256 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



asserts by the credibility he gives to the relator ; and con- 

 sidering that, since the time Rauwolfius travelled into 

 Asia, the manners and customs of those countries may 

 have been altered and changed, and some have been 

 more fully discovered than he could in his short stay in 

 those parts. It was highly to be wished that some person, 

 duly qualified for such an undertaking, would, where 

 requisite, make some brief animadversions and dilnci- 

 dations ; and if any person of great and deserved fame 

 would, in a short preface, give some account of the author 

 (whose life is not, as I know, related by any person but 

 Melchior Adamus, and that with his wonted brevity), and 

 by a favorable character of the work, give it a recom- 

 mendation, it would be an invitation to all ingenious 

 persons to peruse it, for which achievement there is no 

 person on earth so duly qualified as the justly-renowned 

 Ray. Therefore, pardon me, sir, if I join my humble 

 desires to those of our afore-mentioned worthy friends, 

 that you would please to give a new life to Rauwolfius, 

 put him into a fit garb and di-ess to appear in, and by 

 your passport and recommendation, make his converse 

 not only acceptable, but desirable, to all the ingenious 

 men of our nation ; which, if you will please so far to 

 condescend as to perform, Mr. Smith engages to return 

 you, in a fitting manner, his thanks for the benefit he 

 shall receive by the book, Ijeing thereby rendered much 

 more vendible ; and all persons of learning or ingenuity 

 will, I doubt not, acknowledge it as an obligation from 

 you to them. 



Whilst I am now writing, a Westmoreland acquaint- 

 ance of mine coming to see me, in discourse did acci- 

 dentally mind me of the surprise I was in, some years 

 since, at Lowther Hall, in Cumberland, the house of Sir 

 John Lowther. Seeing at Sir John's table a fresh-water 

 trout, which was thirty-eight inches in length, and twenty- 

 seven in girth, taken in Ulleswater, a large lake in 

 Westmoreland, in which, I was assured by Sir John and 

 other persons of unquestionable credit, trouts of that size 



