430 LETTERS. 
how much free gifts from Swedes can contribute 
to the encreafe of Science. 
The news you were pleafed to favour me with, 
from the botanical world, were as many refrefh- 
ments to me in a country, which inftead of Eu- 
phorbus’s, Mefues and Avicennas, is filled with a 
number of Fortune-tellers, and {trolling quacks, 
and where, inftead of the Alexandrian Library, 
one fees millions of murdering labres and pikes : 
a country, in which a traveller has need of all the 
comfort he can get, I lament the death of the 
Librarian Mr. Norrelius ; 1 had feveral conferences 
with this learned man before my departure, about 
the animals mentioned in the fcriprures, in which 
he had great knowledge : I wifh I could have con- 
tinued them to him after my return, when I hope 
to have fome knowledge in that matter as a Natu- 
ral Hiftorian. The great age of Do&or Celfius 
puts me in fear, that I (hall likewife lofe the ad- 
vantage 1 wifh to have, at my return, to fubmit to 
this great man’s judgment, the obfervations I have 
made on the fcripture plants. 
I hope that my defcriptions of, and obfervations 
on, the Cornucopia* (horn of plenty grafs) Panor- 
fa Coa Cervus Camelopardalis , (camel deer,) Mus 
Jaculus (jumping moufe), &c &c. which I had 
the honour to fend you from time to time, partly 
from Smyrna, partly from Egypt, have come 
fafe to hand. The Herpes aleppina , the hiflory 
of which I fenttothe King’s Phyfician, Dr. Bsck, 
is a very remarkable endemical difeafe in Aleppo, 
and I believe not yet taken notice of by any Phy- 
fician. The attention, which I know the Royal 
Academy of Sciences paid to the obfervations 
made in feveral places about the decreafe of the 
fea, hath encouraged me to fend my opinion of lC 
