MEMOIR 



OF 



FRANCIS WILLUGHBY, ESQ. F.R.S. 



To Francis Willughby, Esq. or Willoughby, as it 

 is now commonly written, an English gentleman, 

 who died A. D. 1672, in the thirty-seventh year of 

 his age, is ascribed, by eminent authorities, the 

 honour of having greatly contributed to advance 

 the science of Natural History,* and of having 



* " Francis Willughby was the first naturalist who 

 treated the study of birds as a science, and the first who 

 made anything like a rational classification." Neville 

 Wood's Ornithologists 1 Text-book. " Willughby was the 

 most accomplished zoologist of this or any other country, 

 for all the honour that has been given to Ray, so far as 

 concerns systematic zoology, belongs exclusively to him. 

 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." Sivainson, in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. 

 B 



