Letter 0596

Ray returns all but one of Sloane’s Maryland plants. He hopes he has not damaged them in any way. Ray discusses his work with the plants, which included reorganizing the collection to group similar plants together. He would like to see the ones from the Magellan Strait that Sloane mentioned. He writes of Mr Smith and Mr Willford, his potential publishers. Ray fears that if they do not get enough subscriptions they won’t publish his Supplement. If this is the case, he may have to print it at his own charge. 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]).