54 CORRESPONDENCE OY RAY. 



and yet, methinks, those experiments that you tell me 

 you have received from Dr. Needham and your other 

 friends, will be mighty enrichments : I long to see what 

 they are. As for the juices I sent you, the one is drawn 

 from Centaurewn luteum \Chlora perfoliata, Linn.], the 

 other from Lactuca selves fris \Lactuca virosa, Linn.] 

 My notes of this nature being, for the most part, but of 

 one year's standing, I am loth to venture raw conjectures 

 even before so kind a judge as you are of my papers, 

 otherwise I assure you, there is nothing I have observed 

 or tried but I would willingly impart. I know you have 

 not been unemployed about prosecuting your experiments 

 upon trees, and I should be glad to know the success, 

 both as to the motion of the sap in them, and likewise 

 the textm-e; about which last I am confident Mr. Wil- 

 lughby is very thoughtful and dihgent, and I hope 

 fortunate. 



Mr. Wkat to Mr. Lister. 



Dear Sir, — I have sent you inclosed two papers, the 

 one containing descriptions of buds, which you commu- 

 nicated to Mr. Will at his last being at WoUarton, to 

 which we have added the Latin names of Aldrov. Only 

 the third I take to be a fowl distinct from the common 

 Widgeon, which is not unknown to you. Indeed I do not 

 remember that ever I saw any bird of the duck kind 

 whicb hath a circle of white feathers round about the 

 setting on of the bill.* Your descriptions of the rest that 

 I have seen are very exact. The other paper being a 

 table of our English spiders I have sent, not that I can 

 discover any error or defect in it, but because you desire 

 it. In prosecuting the experiments about the ascent and 

 motion of the sap in trees, I was interrupted by a few fits 



* [The duck with a broad band of white feathers at the base of the bill is 

 an old female of the Scaup Duck, Fuligula niarila.'] 



