Dear Sir

Dec^r 2[...] 1791.

I am very sorry to have my suspicions confirmed: for such is your punctuality that I was certain that illness interrupted our correspondence. Let me beg to You & miss Bulls¹ to accept my best wishes that you may enjoy many returns of the season un-embitterd with sickness or the tender anxious duties which such circumstances call forth. I esteem your early thoughts of me on Symptoms of returning health a very particular mark of y^r friendship. I accept the prints of shipping with many thanks & request they may be sent to M^r Mazel No. 7 Bridges street Convent Garden who has a parcel ready for me.

I have sent my journey from London to Dover to be bound in vellum by a treasure of a binder at Denbigh who falls little short on any of y^r celebrated binders: & yet never was further than chester. so extensively have the arts spread. Y^r Copy is almost ready & shall be sent the moment it is completed. Moses can do no more to it than furnish a frontespiece. I suppose you would have him ornament the margin of the zoological part of the arctic Zoology² with birds & beasts which he can do well. let sickness or age attack us we must beguile both with innocent amusements.

I return with thanks the Balloon. If I read right or if the printing on the back refers to it: the balls were made of copper: such a ^metallic system was thought of by Baldwyn of Chester the Balloonist of that city. but his Balls were to made of the matter with which mock-silver plate is made. Pray look into Gentle mans mag. vol. LIV. 245. 329.³ By which you will see that the art of Ballooning I mean its principles were known 2000 years ago. I shall be happy to hear of y^r perfect recovery: but not I entreat you exert yourself on that or on any other motive on my account.

I am with truest regard
Dear Sir
affec^tly y^rs

Tho. Pennant

Be so good as to make my best Complim^ts to Gen. Rainsford. I suppose Storer is still at Bath.

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Editorial notes

1. Elizabeth and Catherine Bull.
2. It is not entirely clear on which version of Arctic zoology Bull was working. In view of previous references to the printing of the zoological part in 1118 and 1124, it may be fair to assume that the earliest printed examples of the second edition of 1792 is meant.
3. See letter from 'Adurfl' in Gentleman's Magazine, LIV, part i (1784), 245–6, where it is contested that 'The principle at least on which it [the Air Balloon] is constructed, appears to have been known above two thousand years ago'; and a letter from 'An Old Westminster' in ibid., 329, sending 'a remarkable passage out of Aulus Gellius . . . which seems to make it probable, that the principle of modern air-balloons was in some degree at least known to the ancients'.