I'm grateful to several people already for help with this question, including Linda Rowe, Jon Kukla, and, especially, Bland Whitley, at the Jefferson Papers.

	Bland tells me that their files show that Douglass Adair, Lyman Butterfield, and Julian Boyd discussed the letters by Academicus.  They were inclined to discount all the letters but one (August 5, 1773)--that one Butterfield and Boyd were about to publish in Vol.I of the Papers, but then (December 8, 1949) decided that Samuel Henley was the more probable or, at the least, the equally likely author.   Adair agreed no definitive attribution was possible.

	But I'm now inclined to think that that one letter may well have been by Jefferson, and am working on a piece considering that question (pro and con; would be happy to see discussion here, which I'll duly acknowledge).

	The letter

				http://research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/VirginiaGazette/VGImagePopup.cfm?ID=3685&Res=HI

does seem to be in a different voice, more Jeffersonian in tone and scope, than the other letters by Academicus.   And it's seemingly written by someone removed from Williamsburg or someone perhaps just returned to Williamsburg, someone who has apparently only recently seen the May 1773 issue of the VG which he mentions.  

	I don't think Henley can have written the letter--Robert Doares' helpful article

				http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Autumn03/society.cfm

makes it clear Henley was already an officer of the Philosophical Society, as announced in that May issue.  The future Bishop Madison might still be a candidate, but presumably also having been involved from the start he too would seem unlikely to write as the author does.

	tlm



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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia  23187              757-221-3932

		http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/   

		http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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