I have your favour of the 25th of last month. While you are employed in affairs of consequence to the public I must submit to the Want of that pleasure which I allwise receive from your letters. You will oblige me much by a Copy of your Treaty with the Ohio Indians as I hope thereby to see that you are pursueing the Brittish interest among the Indians while it seems to be too much neglected in this Province.

We have at present no law in this Province for restraining the Trade to Canada except that by which a Duty is laid on Indian goods sold out of the City of Albany and applied for support of the Garison at Oswego. It is certain that a very considerable Trade is carried on between Albany and Canada by means of the Cachnuaga or French Indians all of them deserters from the Five Nations. When I was last at Albany there was at least 200 of them stout young fellows at one time in the Town. In this trade the Duty is evaded which the other Traders with Indians pay. The Indians have passports from the Government of Canada and I therefrom conclude that this Trade is thought beneficial to the French Interest and it may be great inducement to our Indians to desert by the benefite they receive from it for none are allowed to be the carriers between Albany and Canada but French Indians.

I shall be in a longing expectation of seeing Mr. Bowdoin’s observations on my book. Mr. Collinson sent me some remarks made on it by Professor Euler of Berlin. He writes much like a Pedant highly conceited of himself. Mr. Collinson has receiv’d my answer which he proposed to communicate to Lord Macclesfield and others who take some notice of my book. Tho’ I have several letters from Mr. Collinson he makes no mention of having receiv’d the Answer to Professor Kastner which you sent him. In his last of the 15th of Septr. he tells me that you had obliged them with 3 curious papers on

The Increase of Mankind

The Properties and Phaenomena of the Air and

The present State of the Germans in America.

I may hope to have the pleasure in a litle time of reading them as there is nothing from you which I do not read with much pleasure. When Mr. Bartram brought the papers from you which I now send back I was at New York thinking my self obliged to give my attendance there on my having received a long letter from the Earl of Halifax in July last in which he did me the honour of expressing himself with some esteem for me which I have the more reason to value on its being wrote after a mature consideration of our publick transactions. The great and unexpected changes which have happened since have unavoidably imployed my thoughts. The result I hope will leave me at ease in retirement. I could not therefor read your papers with attention till after my last return from New York about 4 weeks since. You will find inclosed what occurred to my thoughts in reading of them. Our knowlege in Meteorology is very defective. I have great expectations of the improvements you will make in it.

I receiv’d the Abbe Nollets letters only on Saturday last since which there has not been time to read them. I find none of these publick Teachers can bear to have their dictates to their Schollars contradicted or that any should be capable of acquiring knowlege without their assistance. The most unexpected remarks on my book I receiv’d lately with a letter from Saml. Pike a person entirely unknown to me with a book he has lately published entituled Philosophia Sacra wherein he attempts to deduce the Principles of Physiology from the Hebrew Bible. He tells me that my Principles come nearest to the divine Standard and that my first litle essay lead him to the true meaning of several parts of the bible of any that have yet appeared. If his book had not come with his letter I should have suspected him to be a Wag. His remarks on the Principles of Action fill about 20 pages of the Book. He concludes with these Words “Thus the Substance of What Mr. Colden asserts is regularly and mechanically explained by the Principles of revelation: and his Thoughts upon Philosophy are found to be an unexpected and undesigned confirmation of the philosophy of Scripture.” However his book has not increased my vanity much.