Letter 0404

Ray received ‘the 3 Tribes’ Sloane sent him. He is eager to peruse and send them back before winter comes. The cold weather makes it difficult for him to write. Ray has not heard ‘of the reservatory of water made by the disposition of ye leaves of the Viscum Caryophlloides’ Sloane mentioned in his last letter. His wife sends her best to Sloane. 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]).