Letter 0575

Ray apologizes for making such slow progress on his work. He has been adding Hermann and Boccone’s work into his Supplement. He would like to meet Krieg and Vernon before taking notes from them. Ray discusses his latest botanical observations and his notes on caterpillars and beetles. He would like to do more, but his ‘glass is almost out’, and he is in too much pain to so. 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]).