CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 105 



conveyed, unless I had sent to Mr. Martin for direction ; 

 and truly the thing is so inconsiderable a trifle, that I 

 thought it not worth the while to give him the trouble. 

 Besides, it is so ill corrected, that I am also in that re- 

 spect ashamed of it. 



I am going on as fast as I can with the Ornithology. 

 That the work may not be defective, I intend to take in 

 all the kinds I find in books which Mr. Willughby de- 

 scribed not, and to have a figure for all the descriptions 

 I can procure them for. I have sent this week to Mr. 

 Martin to begin to get some figures engraved. 

 Middleton, Nov. 29, 73. 



Mr. JOHNSON to Mr. RAY. 



HONOURED SIR, You desired a particular account of 

 the Barnacles, which I have given, and am confident they 

 are two species at the least, yet so near akin, that they 

 have all a dark veil, covering head and neck alike. 



If you have not yet determined what those shells upon 

 old planks and ships (which antiquity fancied to be young 

 goslings) are, give me leave to propound one conjecture 

 among many, viz. that they are the spawn of shrimps. 

 It was my brother Jo. Johnson's observation, who told 

 me, that so far as his naked eye could discover, there 

 was an exact proportion of parts betwixt the contents of 

 those shells and the shrimp. If this conjecture have any- 

 thing of probability in it, pray examine it farther ; if not, 

 pardon this trouble. The conjectural reasons which I 

 here and there add of the parts of fowls I express posi- 

 tively, to avoid prolixity of words ; and if in many of 

 them I err (as like enough I may), it is not for want 

 of . 



Most of the Latin names I give are Jo. or Gesn., for 

 I have not Aldrovand., though I confess sometimes their 

 descriptions are imperfect, or do not exactly agree ; and 



