CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 145 



of the best alterative medicines yet commonly known. I 

 beg, sir, a few of your thoughts concerning the quinquina, 

 as to the place of its growth and its history. Peradven- 

 ture it may be an East Indian drug, and brought from 

 the Moluccas to Peru. I am much in the dark, and 

 want some of your learned communications about it. 

 What Bartholine and Signor Badi have writ of it does 

 not satisfy. 



When I was at Rome, I observed many times two 

 fathers, belonging to the public elaboratories there, to 

 gather up and down, in the villas and gardens, the gum 

 and resin of the cypress, as also to get an oily substance 

 from the wood by a kind of distillation per descensum. 

 Upon nfyinquiry, the fathers were so obliging as to tell 

 me that out of this resin they prepared a lacca, which, 

 being superficially spread and dried over any body, would 

 preserve it fresh to the end of the world. The prepara- 

 tion is thus. After having distilled a sufficient quantity 

 of liquor from the resin, they cohobate that distilled spirit 

 on the remaining part of the gum (left in the retort), 

 which, by a gentle digestion, dissolves, and becomes a 

 lacca. I told the fathers that the very same preparation 

 out of amber, turpentine, or mastich, might serve as well 

 for that purpose. However, I was very thankful for their 

 kind communication. 



In the kingdom of Naples I saw great plantations of 

 the Gossipium, or Xylon (observed by yourself in Malta). 

 The Neapolitans use the Lanugo very successfully in the 

 piles, internally as well as externally, which I had once 

 an opportunity to remark. 



Leyden, June 4, 84, N. s. 



Mr. RAY to Dr. ROBINSON. 



SIR, The 'Hortus Malabaricus,' which the Dutch 

 herbarists are so busy in carrying on, is too pompous 



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