Thomas Pennant to David Skene

10 November 1769

ID: 0395 [see the .xml file]
Identifier: Aberdeen University Library, Special Collections MS 483, 58-59
Notes:

Transcribed from a volume of scribal copies of Pennant's original letters to David Skene. The copies are likely the work of Alexander Thomson, who on his death in 1868, bequeathed the collection to Aberdeen University Library. See Colin A. McLaren, ‘Reports and surveys of archives in northern Scotland’ in Northern Scotland: A Historical Journal, Volume 1 (1972), pp.115-125.
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Cite: 'Thomas Pennant to David Skene 10 November 1769' in Curious Travellers Digital Editions [editions.curioustravellers.ac.uk/doc/0395]

Dear Sir

I deferred answering your obliging favour till the receipt of the box but that being still on its road I would no longer defer my thanks for the account you favour me with of the Stocking Trade. Be so good in your next to give me ^the number of inhabitants in Aberdeen; also the price of Provisions of all sorts fowls &c. in your market with the number of ozs. that go to a pound in Beef, and Mutton and the like. My object is accuracy in what I mean to publish.1

To show you I have not been idle inclosed are two engravings for the next 50 plates the lowest fig. of the birds furnishing one with a pretence of mentioning my good friend Doctor Skene,2when you have done with them please to send them with my respects to Sir Archibald Grant that he may see I merit by my activity the loan of his snake. Mr. Professor Oglevie who has been so kind as to promise me a box will I dare say be so good as to put the snake into it. I trouble you to forward the inclosed to him.3

I will not anticipate my account of my journey after I left Aberdeen, for as much as I can lug into the explanation of my 50 plates, shall be given there.

If anything new occurs in the natural history way let me hope for its being communicated. I flatter myself I shall often have that pleasure. Let me add one more trouble that of the prices of the paving granite as put on board.

I am Dear Sir with
True regard
Your obliged and
most obedient servant

Thomas Pennant

Novr. 10th. 1769. Downing.

Editorial notes

1. Pennant's description of Aberdeen in his Tour in Scotland 1769 incorporates information on the price of provisions, probably provided by Skene: see 3rd edition (Warrington: 1774), pp.136-140.
2. See British Zoology Illustrated by Plates and Brief Explanations (Chester: 1770), Plate XIX. (engravings of a Little Auk and Auk), and Pennant's note: 'I met with it in the cabinet of Doctor David Skene, at Aberdeen, shot on the coast about twenty miles north of that city, in the spring of the year', p.24.
3. The snake is described and identified as Linneaus's Anguis Eryx in both an appendix to the Tour in Scotland 1769 (Chester: 1771), pp.281-82, and in Pennant's 'Caledonian Zoology', included in John Lightfoot's Flora Scotica (London: 1777), pp.48-49.