of [Giovanni Antonio] Scopoli.
[On separate folio] List of plant names, possibly in a different hand, no reference to this in the rest of the letter.
Thanks for the tracings from [Johan Christian] Fabricius' 1783 memoir on the hearing of insects; notes that Fabricus does not seem to have looked into the internal structure of the hearing organs of crayfish. Notes a dissertation by Mr Minasi titled "Dissertazione dei Timpanetti dell'udito scoperti nel Granchio Paguro" (1775) that may predate Fabricius' work. [Giovanni Antonio] Scopoli's successor at University of Pavia is Brusatti, previously Professor of Chemistry at the Theresian College in Vienna.
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Translating Pulteney's work on Linnaeus and adding a supplement of vindication.
Shortly leaving for Connaught [Connacht, Ireland], hopes to be more successful with his natural history researches than on his last visit. Asks after a "Flora Hibernica" he believes he heard of in London. Extract from unnamed book recently published in Ireland on discovery of elk antlers and skeleton in 1783 on the "sea lands of the Bishop of Dromore". Encloses drawing [not extant] of a "Borer" insect causing damage to West Indies sugar canes as the Hessian fly does in America, sent larvae to [Thomas] Marsham.
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