28 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
these opinions on their respective characters are 
supported by facts has been already shown. The 
system of Ray, in his Synopsis, is almost precisely 
a transcript from that of Willughby; and it is not 
one of the least beauties in the character of the 
survivor, that so far from wishing to appropriate 
to himself the laurels of his deceased patron, he 
seems particularly anxious to disclaim all pretensions 
to them. As the exposition of systematic details 
and of tables suits not with the nature of this 
sketch, we may at once pass from the patron to 
the protégée, and endeavour to form a just estimate 
of the real merits possessed by the third, though 
not perhaps the least, member of this zoological 
triumvirate. The life of Ray, unlike that of his 
friend, was protracted to a lengthened period; for 
he lived to the age of 77. The time, therefore, 
which he enjoyed for prosecuting his researches 
was nearly doubled: and hence he was enabled to 
expand them over a much wider field. Botany 
was his chief, if not his sole, study for the greatest 
part of his life; for he only began his work upon in- 
sects at the advanced age of seventy-five; although he 
had doubtless been collecting his materials for some 
time previously. In botany, and in no other science, 
was Ray the author of a system, for he confessedly 
adopted Willughby’s, both in ornithology and 
ichthyology ; while his arrangement of quadrupeds 
and of insects was doubtless derived from the same 
source. Indeed he himself informs us, that among 
the MSS. of his friend he found the histories of 
« beasts and insects,’ no less than of “ birds and 
Jishes, digested into a method of his own.” It belongs 
