262 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



reader, and make it current all over Europe. My wife 

 sends you her very humble service, and I am, 



Sir, 

 Yours entirely to command and use, 



JOHN RAY. 



Black Notley, Feb. 28, 93. 



Mr. RAY to Dr. HANS SLOANE. 



Black Notley, April 10, 93. 



SIR, I ought long since to have acknowledged the 

 receipt of, and returned something in answer to, your 

 friendly letter of Feb. 16, 1692, but truly I have been 

 ever since so afflicted with constant pain by reason of 

 exulcerated pernios of both my legs, that I have had little 

 heart to write or to do anything else but what was neces- 

 sary. I am now, I thank God, at a little more ease, and 

 do hope warm weather coming on will dry up and heal 

 my sores. You need not have taken any notice of my 

 book ; an hundred of them will scarce suffice to acquit 

 me of the obligations you have laid upon me by your 

 many favours and kindnesses. 



You have done well in procuring Rauwolff's ' Itinerary' 

 to be translated and published in English. I wonder, 

 indeed, so good a book hath lyen so long locked up in 

 High Dutch. The translator hath done his part as well 

 as could be expected from a foreigner ; I have revised it, 

 and altered the phrase and language, where I thought it 

 less grammatical, or consonant to the idiom of the English 

 tongue, or to the words approved now by use among the 

 learned and civil part of the nation. Annotations (either 

 parallel or additional out of other writers, or corrective or 

 significative of the partial alterations of customs and 

 manners since Rauwolff's time, which, as Captain Hatton 

 suggested to me well, must in all likelihood have hap- 

 pened in the space of above an hundred years) I have 



