296 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



with a feverish heat, of which I am not yet fully recovered. 

 I hope you are well, and pray for your health. My wife 

 sends you her very humble service. I must own myself 

 to be much obliged to you, and am, 



Sir, 



Your very affectionate friend and humble servant, 



JOHN RAY. 



For Dr. Hans Sloane, 



at his house at the corner of Southampton street, 

 next Bloomsbury square, London. 



Mr. RAY to Dr. HANS SLOANE. 



Black Notley, July 17, 96. 



SIR, Since my last to you, considering my infirmities 

 and craziness, admonishing me of the near approach of 

 death, I think it best to speed the finishing and fitting 

 my Supplement for the press, and to deliver it up into 

 the bookseller's hand who put me upon it, to be pub- 

 lished or suppressed, as he shall find it most for his own 

 interest. I am sensible that it must needs be a very 

 weak and imperfect thing, I wanting those helps which 

 those that have travelled into the Indies and live about 

 London have. But yet none so fit to make a Supplement 

 to my own History as myself ; and there be many faults 

 I am advised of which I would willingly correct. But I 

 would fain dispatch it, and rid my hands of it, that so it 

 may be no disturbance to my thoughts. Your History, 

 were it reasonable for me to beg the defloration of it, 

 would afford the greatest ornaments to it. But I am 

 almost come to a resolution not to desire any such thing 

 of you, but content myself with the names I find in your 

 Catalogue of such as are nondescripts, and with your 

 synonyma for the reducing of such as are repeated. 



