260 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



Dr. HANS SLOANE to Mr. HAY. 



London, Feb. 16, 169f . 



SIR, I should have some time since given you my 

 thanks for the favour you did me in sending me one of 

 your books of Physico-Theological Discourses ; which I 

 now do, assuring you at the same time, that you have me 

 very much at your command and service. I have perused 

 most part of RauwolfP s Voyage ; which being only extant 

 in High Dutch, and that understood by veiy few, I thought 

 would do well in English, and so borrowed it from the 

 Royal Society : and Capt. Hatton being desirous of it 

 likewise, we put it into the hands of Mr. Staphorst, who 

 has done it as you see, I think pretty clear ; though the 

 making it good language, and the notes, are left wholly 

 to you. Some passages are not to be well translated, 

 because of differing customs and proverbs ; but I think so 

 far as the natural history is concerned it may be under- 

 stood. Authors make mention of a fourth part of this 

 work printed the next year, viz. in 1583, which is very 

 true ; for some of the plants of Rauwolff mentioned by 

 him, and described in this journal, were engraven in wood, 

 and without any farther descriptions, only references in 

 the margin to the descriptions in the pages of the journal, 

 make up a fourth book, or part ; which, with a new title- 

 page, was what made the second edition ; the book in 

 pages, &c., without cuts, and of the first edition in 1582, 

 being exactly the same as with the fourth part, and cuts, 

 in 1583. The compiler of the Historia Lugdunensis at 

 the latter end, in an Appendix, takes all these cuts, bating 

 some few, which had been graved in the body of that 

 history ; and adding the descriptions out of the journal to 

 the cuts, makes that Appendix which we have at the latter 

 end of that work. I think this work a very curious one 

 in several natural remarks, as in the spiral cutting of the 

 poppy-heads, in making opium, &c. I have likewise 

 solicited hard to get one Martin's book of Greenland trans- 



