1910.] Ray's General Status in Zoology. 17 



RAY, 1693. 



'Synopsis Methodica Animaliiim Quadrupediiin et Serpentini Generis.' 



In John Ray (1627-1705) the country and century of Sir Isaac Newton 

 produced another natural philosopher of the highest rank. 



Nearly ninety years after the appearance of Ray's 'Synopsis' his country- 

 man and successor Thomas Pennant, author of the 'History of Quadrupeds' 

 (1781), speaks appreciatively of Ray as follows: "... .living at a period 

 when the study of Natural History was but beginning to dawn in these 

 Kingdoms, and w^hen our contracted Commerce deprived him of many 

 lights we now enjoy, he was obliged to content himself with giving descrip- 

 tions of the few Animals brought over here and collecting the rest of his 

 materials from other Writers. Yet so correct was his genius that we view 

 a systematic arrangement arise even from the -Chaos of Aldrovandi and 

 Gesner. Under his hand the indigested matter of those able and copious 

 Writers assumes a new form, and the whole is made clear and perspicuous" 

 (op. cit., pp. i-ii). 



This indeed was one of Ray's chief services to mammalogy, that out of a 

 "Chaos of indigested material" he brought a reasonable systematic arrange- 

 ment, a real basis for the taxonomic work of the succeeding century. 



These admirable results, which we shall examine in detail below, were 

 not attained until after long previous training in other fields of taxonomy. 

 In this case, as in so many others among early naturalists, we see the felici- 

 tous application to zoology of the training gained in systematic botany. 

 For in 1670 appeared the 'Catalogus Plantarum Angliiie,' in 1682 the 

 'Methodus Plantarum Nova,' in 1686-1704 the 'Historia Plantarum,' while 

 in the meanwhile, in cooperation with his friend Francis Willughby, Ray 

 published the 'Ornithologia' (1676) and the 'Historia Piscium' (1686). 



In all these works the species is recognized as the practical unit of taxon- 

 omy and in the 'Historia Piscium' for example, not less than 420 species 

 (according to Giinther) are carefully and concisely described. 



Ray's conception of "species" however does not appear to be entirely 

 identical with the modern usage. He often used words merely as the 

 equivalent of the middle English "spece," which survives in our word 

 "spice," and meant "kind": it was also equivalent to the logical "species" 

 (c/. the Greek eT8os) of the schoolmen, and is exemplified in the "Historia 

 Piscium" in such phrases as "clarias niloticus Belonii mustelse fiuviatilis 

 species," "bagre piscis barbati ac aculeati species." Ray also used the 

 term "species" in a c[uite Linnsean manner, as in the names Ovis laticauda, 

 Ovis strepsiceros and Ovis domestica. In form, at least, this foreshadows 



