Natural History in London, 85 



After enumerating the principal works which Ray produced, he observed 

 " Ray was the first who reduced natural history to a system, and prepared, 

 the way for those more perfect arrangements which have since had so salu- 

 tary an influence on its cultivation. It was to his penetrating genius and 

 indefatigable exertions, that the civilised world was indebted for many most 

 important discoveries. If he did not himself always arrive at the goal, he 

 pointed out the road ; and it was to his pursuing the course he had com- 

 menced, that we owed our present advanced state in many particulars of 

 natural history. Haller felt how much he owed to Ray, and he termed 

 him the greatest botanist in the memory of man. 



" Of this inestimable author Stillingfleet observes, • that no writer, till his 

 time, ever advanced all the branches of. natural history so much as that 

 sagacious, diligent, English observer, whose systematical spirit threw a light 

 on every thing he undertook, and contributed not a little to those great 

 and wonderful improvements which have since been introduced.' " 



Mr. Bicheno, Secretary to the Linnean Society, pronounced a warm 

 eulogy on Ray, " whom Cuvier had justly called un MethodistCy and whose 

 works he had studied, still with fresh advantage, for the last twenty years. 

 Ray was, indeed, a methodist. He was the first who arranged the grand 

 outlines of natural history, and enabled every one to become acquainted 

 with the groups, the grand formations of nature. With the minute parti- 

 culars of his subject, Ray had not much interfered, but he had originated 

 that system of arrangement which gave perspicuity to the labours of others, 

 and had accurately described the characters of nature's grand ope- 

 rations." 



Mr. E. Forster, Vice-President and Treasurer of the Linnean Society, 

 said, that born and educated in the same county with Ray, he had been 

 taught, from his infancy, to admire that great man ; and his admiration 

 soon became veneration from a study of his writings. Nearly forty years 

 ago he had first visited his tomb, befoi'e it had long undergone a repair at 

 the expense of a gentleman present (Sir Thomas Gery Cullum). In his 

 pilgrimages to Ray's tomb, he had felt great delight in seeing also the place 

 of his birth, the church in which he had been baptised; and in entering 

 the house in which this good man had lived and died, it was pleasing to 

 reflect that he was treading the very boards which Ray had trodden, and 

 that he was looking, perhaps, on trees and plants which Ray had admired. 



Dr. Fitton, the President of the Geological Society, and Mr. Greenough, 

 passed each a high eulogy on the character of Ray, who made many saga- 

 cious observations on geology, and entertained some opinions much beyond 

 the state of the subject in his own time. 



Mr. Vigors, the Secretary of the Zoological Society, spoke of the high 

 sense now entertained of Ray as a philosophical zoologist. 



On the healths of the Naturalists of Great Britain and Ireland being 

 drunk, coupled with the name of Mr. Kirby, the Rev. Gentleman said that 

 he had never before addressed a public assembly of a festive character ; 

 but he felt it right to take that opportunity of testifying his admiration of 

 the great and good Ray. He was great as a natural philosopher, and great 

 also as a moral philosopher. He penetrated the world of science further 

 than any of his contemporaries, and by his exertions formed a bright con- 

 stellation of information, whose beams had served as a guide and beacon to 

 more modern labourers. In entomology, the branch of science to which 

 he himself was devoted, the naturalist of the present time was, indeed, 

 deeply indebted to Ray, who had combined the system of Aristotle with 

 that of Swammerdam, and cleared the way for Linnaeus. Much had 

 been done to unveil nature, but still much remained to be done; and he 

 hoped that a course of perseverance would be pursued until all was 

 accomplished. 



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