Letter 0975

Dale informs Sloane that Ray died on Wednesday the 17th at 10:00 a.m. ‘But our loss is without a doubt his gain; God grant we may meet him above, where death can no more separate’. 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]).