THE NATURAL HISTORY OF JOHN RAY 43 



His chief assistant was Francis Willughby, a young 



man of wealth and good family ; while Martin Lister, a 



Cambridge fellow, who had already laboured at natural 



history with good effect, undertook an independent 



share in the work. Ray wisely began with what lay 



close at hand, and published a catalogue of the plants 



growing around Cambridge. This was not a mere list 



of species, but a note-book charged with the results of 



much observation and reading. Journeys in quest of 



fresh material were begun. Then Ray's well-laid 



scheme was disconcerted by calamities which would 



have overwhelmed a less resolute man. He was driven 



from Cambridge by the Act of Uniformity, and forced to 



serve for years as a tutor in private families. When 



this servitude came to an end his only livelihood was a 



small pension, bequeathed to him by Willughby, on 



which he lived in rustic solitude. Willughby was cut 



off at the age of thirty-six, having accumulated much 



information but completed nothing. Lister became a 



fashionable physician, to whom natural history was 



little more than an elegant diversion. The whole 



burden of the enterprise fell upon Ray, who manfully 



bore it to the end. He completed his own share of the 



work, prepared for the press the imperfect manuscripts 



of Willughby, and before he died was able to fulfil the 



pledge which he had given forty years before in the 



prosperity of early manhood. It is needless to say that 



the natural history of Britain, executed in great part by a 



poor and isolated student, fell far short of what Ray might 



at one time have reasonably expected to accomplish. 



Ray, like other early naturalists, saw that a methodi- 

 cal catalogue of species, arranged on some principle 

 which could be accepted in all times and in all countries, 

 was indispensable to the progress of natural history, 



D2 



