414 CORllESPONDENCE OF RAY, 



Mr. Ray to Mr. Deeham. 



Sir, — I received yours of the 19th, for which I thank 

 you and acknowledge myself much obliged to you for 

 being at the expense of so much time and pains to gratify 

 me. What you have been pleased to communicate con- 

 cerning the sudden appearance of a vast multitude of 

 small frogs, and the account you give of the place where 

 they were generated, and whence they did proceed, I 

 have written out and sent to London to be inserted in 

 this last edition of my Treatise concerning the Wisdom of 

 God, &c., as also what you have imparted concerning the 

 use of those extremely small water insects or animalcules. 



As for the History of Insects, I intend not a general 

 one, but only of such as are native of England, adding 

 such exotics as are found in the museums or cabinets of 

 the curious about London or elsewhere. Neither yet can I 

 hope that all that I myself have observed, or shall obtain 

 from friends, will amount to the fifth part of the species 

 that are native of this island. I have, for some years 

 together, been a dihgent searcher out of Papilios diurnal 

 and nocturnal, and though I have found and described 

 near 300 species, great and small, of that tribe or genus 

 within the small compass of four or five miles, yet came 

 I not to the end of them, so long as I prosecuted that in- 

 quiry, but every year afforded me new ones. Now the genus 

 of beetles is as numerous as that of the Papilios, if not 

 more. The flies (so at present I call all insects that have 

 naked and smooth, not farinaceous wings), both bipennes 

 and quadripennes, are in a manner infinite, nor hath their 

 history been with diligence prosecuted by any man that 

 I know of, except Mr. Willughby, whose manuscript I 

 hope to procure. 



I cannot but admire your industry and patience, in 

 searching out and observing the various species of gnats, 

 with the manner and process of their generation, and the 

 success you have had in discovering them, which may 



