Robert Plot was born in December 1640 and baptized on 13 December, which many have quite reasonably taken to be his birthday. Plot lived a remarkable life, becoming first Keeper of the Ashmolean, Oxford’s first professor of Chemistry and the secretary of the Royal Society, and happily taking on the appellation of “the learned Dr. Plot.”
His book The Natural History of Oxford-shire of 1676, addressed to King Charles II, is almost as impressive as its author. Amongst its many noteworthy passages is the first known description of a dinosaur bone, though Plot did not know what exactly he was detailing.
Come we next to such as concern the Members of the Body: Amongst which, I have one dug out of a quarry in the Parish of Cornwell, and given me by the ingenious Sir Thomas Pennyston, that has exactly the Figure of the lowermost part of the Thigh-Bone of a Man or at least of some other Animal…
CONNECT
This is so neat! The digitized volume is HERE.
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