126 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



which I suppose is ere now begun to be printed, though 

 I have not yet received any proof of it. I thought it the 

 more expedite way to give you this trouble than to stay 

 the sending to London for those books. Your notes 

 and observations in natural history do very well deserve 

 to be made public, and I should advise rather by them- 

 selves than be buried in Mr. Willughby's work, the 

 printing also of which depends upon my life and health ; 

 and, besides, it will be long before his History of Insects 

 and Exanguia be fitted for the press, I being at present 

 upon the History of Fishes, which will take up still a 

 year or two's time. I have only this to object to you, 

 and myself, against their speedy publication, that the 

 longer they lie by you, if still you prosecute the same 

 studies and inquiries, the more perfect and full they will 

 be, every day almost adding or correcting, or illustrating 

 somewhat ; but if you have quite given over those re- 

 searches, defer not to put them out. If it had been my 

 hap to find out so many before unobserved particulars 

 and experiments, I should have thought myself wanting 

 to my own reputation had I not published them in my 

 own name ; though I confess I have always thought 

 that, for new inventions and discoveries, we are rather 

 beholden to a good genius, dyaQy <W^ovi, than to our own 

 wit or industry at least the faculty and SECVOTJJC, or 

 shrewdness in inventing and discovering, is a particular 

 gift of God, and not conferred upon all. But yet those 

 discoveries and new inventions are not granted even to 

 such men usually, unless busied in searching and inquir- 

 ing into those things. **** 



SuttonCofield, July 15, 76. 



