Aubrey, John

Encouraging him to publish decorative botanical tables that could be "fitted to be [hung up] in garden-howses in the manner of Mappes," suggesting that each plant be accompanied by a woodcut and its name in various languages, and also encouraging extensions to the idea ("...the like may be done for these other Tables of Stones & Metalls & those also of Insects, Birds Beasts. The same may be also putt into a little pocket booke which may be of use where the large Tables cannot be had..."), adding that Sir Christopher Wren also supports this proposal, 1 page, folio (300 x 190 mm), docketed, marked up for publication by William Derham with passages cancelled in red crayon and lost words supplied in another hand, London, 9 July 1678; rodent damage with loss of c.11 words, small portion of paper removed at bottom right corner, strengthened, printed label pasted down. Green cloth folding-box and morocco-backed slipcase.

Enys family of Enys, Cornwall (Bonham's, 28 September 2004, lot 294). acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

The naturalist John Ray (1627-1705) was, like Aubrey, an early fellow of the Royal Society and assisted Aubrey in the latter's natural history of Wiltshire. Ray made important contributions to the development of taxonomy and first drew up tables of plants and animals for Bishop John Wilkins in his Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668). He published catalogues and groundbreaking field guides but no wall-charts are mentioned in Geoffrey Keynes's Bibliography of John Ray (1951).

No other letter by Aubrey has been sold at auction in recent decades.