280 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



felt clammy, and tasted sweet ; I took it off with my knife, 

 the white grains ran into a clear liquor, and in a short 

 time I was able to get together a small quantity into a 

 little gallipot that I keep ; upon shaking of any bough this 

 would fall as a mist doth. All day in these hedges was a 

 noise as of a swarm of bees. We saw it lying upon the 

 leaves as well as blossoms. I have noted honey dews, 

 which do much hurt to our corn ; but never thus early, 

 nor in this form of manna. Taking some on a broad 

 smooth leather, I observed they did not dissolve pre- 

 sently, but run along as small round seeds, upon the motion 

 of the leather. 



Chedsey, April 24, 1694. 



Mr. PASCHALL to Mr. RAY. 



Chedsey, May 25, 1694. 



SIR, I was engaged in a journey when your last came, 

 and observed in both going out and coming home, that 

 taking in both the rising senaries I was much less weary 

 than I use to be if I travel in a falling senary. This holds 

 with me generally, as I have many times noted. I also 

 noted, as I have done frequently, that in the ebbs, the 

 mid-heaven about the zenith was clearer, and more free 

 from clouds in a cloudy, and nebulae in a nebulous season, 

 than the parts nearer the horizon, and that it was vice versa 

 in the tides. 



I know one who commonly finds that if he take but a 

 very gentle purgative in a rising senary, or the former 

 part of a tide, it works not till the ebbing senary begins, 

 and then doth very kindly. And he takes it for a rule, 

 that in tides the healthy are best, and the sickly worst, 

 but in ebbs the contrary holds. He also thinks, upon 

 several trials, that the surface of a wholesome earth opened 

 in a tide, emits steams that arc more salutary and healing, 



