Letter 2292

Dale asks for ‘Mr Buddles Plants and Manuscripts’, as Sloane promised to lend them to him but has not followed through. He asks if he may purchase duplicate copies of books from Petiver’s collection, which Sloane had bought. 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]).