CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 195 



the resolving all our doulits about the names we meet 

 with of plants in that part of America, as the Dildoe, 

 Mammee, Mangrove, Manchinello, Avellance purgatrices, 

 the Sower-sop, and Custard-apple. Of most of which, 

 though I am pretty well informed and satisfied by Dr. 

 Robinson, yet I shall be glad to be either confirmed or 

 better informed by so knowing and curious an observer 

 as yourself. I should be glad to know what manner of 

 fruit the Mandioca bears; for, whatever some have written, 

 that it is not without, I am confident. You may also 

 please to observe whether there be any species of plants 

 common to America and Europe, and whether Ambergrise 

 be the juice of any sort of metal or aloe dropped into the 

 sea, as Trapham would have it. What kind of Arundo 

 it is the same author calls the Dumbcane, as also what '"'W 

 his animal seeds may be. The shining barks of trees 

 which he mentions deserve observation, because I find 

 nothing of them in other Avriters. I shall not instance in 

 more particulars. I wish your voyage had so long pre- 

 vented the pubhcation of my history, that I might have 

 been satisfied and informed by you of these and a thou- 

 sand other particulars, and had so great an accession of 

 new and nondescript species as your inquisitions and ob- 

 servations would have enriched it withal. I take leave, 

 and rest, &c. 



Rich. Waller, Esq. to Mr. Ray. 



Sir, — I thought it might not be an unacceptable com- 

 munication to tell you, that being this last summer at 

 Keinsham, in Somersetshire, and making a search after 

 the Cornua ammonis, I found, amongst several of the 

 ordinary snake-stones in which the shelly diaphragms 

 were very visible, one of the true nautilus shape, covered 

 in some places with a shelly incrustation, with the dia- 

 phragms to be seen to the centre of the voluta ; and in 



