CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 255 



Capt. Hatton to Mr. Ray. 



Sir, — Those few plants of Rauwolfius's collection, pub- 

 lished in the Appendix to the ' Historia Lugdunensis,' 

 got him so great fame amongst the lovers of botany, 

 that I have heard Isaac Vossius declare above £400 

 sterling had been offered for the four specious volumes 

 he had of dried plants collected by Rauwolfius ; and to 

 most strangers who came to see his deservedly-famed 

 library, he constantly showed those amongst his other 

 most valuable books ; and very few books writ in any 

 modern language are mentioned with a higher encomium 

 than Rauwolfius's ' Itinerary ' is ; but being printed 

 about a hundi-ed years since, it is very rare, and being 

 never translated out of High Dutch (in which language 

 it was writ), it is unintelligible to those who do not un- 

 derstand the German tongue, which occasioned me, some 

 time since, in discourse with our learned and ingenious 

 friends. Dr. Sloane and Dr. Robinson, to express my 

 sentiments, that I believed a translation of it into Eng- 

 lish would be very acceptable to all the ingenious persons 

 of our nation ; and they both concurring in my opinion. 

 Dr. Sloane borrowed it out of the library of the Royal 

 Society, and Mr. Staphorst is about the translation of it 

 into English, and hath near finished it. But before it be 

 pubhshed, it would be very necessary not only that the 

 style of the translation (which is performed by a German) 

 should be corrected by a master of the English language, 

 but that the author himself should be animadverted on 

 in some places. The learned and famed Ludolphus^ in 

 his incomparable Commentary on his ' Ethiopic History,' 

 hath reproved him for asserting that the Unicorn was in 

 the Abyssin's country ; but Rauwolfius doth not pretend 

 to have been there, only relates it from one, his affection 

 to whom had biassed his judgment ; and it is much to be 

 feared that even the perspicacious and judicious Ludolphus 

 himself may have been imposed upon in some things he 



