Letter 1096

Dale writes that there has been a misunderstanding. He received the plants, but he wanted to wait until Sloane had named them before viewing them. As such, he sends them back. Dale hopes Sloane got Willoughby’s papers. He has sent Mr Thorp an addition to Ray’s ‘Historia Insectorum’. Mr Doody’s death has dashed his hopes of seeing his finished work. Samuel Dale was an apothecary, botanist, and physician who contributed several articles to the Philosophical Transactions. He was John Ray’s executor and good friend, and from Dale’s letters to Sloane we learn many details of Ray’s final moments (G. S. Boulger, Dale, Samuel (bap. 1659, d. 1739), rev. Juanita Burnby, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7016, accessed 5 July 2013]).