184 LETTERS FROM THE REV. WM. DERHAM, D.D. 
plants and drugs towards the end of the 17th and beginning of 
following century. 
The book by Sir Hans Sloane, which Dacre Barrett was 
asked to lend, was the former’s Catalogus piantarum quae in 
Insular Jamaica, etc., etc., published 1696. 
S' 
With many thanks I return you your Books. I forgot to ask 
you when you were speaking of it whether you observed the Sun 
rays in the Fog to converge or diverge towards (as in Fig. 2nd ) 
or fromwards one another, or whether they appeared only parallel 
as in y e figure 1. w ch I conceive represents your meaning in some 
measure.) 
If you do no use it I beg the fav' of your Purchas’s Pilgr : 
but only the first vol. & the 2 d too, if they will not be too heavy for 
the carriage at one time. I have long had a mind to run over 
ye laborious honest Author. Since I have considered your notion 
about the illuminations of our Region of the Atmosphere by the 
Refractions I believe we may give thereby a better account of 
the difference between the Sumer and Winter Warmth than w 4 
hath already thought of w ch next time I can be so happy to see 
you, we will talk of, not having time at present (going to baptise 
a child in some hast) to say more than y 4 I am w th great respect. 
Sr 
Your much oblig d humble Serv 4 
W. Derham. 
If it will not be to great a trouble, be pleased to send me a small 
fragment of your artificial Porpl^rrne. 
The Rev. S. Purchas, born 1575, died 1628, was a native of 
Thaxted, Essex. He became curate at Purleigh in the same 
county, where he married a servant girl, then in the employment 
of his Rector. He became Chaplain to the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, and rector of a church in the City of London. He 
was a careless and inaccurate writer, and although he inherited 
the MSS. of Richard Hakluyt, he did not make as good use of 
them as he might have done. He is chiefly known for his book 
Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchase his Pilgrims, a work which is 
of greater value on account of its rarity than for its intrinsic 
interest. 
S' 
With many thanks I return you your Acta Erud. & beg the 
favour of you to lend me 3 or 4 vol. more of them, w ch I will quickly 
dispatch. 
This Bird I saw catching Flies from the top of my Pales w ch 
I shot, as being a Bird I neither knew, nor ever before saw, y 4 I 
