558 Account of the late Mr, JVillmn Martin^ F.L.S. [Jan, I, 
of Bolton’s letters to Mr. Martin have 
been preserved, and furnished informa¬ 
tion upon various points, whicti could 
not now be obtained from any other 
source. 
It appears, from this correspondence, 
that Mr. M. was accustomed to consult 
his old master concerning every publica¬ 
tion which he projected ; and, indeed, 
upon every material step he intended to 
take. On all these occasions he received 
the best and jnost disinterested advice. 
The following short extract, from one of 
Bolton’s letters, may very properly be 
introduced here, as expressive of his re¬ 
gard and good wishes for his former pu¬ 
pil, and of the encouragement held out 
to him. “ My mind has long suggested 
to, me, that you will see good days. I 
hope they aie now arriving. Persevere 
in that modesty, truth, and industry, 
which I have valued in you ever since I 
l^newyou; and, above all, be a friend 
and guardian to your mother in her de¬ 
clining a^e.”—An instance of his kind- 
ness w'ill appear in an extract from ano¬ 
ther letter.—“ If you have done with 
Da Costa, you may send it by the wag¬ 
gon, but pay not the carriage. If you 
want it longer, keep it. As to what lit¬ 
tle money you owe me, if it will in the 
least distress you, don’t send it. I have 
just got a draft for Fungi, which will be 
beef for me till Christmas.”—Mr. Mar- 
delicacy would not allovv him to ob¬ 
serve his friend’s injunction on this 
occasion. He not only paid the car¬ 
riage, but paid for tlie binding of the 
volume, which subjected him to a re- 
7 V4 - 
proof in a subsequent letter. 
This correspondence was not without 
its advantages to Bolton, for Mr. Mar¬ 
tin’s ingenuity, in the execution of his 
engravings, ejiabled him to furnish his 
friend occasionally vvith useful hints and 
directions, Neither of them being en¬ 
gravers by profession, the mutual corn- 
inunlcation of their failures and successes 
in the management of their copper¬ 
plates, must have been very useful to 
both. Bolton was frequently too |.)ro- 
fuse, or too sparing, in the application 
of the aqua-fortis, which, to use his own 
phrases,'eiilier bit too much or too lit¬ 
tle, and he always related his blundeis 
and disappnintnients very humorously, 
Jiis plates were often jogging to Lon?' 
^on, in the waggon, to get new faces. 
When ?iir, Martin first engaged in the 
Study of naiuful history, his attention 
was principally directed, if not entirely 
confined, to the animal kingdom ; and 
the first work which he conceived the 
design of publishing, was upon this 
branch of the science. 
As early as the year 1789, he made 
Bolton acquainted with his intention of 
publishing a Zoological Table, on a sin¬ 
gle sheet, to be mounted as a chart, on 
canvas and rollers, who advised him to 
print it on a 4to. form, and to add an 
explanation of terms, with the plates, 
requisite for the illustration of these. 
Tins advice beseems to have determined 
upon adopting, for vve find the following 
title given in one of his MS. volumes ; 
‘^Zoological Tables, exhibiting, in one 
view, the classes, orders, and genera, 
of the animal kingdom, with the de¬ 
pendences and leading characters, ac¬ 
cording to the Linnsan system ; with 
six plates, on which are engraved in 
aquatinta figures, explanatory of the 
characters, on which the orders de¬ 
pend.” 
In these tables, which were never 
completed, it appears that the charac¬ 
ters of the classes, orders, and genera, 
were to have been translated from tliose 
given by Linnaeus, in the 12th edition of 
the Systema Naturae. Not being in pos¬ 
session of this celebrated work, so neces¬ 
sary to every naturalist, he has taken 
the trouble to transcribe the genuine 
characters in the original Latin, and to 
add the names of the species, except in 
those extensive genera of insects, which 
comprehend a vast number of species, 
and here he has only put down the names 
of the divisions, and the numbers of the 
species. In many instances the English 
names and references to Edwards’s 
figures are given. 
It seems that Mr. Martin did not pro¬ 
ceed to publish the Zoological Tables, 
on account of the appearance of the 
new and extended edition of the Sys- 
tema Naturae, by Gmelin, about this 
time; the first part of which was printed 
in the year 1788, though he was not ap¬ 
prised of this edition till 1790. 
lie had afterwards, it would appear, 
an intention of publishing a Fauna Bri- 
tunnicu in the Latin language, extracted 
from Gmelin’s edition of the work men¬ 
tioned above, with references to thq 
plates of Pennant and Bewick, and the 
addition of the English name and size of 
each species of animal. A specimen 
this intended woj-kj fairly transcribed, is 
