102 MEMOIR OF 



genius lay chiefly to animals, therefore he under- 

 took the birds, beasts, and fishes, and insects, as Mr 

 Ray did the vegetables' 9 This account Dr Der- 

 ham professes to give as he had it from Mr Ray 

 himself, a statement which Sir James Edward 

 Smith could not have sufficiently weighed, when 

 he pronounces, as he does in his introductory 

 discourse to the Linnaean Society, p. 18, that 

 " certainly it is by no means a fair statement of 

 the case, to say, with Dr Derham, that Mr Wil- 

 lughby had taken the animal kingdom for his 

 task, as Mr Ray had the vegetable one." 



Dr Derham also remarks, " that Mr Willughby 

 carried his province as far as the utmost applica- 

 tion and diligence of a short life would enable 

 him ;" and that " he laboured so incessantly in 

 his studies, that he allowed himself little or no 

 time for those recreations and diversions which 

 men of his estate and degree are apt to spend so 

 much of their time in, but that he prosecuted his 

 design with as great application as if he had had 

 to get his bread thereby."* 



Mr Ray's own account of the book is of great 

 importance, as tending to set in a clear light the 

 distinction between Mr Willughby 's share in it 

 and his own. " Observing," he says,f " in this 

 busie and inquisitive age the history of animals 

 to have been in a great measure neglected by 

 Englishmen, (for that, since Turner and Mouffe$ 



* Derham's Life of Ray, p. 49, 

 t Preface to the English edition of Willughby's Orni- 

 thology. 



