Letter 0495

Ray thanks Sloane for providing botanical specimens for his work. He is returning the specimens he is finished with. Ray informs Sloane that he is largely done his Supplements, except for the section on dendrology. He would like to send it to Sloane to read over the parts that relate to Jamaican flora. Ray laments that he does not live in London and cannot go view the plants in the gardens. Math deductions are present on fol. 48, written in Sloane’s hand. 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]).