390 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



have made far better work than I have done, or can do. 

 However, I must now go through with it, and shall 

 thankfully receive what you shall further please to com- 

 municate, and insert each particular in its due place, 

 according to the best of my skill. I am very glad you 

 have found out and received Father Camelli's papers, 

 who deserves the character and commendations you have 

 given him. So soon as I shall have received and con- 

 sidered his descriptions and designs, I shall send him a 

 letter of acknowledgment and thanks, with a request that 

 he would send his designs and history of trees and climb- 

 ing-plants, which, in his letter to me (which is now in 

 Dr. Sherard's hands), he promised. 



I am sorry for the news of Mr. Brown's death, which 

 I heard not of before the receipt of your letter. He was 

 a very commendable person, very ingenious, and as well 

 fitted as inclined to promote natural history. 



I have seen and read, and transcribed into my Supple- 

 ment, what I found of your notes and remarks upon 

 Mr. Brown's two books of plants in the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions.' You have discovered so many oversights 

 and mistakes in Dr. Plukenet's works, that I fear he may 

 have led me into some errors, who followed him as a 

 most exact botanist, without due examination. You 

 that have seen his dried plants, and have often received 

 specimens of the same, are better able to judge of his 

 performance. 



I am glad your business increases so as to require 

 more attendance, and take up more of your time, which 

 cannot be better employed than in the works of your 

 proper callings. What time you have to spare you will 

 do well to spend, as you are doing, in the inquisition and 

 contemplation of the works of God and nature. Indeed, 

 you are highly to be commended for what you have 

 already done, and encouraged to proceed with vigour, 

 notwithstanding the snarlings of some silly pretenders to 

 wit, whose scoffs you need not more to value than the 

 barkings of small whelps in the street. 



