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 protegee, 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 h*s 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 

 fishes, digested into a method of his oivn? It belongs 



