320 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



astringent plants we have ; the native Irish call it Birin 

 Yarragh, which signifies Herha dysenterica, and use it 

 in that distemper with good success, and I have used 

 it boiled in milk with very good success, prcemissis uni- 

 versalibus, in fiuore alho. It is doubtless an excellent 

 vulnerary, and effectual in all fluxes beyond any herb I 

 know. 

 Clonmel, April 24, 1697. 



Worthy Sir, — As to Insects, I am sorry I have nothing 

 by me worth communicating. I had formerly made 

 several observations on these animalcula, but being forced 

 in the late troubles for England, I left most of what I 

 was worth in Limerick, which place holding out longer 

 than any other part of the kingdom, I there lost most of 

 my books, and, Avhat I esteem more, my papers and 

 manuscripts. At present I have only to say, that I am 

 apt to think there are few plants but if narrowly looked 

 into would be found to produce some kind or other of 

 insect, not by way of equivocal generation, which notion 

 is now as universally as deservedly exploded, but by be- 

 coming fit matrices to cherish and matm'e eggs deposited 

 in or on them. I have lately observed many eggs in the 

 common rush, Juncus lavis vulg. [Juncus conglomeratm, 

 Linn,, and /. effusus, Linn.], but I know not yet what 

 animal they produce. One sort are little transparent 

 bodies in shape somewhat like a pear or a retort, lying 

 within the skin, upon or in the medulla, just against a 

 brownish spot on the outside of the rush, which is appa- 

 rently the cicatrix of the wound made by the fly when 

 she put her eggs there. Another kind I observe, which 

 are much larger and not so transparent, of a long oval or 

 rather cylindrical form ; six, eighty or more of these lie 

 commonly together across the rush, parallel to each other, 

 like the teeth of a comb, and are as long as the breadth 

 of the rush. These, sir, are only hints to be farther im- 

 proved by you, who, being so conversant with plants and 



