458 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 16Q\. 



A Letter from Mr. John Ray, giving an Account of the Phytographia of 

 Leonard Plukenet,* M. D. Lond. fol. 169I. N° I93, p. 528. 



The Method the Indians in Virginia and Carolina use to dress Buck and Doe 

 Skins. Communicated by the Hon. Sir Robert Southwell, Knt. President, R.S. 

 N° 194, p. 532. 



The pelt being taken off, it is first stretched out by lines on a kind of rack 

 for drying them ; and the brains of the deer are taken out, and laid on moss, 

 or dried grass, and then dried in the sun, or by a fire, to preserve them. 

 When the hunting time is over, the women dress the skins ; first, by putting 

 them in a pond, or hole of water, to soak them well. Then with an old knife, 

 fixed in a cleft-stick, they scrape ofl^ the hair while they are wet. The skins being 

 thus prepared, they are put into a kettle or earthen pot, and a certain propor- 

 tion of the dried brains into a kettle over a fire, till they are more than blood- 

 warm ; which will make them lather and scour perfectly clean ; which done, 

 with small sticks they wring and twist each skin, as long as they find any wet 

 drop from them, letting them remain so twisted for some hours ; and then they 

 untwist each skin, and put them into a sort of rack, like a clothier's rack, 

 consisting of two small poles set upright, and two more put athwart ; then they 

 stretch them out every way by lines ; and as the skin dries, with a dull hatchet, 

 or a stick flatted, and brought to a round edge, or a stone fitted by nature for 

 that purpose, rub them all over, to force all the water and grease out of them, 

 till they become perfectly dry : which is all they do. 



And one woman will dress 8 or JO skins in a day; that is, begin and end 

 them. I intimate this because the men never do it. 



* Leonard Plukenet, an eminent and zealous English botanist^ is said to have been born about the 

 year l642. It does not appear that he attained to any celebrity in the profession of physic, being 

 altogether absorbed in the study of plants, and devoted his whole time to the composition of his 

 Phytographia and other works. He spared no pains to procure specimens, and had correspondents in 

 almost all countries. He was one of those botanists to whom Ray was indebted for assistance, in 

 the arrangement of the second volume of his history of plants. With Sloane and Petiver he seems 

 to have been at variance, censuring their writings with much asperity. He was himself at the charge 

 of all his own engravings, and published the whole work at his own expence, (except a small sub- 

 scription of about 55 guineas towards the conclusion). In the latter part of his life he is said to have 

 been assisted by the Queen, and had the superintendance of the garden at Hampton-Court, with the 

 title of royal professor of botany. The time of his death is not certainly known, but it was pro- 

 bably about the year 1705. His works are, 1. Phytographia. 2 Almagestum Botanicum. 3. Al- 

 magesti Botanici Mantissa. 4. Amaltheum Botanicum. The works of Plukenet contain upwards of 

 2740 figures, of unequal merit, and too small for the more accurate purposes of botanical science. 

 His Het barium is preserved in the British Museum. 



