Letter 0406

Ray thanks Sloane for the information he sent, but he cannot make use of it until his own work is published, ‘lest I should in any measure prejudice the sale’. Ray is certain Sloane cleared up the obscurities in Hernandez’s work and would like to see the result. He believes ‘the six last volumes of the Hortus Nababaricus & Plumiers first Vol.’ have been published, but he has not seen them yet. Ray has been reading ‘a little Treatise concerning the Method of Plants’ which is ‘an answer to wt Monsr Tournefort hath objected against’. He is working on his History of Insects and his wife sends her best. 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]).