BICENTENARY OF LINN^US 25 



that of John Ray. Accordingly, the fourth epoch under consideration may 

 be termed the Raian Epoch, and culminates with the publication in 1693 

 of Ray's "Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini 

 G^eneris," which is one of the great landmarks in the history of classification. 

 Ray's debt to the past is shown in the facts that his lucid tabular analyses 

 of the common structural features of animals are arranged dichotomously; 

 that in each division and subdivision a single adjective or adjectival phrase 

 indicates the most important common feature of the animals in question, 

 and that these terms are, as we have seen, in many cases borrowed from 

 Aristotle. 



Ray, like Linnaeus, gave more attention to plants than to animals, and 

 depended upon his colleague, Willughby, for much of the data, especially 

 in the fishes. Like Linneeus also, Ray had a superb gift of order and a 

 philosophical mind that made him a worthy countryman and contemporary 

 of Sir Isaac Newton. 



In his tabular analysis, Ray distinctly foreshadows Linnaeus in the fol- 

 lowing points : — 



1. The higher vertebrates are contrasted with the fishes as breathing 

 by lungs instead of gills. 



2. The whales are classed with the viviparous animals and expressly 

 removed from the fishes, from which they were further distinguished by the 

 horizontality of the tail-fin. This step, however, was felt to be so radical 

 that Ray afterwards constructed a definition which included both whales 

 and fishes. 



3. As remarked by Gill, the terrestrial or quadruped mammals are 

 bracketed with the aquatic as "Vivipara," and contrasted with the "Ovi- 

 para" or " Aves." "The Vivipara are exactly co-extensive with Mammalia, 

 but the word ' vivipara ' was used as an adjective and not as a novm. " ' This 

 distinction seems to have been an important one, when substance was so 

 carefully distinguished from attribute. Ray emphasized the common 

 attributes of all the terrestrial hairy quadrupeds, of the amphibious hairy 

 animals such as the seals and manati, and of the purely aquatic and fish-like 

 Cetaceans; but he does not seem to have insisted that all these animals 

 agreed in essence and substance as well as in attribute, so that they should 

 require a new substantive name such as Linnaeus afterward applied to them. 



4. The double ventricle is noted as characteristic of both Vivipara and 

 Ovipara. 



5. In order to associate the "manati" and other amphibious mammals 

 with their terrestrial congeners, the term "hairj- animals" is employed as 

 more comprehensive than quadrupeds. 



1 The Story of a Word Mammal, in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXI. September, 1902, 

 pp. 43*-438. 



