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 LXV. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



COMMEMORATION OF THE SECOND CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH- 

 DAY OF RAY. 



A MEETING is about to take place in London, which, to judge 

 from the name of the gentleman who has consented to take 

 the chair, and from the stewards who have undertaken to act on the 

 occasion, may be regarded as a national festival in honour of our 

 distinguished Naturalist Ray. Throughout the whole of a long 

 and industrious life, that enlightened observer and systematist de- 

 voted himself unceasingly to the study of the works of the Creator, 

 whom in those works he learned devoutly to adore. His researches 

 extended into every branch of Natural History, and in each of these 

 he excelled. His labours were deservedly esteemed by his con- 

 temporaries, and continued to receive from succeeding writers the 

 attention to which their intrinsic value entitled them : to them 

 Linnaeus himself was deeply indebted, and Cuvier, the first of the 

 Zoologists of the nineteenth century, does not hesitate to avow his 

 obligations to our illustrious countryman, who laboured in the same 

 vineyard during the seventeenth. The admiration and gratitude of 

 every Naturalist, to what branch soever of the science his attention 

 may be more particularly directed, are justly due to Ray, and are 

 indeed on all occasions most freely tendered. How well he merited 

 them will readily be illustrated by even a brief enumeration of a 

 few only of those numerous and valuable productions which we owe 

 to his observation, his study, and his research. 



Ray has been pronounced by Cuvier to be the first true Systema- 

 tist of the Animal Kingdom, and the principal guide of Linnaeus in 

 this department of Nature. To him chiefly the Zoologist is indebted 

 for the excellent "Ornithology" and "Ichthyology" which pass 

 under the name of Willughby. The notes collected by both were, 

 after the decease of the latter, digested and arranged by Ray, who 

 revised and methodized the whole, and gave to the works the form 

 in which they were presented to the world. Both these productions 

 are well known, and are still justly esteemed ; the Ichthyology 

 especially, the principles first applied in which have been adopted 

 by Cuvier in his primary divisions of the Fishes in that great work 

 for which he has been collecting materials during nearly the whole 

 of his life, and of which the first livraison has just appeared. The 

 posthumous publications of Ray, the Synopsis Methodica Avium, 

 and the Synopsis Methodica Piscium, afford abridgements of the 

 Ornithology and the Ichthyology, with numerous additions. His 

 Synopsis Methodica Qiiadrupedum ct Serpentini getieris, was pub- 

 lished during his life, and very shortly after his decease appeared 

 his Methodus Insectorum. The Historia Insectorum, a work of real 

 value, was printed some years after his death at the expense of 

 the Royal Society. 



By Haller, Ray was designated as the greatest Botanist in the me- 

 mory of man. Still more emphatic is the character of him given by the 

 late revered President of the Linnaean Society : " The most accurate 



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