ABSTRACT
The printed edition of Henry Oldenburg letters reveal that certain specific texts, the so-called “inquiries for natural history” of the Royal Society, often appeared side by side with the epistles. The inquiries for natural history were devices for the structured gathering of information; the Royal Society of London started to produce them almost immediately after its establishment in 1660. They took the form of questionnaires meant to guide those observing natural history when they were away from London and without direct assistance from the Society. The very structures of Henry Oldenburg letters were often created by a “cut-and-paste” technique, in which he combined his own sentences with extracts from letters to him and other pieces of texts. Besides offering the printed instructions, Henry Oldenburg also listed a series of specific questions on Turkey and Levant; it was, basically, the same material provided to Finch.
