CORRESPONDENCE OP RAY. 301 



Mr. Ray to Dr. Hans Sloanb. 



Black Notley, Aug. 15, —96. 



Sir, — I received yours of the 11th, and do hold myself 

 extremely obliged to you for your readiness to assist me 

 in compiling my Supplement. Your papers, if you please 

 to do me so great a favour as to lend me them, to use for 

 some time for the illustration and ornament of my work, 

 I am now ready for them, having run over Dr. Plukenet's 

 ' Almagsest.' wherein I find many mistakes, so that I 

 dare not confide in him for things which I am ignorant 

 or doubtful of. A man that relies wholly on dried 

 specimens, were he cunninger than Dr. Plukenet is, must 

 needs commit many mistakes. 



As for the method of capillaries I proposed in my 

 letter to Rivinus, I have not skill enough in that kind of 

 plants to be able to make use of it, and so must be 

 constrained to adhere to my old method a little altered. 

 For whereas I did suppose that no capillaries were 

 properly cauliferous, but that their whole superficies did 

 consist of mere leaves. I am now convinced of the con- 

 trary, and therefore intend not to meddle with it any 

 more, but to divide those plants, whether caidiferous or 

 not cauliferous, according to their leaves, into such as 

 have a simple leaf, which I make to be either whole or 

 laciniated, and such as have a compound leaf. And 

 these into such whose leaves are compounded of — 1, 

 single leaves, or pitinida ; 2, surcidi pin7iati, or decom- 

 posita ; 3, ramastri, divided into surculi and pinnce ; 

 which leaves Bauhine calls ramose. But to render things 

 clear, I take it to be needful to define a compound leaf, 

 which I shall do thus : A part of a plant which is made 

 up of pinmda, surculi, or ramastri, connected on each side 

 to a middle rib growing gradually shorter and shorter 

 towards the top of the middle rib, which also terminates 

 in a leaf, the footstalk and middle rib having its supine 

 superficies different from its prone, viz. either fiat or 



