Letter 1407

Dale inquires about the progress made regarding the publication of Ray’s manuscript. He informs Sloane that he will soon return a borrowed book and send along some plant specimens. Dale hopes to borrow other books and asks for the Jamaican shells Sloane had promised him. He asks about the author of a botanical treatise. 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]).