Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer, Göttingen, [Germany], to James Edward Smith, 12 Marlborough Street, London

Summary

Requests information on the new species of 'Hystrix' [ie. Echidna] from New South Wales, no information in Captain [John] Hunter's "Voyages to New Holland". Using [Arthur] Phillip's and [John] White's "voyages" and [John] Latham's "Index ornithologicus" to communicate zoological finds from New Holland to his colleagues; details of a German translation of latter work. Smith's desciption of 'Bradypus ursinus' published by de Luc in "Rozier's Physical Journal" May 1792; [Jean-Claude] de la Métherie has made a poor figure of it in his ["Journal de Physique"], requests further descriptions of it. Smith's "disciple" Townson said there is a new Swedish edition of Linnaeus' "Fauna Suecica", asks if Smith is working on it and whether he is including the new insects from the Linnaean collections published in [Dietrich Heinrich] Stoever's biography of Linnaeus. Himself and [Heinrich Adolph] Schrader had planned a German translation of "Linnean Transactions" but preempted by Dr Reich of Leipzig, who has no zoological or botanical knowledge.

Letter details

Record number

LINNEAN3124

From

Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer

To

Sir James Edward Smith

Date

4 Jul 1793

Sent from

Göttingen, Germany

Sent to

London

Source of text

GB-110/JES/COR/7/72, The Linnean Society of London

Language

English

Contributor

The Linnean Society of London[View Ɛpsilon collection]

Also published in The Correspondence of Sir James Edward Smith, The Linnean Society's Archive Catalogue.

• Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer
• Sir James Edward Smith