CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 399 



Mr. Ray to Dr. Derham.* 



Sir, — I received yoiu-s of April the 24th last past, for 

 which I return you thanks ; and first, for your approba- 

 tion of such books as I have published, though I dare not 

 own any such worth in them as to deserve so good an 

 opinion as you or others may have conceived of them. 

 However, the more unmerited such commendation is, the 

 more thanks I owe you and them for it. 



2. For that particular and exact account you have 

 given me of the appearance of an innumerable multitude 

 of small frogs covering the highway, &c., I doubt not 

 but had others, to whom the like phenomenon hath oc- 

 curred, been as inquisitive and observant as yom'self, they 

 might have found out whence they came forth. Had I 

 received this history before the last edition of my book of 

 the Wisdom of God, &c., I could have made good use of it. 



Your observations of the whole process of the genera- 

 tion of gnats, from the egg to their mature state, I should 

 be glad to see. I have seen that water animalcule, out 

 of which they immediately proceed, but never saw their 

 eggs, or where they lay them. It is not many years since 

 I applied myself to the observation and search of insects 

 in order to compose a history of them, but now I am 

 wholly taken off from that study by the afflictive pains I 

 almost constantly labour under, by reason of ulcers upon 

 my legs, I having not been half a mile out of my house 

 these four years ; and though I have made use of many 

 means, and have had the advice of some of the most 

 skillful surgeons and physicians, yet without success, 

 gromng yearly worse and worse. Besides, I have been 

 very much haunted with a troublesome diarrhoea, fre- 

 quently recurring, so that you may w^eU think I can have 

 but little heart to mind natural history ; but yet I am so 

 far engaged, that I cannot shake it off. I have now just 

 ready to go under the press a third volmue of the ' His- 

 tory of Plants/ being a Supplement to the two former 



* The original is thus endorsed by Dr. Derham : " Received this May the 

 8th, 1702." 



