SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 199 

 graduates on Greek and mathematics alternately, and was eventually or- 

 dained, after which he held many college offices. His university period was 

 not to last long, however; the reactionary Government of Charles II required 

 the English clergy to subscribe to an Act of Uniformity drawn up with a 

 view to suppressing liberty of conscience; and Ray was one of those who 

 preferred to give up office rather than to submit. It thus came about that, 

 like so many of England's best scientists, he had to spend the greater part of 

 his life following the profession of a private scholar. This Ray was enabled to 

 do thanks to his connexion with Francis Willughby, a very wealthy young 

 man of noble family, who, eight years younger than Ray, had been a pupil 

 of his at Cambridge and was his constant companion throughout his life, 

 their friendship being based on a common interest in natural science. After 

 Ray's resignation the two friends went for a several years' tour through 

 Europe, during the course of which Ray applied himself especially to botany, 

 Willughby to zoology. Having returned home laden with collections, they 

 settled down in Willughby's country-house in order to work up the material 

 they had collected. In 1672., however, Willughby's death abruptly terminated 

 their collaboration; by his will he appointed Ray one of his executors and 

 left him sixty pounds a year for life, with the charge of educating his two 

 sons, for which purpose Ray remained for some years in his friend's family. 

 Having married, he finally settled down in his parents' cottage, which he 

 had inherited, and there for several decades he continued his researches, 

 universally respected in scientific circles in England and contented with his 

 lot in spite of his modest circumstances. He died in 1705, three daughters 

 surviving him. 



Kay's Methodus plantarum 

 Ray's literary work was extensive and many-sided — sermons and religious 

 essays, handbooks on the classics, treatises on folk-lore, and, finally, the 

 works on natural science on which his fame entirely rests. The greatest of 

 these, in both volume and importance, is his Historia plantarum generalis, 

 a work of i, 860 closely printed folio pages, in which he summarized the entire 

 botanical knowledge of his time. At an earlier date he published a resume of 

 the system in which he arranged the plants in his Historia, under the title 

 of Methodus plantarum. This great history, which contains a systematic de- 

 scription of all the then known plants, starts with a general survey of the 

 nature and conditions of plants. He quotes Aristotle's principle as to the 

 division of the organs into simple and complex, similar and dissimilar. As 

 regards the various parts of the plants he bases his system on Jung's defini- 

 tions and terminology, which are regularly quoted, but are in each individual 

 case considerably extended and thoroughly investigated. He cites the plant 

 classification which Cesalpino originated, according to fruits and seeds, but 

 he points out that the form of leaves and other parts must also be taken into 



