philosophers to examine and give {Gk: dioti} to their {Gk: hostis}. * Plinie is not afraide to call them Oracles: (Lib. xviii. Nat. Hist. cap. iv.) “Ac primum omnium oraculis majore ex parte agemus, qua non in alio vite genere plura certiorara sunt.” But before I fly at the marke to make a description of this county, I will take the boldness to cancelleer, and give a generall description of what parts of England I have seen, as to the soiles: which I call Chorographia Super and Sub-terranea (or thinke upon a more fitting name). _London, Gresham Coll., June_ 6_th_, 1685. [The original of the following LETTER from JOHN RAY to AUBREY is inserted immediately after the Preface, in the MS. at Oxford. It is not transcribed into the Royal Society’s copy of the work.—J. B.] FOR MR. JOHN AUBREY. Sr, Black Notley, 8br 27, —91. Your letter of Octob. 22d giving advice of your safe return to London came to hand, wch as I congratulate with you, so have I observed your order in remitting your Wiltshire History, wch with this enclosed I hope you will receive this week. I gave you my opinion concerning this work in my last, wch I am more confirmed in by a second perusal, and doe wish that you would speed it to ye presse. It would be convenient to fill up ye blanks so far as you can; but I am afraid that will be a work of time, and retard the edition. Whatever you conceive may give offence may by ye wording of it be so softned and sweetned as to take off ye edge of it, as pills are gilded to make them lesse ungratefull. As for the soil or air altering the nature, and influencing the wits of men, if it be modestly delivered, no man will be offended at it, because it accrues not to them by their own fault: and yet in such places as dull men’s wits there are some exceptions to be made. You know the poet observes that Democritus was an example— Summos posse viros, et magna exempla daturos Vervecû in patria, crassoque sub aere nasci. Neither is yr observation universally true that the sons of labourers and rusticks are more dull and indocile than those of gentlemen and tradesmen; for though I doe not pretend to have become of the first magnitude for wit or docility, yet I think I may without arrogance say that in our paltry country school here at Braintry—“Ego meis me minoribus condiscipulis ingenio prælu[si]”: but perchance the advantage I had of my contemporaries may rather be owing to my industry than natural parts; so that I should rather say “studio” or “industria excellui”.