"The progress of our spring, to the middle of March, I persuade myself will be acceptable to my dear baron. Now I come to thank him for his most acceptable letter of the 8th of October last. I am extremely obliged for your kind intentions to send me the work of works, your Systema Naturae. I hope it will please God to bless my eyes with the sight of it. I feel the distress you must be under with the fire. I am glad, next to your own and family's safety, that you saved your papers and books. By this time I hope all is settled and in order; so pray now, at your leisure, employ some expert pupil to search into the origin of the nectarine; who are the first authors that mention how and when it was first introduced into the European gardens. It is strange and marvellous, that a peach should naturally produce or bear nectarines, a fruit so different, as well in its exterior coat as flavour, from a peach; and yet this nectarine will produce a nectarine from the stone, and not a peach. This remarkable instance is from a tree of a nectarine raised from a stone in my own garden, which last autumn had several dozen of fruit on it, finely ripened. For more particulars I refer to my last letter. Pray tell me who Perses was, what countryman, and who is the author that relates his introducing peaches into the European gardens? "That bats as well as flies lie as dead all winter is true; but they do not change elements, and go and live all that time under water. Swallows cannot do it without a provision and contrivance for that end, which it becomes your great abilities to find out; for it is not sufficient to assert, but to demonstrate the internal apparatus God Almighty has wonderfully contrived for a flying animal, bred on the land and in the air, to go voluntarily under water, and live there for so many months. Besides, we are not informed which species lives under water, as there are four species. You, my dear friend, have raised my admiration, and that of all my curious acquaintance; for we never heard before that mushrooms were of an animal nature, and that their eggs are hatched in water. We must suspend gratifying our curiosity until this phenomenon is more particularly explained to us here. Dr Solander is also a stranger to it. Very probably some account has been published in the Swedish tongue; if that is sent to Solander, then we shall be made acquainted with the discovery.