30 NATURAL HISTORY. 



required, that those who had already signed the Solemn 

 League and Covenant did not lie under any obligation to 

 keep their oath ; and to this Ray could not conscientiously 

 subscribe. Rather than do so, he sacrificed his fellowship, 

 and, with it, all his hopes of ecclesiastical preferment; 

 thus setting, along with many other high-minded men, 

 a noble example of adherence to principle, and of dis- 

 regard for considerations of personal comfort or worldly 

 profit. 



Having thus abandoned his career in Cambridge, Ray 

 determined to travel abroad for a time; and he carried 

 this determination into practice early in 1663, in company 

 with his friend Francis Willughby and two of his own 

 pupils. Ray's journeyings on the Continent lasted till 

 March 1666, and took him through a large part of Western 

 and Southern Europe, including Sicily and Malta. The 

 record of his travels, and of the scientific observations 

 which he made thereon, was given to the world in 1673, 

 under the title of ' Observations, topographical, moral, and 

 physiological, made in a Journey through part of the Low 

 Countries, Germany, Italy, and France.' This most quaint 

 and interesting journal abounds in information of all 

 kinds, and upon all sorts of subjects. Observations upon 

 the towns, public buildings, political and social institu- 

 tions, habits of the people, and natural scenery, are 

 mingled in the oddest way with learned disquisitions 

 upon scientific problems, or descriptions of the animals 

 and plants met with on the journey. Endless quotations 

 might be made, but one characteristic sample will be 

 enough. 



Journeying from Niirnberg to Ratisbon, Ray stopped 



