Letter 2186

Dale returns some books, including ‘Mercurius Bot. [by Johnson] Iter Cant. and Erictum Hampsted […] Mr Buddles Collection of English Plants’ and a treatise by ‘Tabernemont’. There is one book in the bundle that was not marked by Sloane. As Sloane marks all his books, Dale believes it does not belong to him and would like to purchase it. 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]).