Letter 4198

Dale writes about Sloane’s answers to his queries on materia medica things and he would like to ask a few further questions. He asks about two barks and would like Sloane to describe them to him so he can tell which is the kind he has. He also asks about a root Sloane has in his History of Jamaica and mentions some Italian earths that are a mystery to him. 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]).