CORRESPONDENCE OP RAY. 465 



I have elsewhere noted) they make brushes at Venice of 

 the panicles thereof, when the grains are stripped off. 



I am inclinable to believe that Dr. Plukenet is in the 

 right in making the American Couhage and the Nai- 

 Corunna of the East Indies to be distinct plants, as I was 

 suspicious when I wrote my 'History of Plants,' from the 

 different colour of their seeds. 



I shall not at present return answer to the other parti- 

 culars of your letter, being somewhat straightened for time, 

 but with the tender of my wife's humble service, conclude 

 and rest, 



Sir, 

 ~ Your affectionate friend and humble servant, 



JOHN RAY. 



To his honoured friend, Dr. Hans Sloane, 

 at his house at the corner of Southampton street, 

 towards Bloomsbury square, London. 



Preface by Mr. RAY to Dr. HANS SLOANE'S Catalogue of Plants. 



THE author of this Catalogue doth not present the 

 reader with titles of plants collected out of other men's 

 writings, or of which he had seen only dried specimens, 

 but of such as himself saw growing in their native places, 

 among which there are a great multitude of new and non- 

 descript species; in one genus alone, viz. those called 

 capillaries, no less than three score, besides those lately 

 published by F. Plumier in his first volume of 'Descrip- 

 tions of American Plants,' which our author had observed 

 and described long before that book came out ; and 

 these not small and contemptible ones, or hardly distin- 

 guishable from the plants of that kind already described, 

 but of eminent stature and beauty, and some of them of 

 so strange and exotic form, that if delineated they could not 

 but invite and gratefully entertain the spectator's eye; 



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