CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. ' 163 



Mr. RAY to Dr. ROBINSON. 



SIR, Yours of the 10th instant I received last post, 

 and therein an inclosed specimen of the Canada sugar, 

 &c., a thing to me strange and unheard of before. It 

 were, as you suggest, well worth the experimenting 

 whether the like might be gotten by boiling up the juices 

 of any of our weeping trees, though I confess I doubt 

 much of the success. For, first, there are so few trees 

 common to the New and Old World, that it is likely this 

 may be a sort of maple* specifically distinct from any of 

 ours. But, secondly, suppose it be not, it may yield 

 a saccharine juice in America, and yet not in England ; 

 as we see the ash-tree yields manna in Calabria, and yet 

 not anywhere else in Italy itself. Thirdly, if it be the 

 lesser or common maple, that is such a nice tree that few 

 of the kind, and those only at some critical seasons, will 

 bleed with us ; so that it is a hard matter to get any 

 quantity of their juice. For mine own part, there are 

 not any of the greater maple, or sycamore trees, that I 

 know of, growing nearer than half a mile off us, so that 

 I cannot attend the gathering their juice, without the 

 expense of more time than I can or am willing at present 

 to spare. The like I may say of birches. We have, 

 indeed, of walnuts some growing near us, but I suspect 

 their scrupulous owners would scarce be willing I should 

 pierce them ; so that I doubt whether I shall be able to 

 make any trials of this kind ; and I make no question 

 but some members of the Royal Society may have 

 more leisure and better opportunities of making them 

 than myself. My thoughts are almost wholly employed 

 at present in the carrying on the History of Plants ; and I 

 am like him who said, " Pectora nostra duas non adrnit- 

 tentia curas." 



As for the History of Fishes, I doubt not but you may 

 add to it many things by me omitted; those authors 



* It is the Acer sacc/utrinum, Linn. 



