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 plantarum quae in
Insular Jamaica, etc., etc., published 1696.
Sr
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 ye figure 1. wch I conceive represents your meaning in some
measure.)
If you do no use it I beg the favr of your Purchas's Pilgr :
but only the first vol. & the 2d 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 wt
hath already thought of wch 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 yt I am wth great respect.
Sr
Your much obligd humble Servt
W, Derham.
If it will not be to great a trouble, be pleased to send me a small
fragment of your artificial Porphyrne.
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.
Sr
With many thanks I return you your Acta Erud. & beg the
favour of you to lend me 3 or 4 vol. more of them, wch I will quickly
dispatch.
This Bird I saw catching Flies from the top of my Pales wch
I shot, as being a Bird I neither knew, nor ever before saw, yt I