MEMOIR OF EAT. 



Tumulum hunc 



a nonnullis humanitati, et scientiae 

 natural!, faventibus, 



olim conditum, 



et aliorum bona diligentia 



postea restauratum, 1737, 



nunc e vetustatis situ et sordibus 



pauci de novo revocarunt, 1792. 



The era in which Ray flourished, is justly de- 

 scribed by Linnaeus as the dawn of the golden age y 

 in natural history. In the period that preceded it, 

 the thick darkness that settled, during the middle 

 ages, orj almost every subject worthy to occupy the 

 human faculties, still continued to overshadow the 

 history of nature. Scarcely any effort was made 

 to elucidate even the most familiar phenomena ; 

 and when such was attempted, the want of obser- 

 vation and philosophical discernment was supplied 

 by fictions of the imagination and the extrava- 

 gancies of credulity. Since what had been seen 

 and ascertained was therefore trifling in amount 

 compared with what had been heard and conjec- 

 tured, it is not surprising that the few works of the 

 time devoted to natural history, should so abound 

 in absurd notions and fictitious representations of 

 animal forms, as to be useful for nothing but point- 

 ing out the illusions to which mankind have been 

 subject. The investigations of Ray and his co- 



