CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 79 



on purpose by the animal to facilitate his flight, and not 

 accidental (which I am the more apt to believe, because 

 very rare), I shall be forward to return Dr. Hulse my 

 particular thanks ; but, as I writ to Mr. Oldenburgh, he 

 might very well mistake many threads shot at a time (as 

 is usual with many spiders, more or less), for one thread 

 divided and forked, or, as Blancanus in Redi says, ramose, 

 woolly, or from which many small filaments proceed; 

 which conceit of Blancanus, I am apt to suspect, gave 

 occasion to the Doctor to be of the same belief; but yet 

 for the main, or mostly, as he says, he could not himself 

 find it to be true. I have purposely omitted to insert 

 any inquiries concerning this matter, and the poison of 

 spidersT^rillingly reserving those two particulars for other 

 papers; yet I am most glad to hear what others may 

 more happily and more ingeniously observe and expe- 

 rience. 



In my letter of August, which was unhappily lost (by 

 reason, perhaps, that I had inclosed in it a plant pasted 

 down), I quoted the express text of Aristotle, " That the 

 thing was not unknown to the ancients ;" and. where he 

 says, " That spiders dart their threads as porcupines do 

 their quills ;" which text, though very plain in itself, yet 

 it will not easily enter into our imagination before we 

 have made the observation by sense : witness the misin- 

 terpretation of Redi and Blancanus. And yet in the set 

 of inquiries I sent to Mr. Oldenburgh, I have purposely 

 given, to incite the curious, another interpretation of the 

 text, which too, perhaps, it will bear, and not much 

 wrested. But too much of this. 



I have communicated to Mr. Oldenburgh my notes of the 

 bleeding of the sycamore, in answer to a late letter of his. 

 He likewise put the query to me of the pismires changing 

 blue flowers red, which it seems somebody had sent him 

 in. As for Mr. Jessop's and Mr. Fisher's experiments 

 which you communicated to me, I did not send them to 

 him as not belonging to me ; but I told him there were 

 such persons that had better examined the matter than I. 



