Peder Ascanius is sorry that he has not answered Carl Linnaeus the Younger’s letter regarding Linnaeus’s death, his own learned teacher. But Ascanius lives so far away that he has almost stopped writing letters.
Ascanius is sorry that he has almost survived himself. In the end Isaac Newton did not know even his own science. Thus youth is beautiful, manhood is pleasant but old age is a nuisance to everybody. Thirty years ago learned people mostly devoted themselves to studies in natural history. But sciences change all the time. Joseph Priestley and Antoine de Lavoisier have made great progress in chemistry. Johan Carl Wilcke has made discoveries related to fire.
Marcus Elieser Bloch in Berlin studies fishes [Ascanius refers to Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische]. 40 illustrations are already published and there are 60 more to come. He might send some to Bloch to be published in Berlin. Ascanius fears that Johan Gottschalk Wallerius is the only one of his friends in Uppsala that is still alive. Ascanius has recently read Wallerius’s ”Verldenes danande” [Ascanius refers to Tankar om verldenes, i synnerhet jordenes, danande och ändring], which he enjoyed.
Ascanius’s letter will be delivered through Count Smettau [Smaettau] and Johan Thomas Horneman who will go to Stockholm. If it is possible for Linnaeus the Younger to send him some copies of Nova Literaria [Ascanius refers to the transactions of the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala, Kungliga Vetenskaps-Societeten i Uppsala, i.e. Nova acta], they can be sent to Peder Stammer, merchant in Stockholm, who can send them on to Peder Falk in Trondheim.