To Benjamin Franklin from Charles Blagden, 10 July 1783
From Charles Blagden
AL: American Philosophical Society
Thursday July 10. [1783]
Dr. Blagden presents his Compliments to Dr Franklin, & begs He will do him the honour of accepting two papers printed in the Philosophical Transactions since the time Dr Franklin has received any of the volumes. That part which contains the Report upon the accident at Heckingham is not yet published.9 Dr B. has not forgot the commission he undertook to procure all the volumes due to Dr Franklin, & will make it his first business upon his return to London
Addressed: Dr. Franklin.
9. Blagden’s journal entry for July 10 notes that he sent to Le Roy “Gulf Stream and Heckingham for Dr. Franklin” (Yale University Library). Le Roy must have delivered the present cover letter along with the two papers. The first was Blagden’s “On the Heat of the Water in the Gulf-Stream …,” published in Phil. Trans., LXXI (1781), 334–44. The second was an account of a lightning strike co-written for the Royal Society by Blagden and Nairne, the latter of whom had already sent BF a detailed account in MS (see XXXVII, 150–1n). “Proceedings Relative to the Accident by Lightning at Heckingham” appeared in Part II of the Phil. Trans. for 1782, which was not published until the end of 1783: Critical Rev., LVI (1783), 410. The imprint Blagden sent to BF was a pamphlet of the same title published by J. Nichols; BF’s copies of it and the Gulf Stream article are at the Hist. Soc. of Pa.