Letter 0422

Ray hopes Sloane and Plukenet resolve their differences. He was struck by Sloane’s account ‘concerning the fruits gathered in plenty on ye shores of the N. West Islands of Scotland’ which he had seen in the Philosophical Transactions previously. He did not believe the story at first, but Sloane has convinced him otherwise. He still has doubts: ‘It is very unlikely to me that they should be brought so far by any current of the sea. I should rather think they came from vessels cast away by shipwreck near those parts.’ Thus, Ray does not consider the debate on the origin of these mysterious fruits to be settled. 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]).