Four days later, on July 6, Jefferson wrote to Francis Hopkinson in Philadelphia: “ . . . Having slipped the opportunity of sending copies of my Notes for yourself, & m( ^~ r) Rittenhouse when D ^r. Franklin’s baggage went, I am doubtful whether he can take them with him. if he can you shall receive them by him; if not, then by the first good opportunity. I am obliged to pray that they may not be permitted to get into the hands of the public till I know whether they will promote or retard certain reformations in my own country. I have written to m ( ^~ r) Madison to inform me on that head . . .”

On September 1, in a long letter to the Rev. J. Madison of Williamsburg, Jefferson mentioned: “ . . . I am anxious to hear from you on the subject of my notes on Virginia. I have been obliged to give so many of them here that I fear their getting published . . . ”

On September 25, at the end of a letter to Francis Hopkinson in Philadelphia, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . I have sometimes thought of sending a copy of my Notes to the Philosophical society as a tribute due to them: but this would seem as if I considered them as worth something, which I am conscious they are not. I will not ask you for your advice on this occasion because it is one of those on which no man is authorized to ask a sincere opinion. I shall therefore refer it to further thoughts. ”

Hopkinson replied to this in a letter dated March 8, 1786: “. . . I think it would be very proper for you to send a copy of your Notes on Virginia to the Philosophical Society, & not amiss if you would present another copy to our City Library . . .”

Jefferson replied from Paris on August 14: “ . . . I will send, as you propose, copies of my Notes to the Philosophical society and the City library as soon as I shall have received a map which I have constructed for them, & which is now engraving. this will be a map of the country from Albemarle sound to Lake Erie, as exact as the materials hitherto published would enable me to make it, & brought into a single sheet . . . ”

In spite of this it would seem that Jefferson did not send a copy to the American Philosophical Society until May 2, 1805, on which day he wrote to John Vaughan, the Treasurer: “ In your letter of Nov. 16. you express a desire to obtain for the Philosophical society an early edition of my Notes on Virginia. I found, when lately at Monticello, a single copy remaining of the original edition printed at Paris, the only one almost perfectly correct, & which never was sold, a few copies only having been printed & given to my friends. I have put this into a box addressed to m ( ^~ r) Peale, and gone round by sea, by Cap ^t Hand, for the use of the society . . . ”

This letter is endorsed by Vaughan: Jefferson. Wash ⁿ. May 2, 1805. Donation of his Notes on Virginia.

On September 8, 1785, Gysbert Karel Van Hogendorp wrote from Breda to Jefferson: “. . . The Notes on Virginia, with a few lines on the first leave of the volume, I received three weeks ago, and intended to express my gratitude to You, and at the same time to communicate you some reflexions, as soon as I would have read them. This I have not done yet entirely, and therefore I beg leave to entertain you another time more extensively on that subject. Now I’ll restrain myself to the article of natural history only, which from its accuracy, and good reasoning, will please every reader. You perhaps recollect, dear Sir, that I told you once in Annapolis, I never read Paaw philosophical researches respecting the Americans. I have got that book soon after my returning home, but impossible it was to me to peruse more than one third of it; so absurd did it appear to me. I conceive that on the borders of the Ocean, perhaps recently freed from the overflowing sea, the low lands of North America, on their first detection by european navigators, may have been more favorable to the breeding of Insects and serpents than of Quadrupeds, as all swampy lands are; but why is nature smaller, or rather less great, in the forming of one animal than of another? And now, after the metamorphosis of your country, which settlements, as they always do, have rendered wholesome to men, and even dangerous to wild and offensive beasts, now, I say, is there any vestige remaining of Nature’s unkindness towards man? Did not I see as great and good cattle in New-England, though ”