Life of Count Rumford. 51 



corresponding to Major Thompson's commission. Mr. 

 Donald McAlpine appears to have been an itinerant 

 practitioner, having pupils at Portsmouth, Newbury- 

 port, and several other places. 



In his essay on his Experiments in Gunpowder, made 

 in England in 1778 and 1779, Thompson speaks of 

 himself as having been " for many years " engaged in 

 practical investigations of that subject. It would ap- 

 pear that thif was his first really scientific labor. The 

 knowledge and skill which he professed when he first 

 experimented abroad are evidences of what he had al- 

 ready done here at Salem, Woburn, and Concord, and 

 afterwards, for a short time, in the camp of the New 

 England forces at Cambridge. 



For a brief interval Thompson comes before us as a 

 gentleman farmer, with a zeal exceeding that of the 

 husbandmen around him who were content to culti- 

 vate native crops. He had broad acres to till, and 

 employed many laborers, among them some deserters, 

 from the British regiments in Boston. 



Here we have Thompson as a farmer. 



" CONCORD, July I7th. 1773. 



" MR. L. BALDWIN, 



u SIR, As I am engaged in husbandry I have a mind to try 

 some experiments in that way, and as my Mother informs me 

 you are about to send to England for some Garden-seeds, 

 against the spring, I should be extremely obliged if you would 

 send the enclosed memorandum (or, rather, a copy of it) to Lon- 

 don, so that I may have the seeds mentioned therein (or as 

 many of them as can be had) as early in the spring as possi- 

 ble. You may depend upon the cash for them as soon as they 

 arrive, together with an ample reward for your trouble and ex- 

 penses. 



" Please to write for them to come as soon as possible, for I 



