120 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



albumen to which end I pleased, which is easy to be seen 

 through the shell between the light and the eye. It was 

 pale coloured, and without any cicatricula, which I do 

 suppose will be found hereafter in others more mature. 

 Mr. Mayfield would persuade me that these fishes are 

 Vivipari, for he saith, about a month or five weeks hence 

 I shall see the fish perfectly formed in that egg-shell 

 I doubt he is mistaken ; however, I will weekly observe 

 their several alterations, and give you a full account here- 

 after. The other eggs, without shells, in or upon the 

 vitellarium, are all round ; the largest about half the big- 

 ness of a tennis-ball. I boiled both parts of them in 

 water ; the vitellum grew solid, like to that of a hen's, 

 but the albumen grew not white like the hen's egg it 

 grew a little more solid, but remained diaphanous. I have 

 inclosed the shell, which does not agree with Dr. Need- 

 ham's description of his Testa Ovi Raice ; he saith, " Ex 

 quatuor angulis totidem lingulse excrescunt;' at one end 

 it hath excrescences rather to be called cornuce than lin- 

 gula ; the other end seems more like a fin than either. 

 What they may hereafter come to I know not ; but will 

 give you an account. 



Sir PHILIP SKJPPON, from Wrentham, to Mr. RAY. 



SIR, I shall now acquaint you, that having read the 

 Observations sent from Barbadoes, and published, No. 

 1 1 7 of the ' Philosophical Transactions,' I soon after dis- 

 coursed about them with one Mr. Tho. Glover, an inge- 

 nious chirurgeon of these parts, who lately came from 

 our western plantations, having lived some time in Vir- 

 ginia, and nine months in Barbadoes, where he says he 

 has let above twenty negroes blood, and always observed 

 the colour to be as florid and red as any European's 

 blood ; and that he never saw any of a dark colour, as 

 is represented by the letter the ingenious Mr. Lister 



