Letter 0985

Dale is thankful that Sloane believes him capable of finishing Ray’s ‘History of Insects’. He will do so in service of the public and Mrs Ray, but he can only edit the English portions of the text. Once he is done cataloguing Ray’s library of more than 1000 books he will send it to Sloane. 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]).