FRANCIS WJLLUGHBY. 93 



is very valetudinary, and you have often alarmed 

 me with his illnesses." 



It can scarcely be doubted but that, under the 

 advantage of a good bodily constitution, which 

 Mr Ray represents Mr Willughby to have origi- 

 nally possessed, these frequent attacks of indispo- 

 sition, and even his premature death itself, are, 

 partly at least, to be attributed to the excitement 

 of a mind overwrought by incessant exercise. In 

 his case, as in that of many other self-devoted 

 victims to the cause of science, these premonitions 

 of disease are regarded merely as hinderances, 

 instead of being carefully obeyed ; and the first 

 opportunities afforded by an imperfect conval- 

 escence, are employed with redoubled energy as 

 reprisals for previous delay. Hence those nume- 

 rous instances in which the brightest expectations 

 of usefulness and excellence have been annihilated 

 in an early grave. 



The accounts which remain of Mr Willughby's 

 last illness are brief and indistinct. All that can be 

 ascertained is, that, in the beginning of June, 1672, 

 " he was seized with a violent pain in his head, 

 which, in consequence of his using diascordium, 

 removed to his side, and that he fell into a pleu- 

 risie, which terminated in that kind of fever called 

 Cattarrhalis, within less than a month after he took 

 to his bed." * 



He died on the 3d of July, 1672. His faithful 



* Ray's Preface to the English edition of Willughby's 

 Ornithology. 



