| Description | (Directed to Johann Christian Wiegleb's.)
My dear Son,
A whole month is past and I have receiv'd no letter from you, not one since yours of the 18 December. This is not begining the new year as I could have wished. It is impossible to keep the thread of my correspondence entire when there are such long intervalls, and if you wish to hear of the welfare of Soho it must be in consequence of your own letters to it. There are some questions in my former letters which you have not answer'd, although necessary for my future guidance. I will now say little upon the subject, but leave it to your own reflections.
Mr. Collins goes to the next Franckfort fair, and will be there on the 1st of April. If he can make it convenient to his plan, he will call upon you and see what progress you have made in the rational and polite arts of playing at cards and smoaking tobacco.
You may tell Mr. Wigleb that water is much faster decomposed by passing the steam of it through a red hot earthen tube fill'd with broken pieces of such earthen tube in order to encrease the surface, than by the electrick spark, as mention'd in my last, Dr. Priestly, at the request of our Lunar Society, haveing made the experiment and obtain'd a pint of air, which explodes similar to a mixture of inflamable and dephlogisticated air, and may thus be obtain'd in quantities.
I have now got a pretty good stock of terra ponderosa aerata, some of which I will send you by the way of Holland.
Count Reden was here all last week. He hath been traviling all over England and Scotland to gain usefull knowledge, such as all the mechanical, chymical, and metalugical arts and manufactures. Young Baron Reden he hath left at Edinburg, where he is studying chymistry under Dr. Black, and mathematicks and natural philosophy under Dr. Robinson. He also is learning to make iron by all our new methods with pit coal, and every Saturday he strips off his coat and works in an iron foundry at Leath, where he moulds iron pipes and performs every other work done in the foundry.
The Count hath made good use of his time, for he now posseses more knowledge of our manufactures than any of his masters, which could only be accomplish'd by perseverence and unremiting application. I wish you to make reprisals in Germany, and to bring back as much knowledge of their manufactures. The Count hath the management of the King of Prusia's iron works in Silesia at Breslau. I intended giveing you some letters to different persons and places, but I am a stranger to your motions.
I expect to go to London this month to sign the contract for the coinage.
I have wrote to your friend at Leipzig and desired him to come here as soon as he can, and if I cannot find him a situation more eligable than my own, I will find employ for him in my counting house at Birmingham, but to live at Soho or near it.
Your sister and every body desire their love to you, and I remain your very affectionate father,
Mattw. Boulton
[Edited transcript.][Priestley] |