Three days previously, Linnaeus had received Domenico Vandelli’s letter of 13 January 1760{L2655}, and he thanks Vandelli for that.
He also thanks for the box of specimens that had arrived from Vandelli through Emanuel Treu. He will be pleased to be able to make Vandelli a similar service in return.
Linnaeus gives a few comments on the minerals.
Linnaeus reports that John Ellis had sent him an incomplete description of the zoophyton six months previously but that only Vandelli’s descriptions could help Linnaeus to understand the species. Linnaeus asks for permission to publish Vandelli’s description in the Acta societatis regiae scientiarum Upsaliensis[nothing by Vandelli was published there, where there was also an intermission in the publishing from 1751 to 1772].
Linnaeus compares Vandelli’s labours in the Apennines with his own journey to Lapland.
Linnaeus is surprised and sorry that no Italian flora has been published, for that by Liberato Sabbati is inadequate [Linnaeus refers to the Synopsis plantarum]. It mixes exotic species with indigenous ones and is unreliable in the determinations.
Linnaeus asks about a gnat living in fig trees that has been described by Giulio Pontedera.
Carl Alexander Clerck is busy drawing and painting butterflies for Linnaeus [Linnaeus refers to the Icones insectorum rariorum ]. He has already completed 120 moths that Linnaeus had already included in his Systema naturae, and is now working on more than 100 butterflies from India, part of the Queen’s [Lovisa Ulrika] museum. He does them all in their natural colours.
Linnaeus wants Vandelli to observe and report on the leafing in a number of tree species in Italy, just as botanists in Montpellier have done [the botanist Linnaeus must have had in mind was François Boissier de La Croix Sauvages and his Methodus foliorum, seu plantae florae Monspeliensis]. The length of the summer can easily be calculated from those data.
John Ray had seen a bird in Florence, called Spipoleta. Linnaeus wonders what species that can be.
Pehr Forsskål, now in Copenhagen, is going to Arabia, just like Vitaliano Donati.
In Lapland, there is an insect that attacks cattle and people. It attacks bare skin from above and often kills its victim within a quarter of an hour.