Letter 0492

Ray outlines his work with a number of different plant samples as of late and relates a story of a group of Irish boys collecting a certain kind of root after mistaking it for another while fishing. One of the boys became violently ill upon ingesting it. Ray also relates an anecdote of a Dutchman poisoned by ingesting these plants. Ray was a theologian and naturalist who collected and catalogued his botanical findings in the much lauded Historia plantarum (1686, 1688) (Scott Mandelbrote, Ray , John (16271705), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23203, accessed 18 June 2013]).