BY DR. DEllHAM. 



43 



especially after his coining to Black Notley, began to 

 suflPer in his health, being often vexed with a troublesome 

 diarrhoea, and, after some time, with eruptions in his 

 legs, which were often very irksome to him, by their im- 

 moderate itching, and sometimes swelling and inflamma- 

 tion.* 



By this time Mr. Ray's ' Catalogue of English Plants' 

 was grown scarce, and was much called for ; upon which 

 he was greatly solicited, by his ingenious friends, to 

 review and improve that book for a third edition, which 

 he consented to. But there arising a difference between 

 him and the booksellers, who had the right of the copy, 

 concerning a third edition, and they, not without some ill 

 behaviour, slighting that book and Mr. Ray's improve- 

 ments, and threatening to trouble any who should dare 

 to reprint it ; this, I say, put Mr. Ray upon a better pro- 

 ject, which was to publish it in another and better form, 

 agreeable to the method of nature, viz., that of a ' Synopsis 

 of English Vegetables,' fit for the pocket, and not in an 

 alphabetical order, as his catalogue was. But to satisfy 

 the importunity of his friends, he, instead of his catalogue, 

 published his ' Eascicnlus Stirpium Britannicarum, post 

 editum Catalogum Plantarum, &c.' This was published 

 in the year 1688, and therein he promised his ' Synopsis', 

 which he accordingly got ready before the year was 

 expired ; but between the delays and tricks of the book- 

 seller and printer, (especially of the latter,) it lay so long 

 in the press, that Mr. Ray's friends in London had a 

 suspicion that they intended to have stifled the book ; 

 but it was entirely finished at the press in May 1690, 

 and published not long after. 



This ' Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum' 



* About the first coming of tliem, lie tells Dr. Tailored E.obiiison, in a 

 letter of April tlie Sth, 1687, that " he was pretty well eased of his pain, 

 and the pruritus was abated, Avhich he could ascribe to nothing but the use 

 of holyhock leaves boiled in May butter, with which he anointed the erup- 

 tions the night before ; and wonders that such a simple ointment should not 

 only abate the outward heat and itching, but remove the inward pain in the 

 muscles." — G. S. 



