RICHARD MIDDLETON MASSEY 245 
for Cambridge. Mr. Bobart is harty and well I was with him 
this afternoon gathering herbs in order for a hortus siccus. Y* 
pictures yt I have of y' shall be kept safe & return’d gina ud 
y* meantime yon ave any more buisness for me, let me kno 
by labia, y’ desires shall ever wh commands with y™ much obliged 
freind h 
umble s 
R. ennai * MASSEY. 
‘Pray dont forget y* plates when they are printed of; nor y° 
putting y’ freind in a method of liveing att London or beyond sea 
when he leaves y* place.” 
Massey’s next letter (to Sloane) is dated from Tabley Hall 
near Knutsford—a, place to be associated in the evens anon 
with another British botanist, John Leicester Warre 
1704. He had expected to be in Lopioe “long before this time” 
but his “good fortune” had hindered him 
“This sumer has been spent in travailing with a young Gentle- 
man into y* northern and western n part of this Kingdom. A 
Knaresborough and the peake in Derbyshire a particularly form’d 
stone from Lyme park in Cheshire y* Muscus odoratus pias raid 
well, some stones & oar from S"* Vincents rock. We t to 
visite Bonewell near Ricards Castle in Shropshire, but the ‘iabls 
is ceased for we coud meet with none of the little bones. Beetles 
I have mett with very few, the cruciatus hysteri male & female 
Ive preserv’d.”” He was then going into Shropshire “to bid some 
relations farewell”: on his return to Tabley, he wrote (Sept. 27) 
giving a list of books he had purchased; from this and the 
reference to “ farewells” it may be assumed that he was arranging 
to settle in Wisbech, whence he wrote to Sloane with A cigths to a 
patient on April 10, 1705. Here he at once succeeded so well in 
“sd thesis that from Wisbech he wrote to. spare on July 4 0 
e 
contains references to fossils and an account of a visit to Crow 
land Abbey, whose condition he describes. Many of his letters 
relate to medical matters ; others show his interest in coins an 
other antiquities 
In October 1706 he ve of taking the shop and carrying on 
the fies of an apothecary who was leaving the town, and 
_asks Sloane to obtain from the College of Physicians the licence 
necessary nae this purpose. On the 23rd of the following month 
he was admitted an extra-licentiate of Brasenose College. On 
his earlier letters the name is thus spelt, but in later ones it is 
siviteed " Middleton,” in which form it is always printed. 
