Letter 0791

Dale will not be able to include Sloane and Petiver’s insects in Ray’s ‘History of Insects’ because he does not have the time. He has transcribed much of Willughby’s work and feels the ‘British Itinerary’ should be published independently. 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]).