1773.] T0 JOHN BART RAM. 453 



You will please to draw for the balance, whenever it suits you ; 

 and the sooner, the more agreeable to, rny dear sir, your most affec- 

 tionate friend and servant, 



Michael Colllnson. 



Manchester Buildings, January 8th, 1773. 



Dear Sir : 



Your kind favour of the 11th of November last is now before me, 

 the contents of which, however, equally surprise and concern me, 

 in finding that neither of the two letters I troubled you with, of 

 the 6th March and 11th June have come to hand, which I am in- 

 deed astonished at ; as I delivered them both, myself, at the post- 

 office, which conveyance I never found fail before, in any letter 

 either, sir, to you or my friend Cadr. Coldex of New York : and 

 till your present favour, I have not, my dear friend, heard a single 

 tittle from you since the 17th December, 1771, to which I had long 

 since replied. 



This present scrawl shall be conveyed from the Pennsylvania 

 Coffee-house, which may possibly be the surest mode of conveyance. 



With regard to my letters, in point of consequence, they are less 

 than nothing. On the contrary, yours, sir, are invaluable. Your 

 sentiments are original, ingenious, and to the last degree pertinent, 

 on the subjects on which they treat. They were held in a manner 

 sacred by my dearest father ; nor is their consequence sunk in the 

 hands of his son, by whom they are considered as an inestimable 

 treasure of American Natural History. 



Though I never take any copies of my own insignificant epistles 

 to my friends, yet I always memorandum the date of my letters to 

 them, or the day they are consigned to the office ; which makes me 

 positive to the above, which have somehow strangely miscarried. 

 * :;: * Your ingenious idea respecting the former exist- 



ence of certain kinds of animals, now extinct, I confess carries great 

 weight with it, and yet, my dear sir, I cannot implicitly give my 

 assent to it, in the whole. With regard to the Unicorn, I am 

 rather divided in my judgment, even in respect to their present 

 existence, in the interior region of Africa, of which, at this period, 

 we are extremely ignorant. I have an old History of Abyssinia, 

 that speaks positively to the fact ; and there are other authorities 

 on record, if they deserve credit, that support the same opinion. 



