22 MEMOIR OF RAT. 



ciples that he did not hesitate to reject it. He was 

 accordingly deprived of his fellowship for non-con- 

 formity, along with thirteen others belonging to the 

 university of Cambridge. 



Ray's ardent desire of knowledge, and the plea- 

 sure he derived from pursuits so congenial to his 

 taste and disposition, led him sooner or later to in- 

 vestigate almost every department of Natural His- 

 tory. But botany, a subject which has attracted 

 so many youthful minds to the study of nature, was 

 the object of his earliest predilection, and it like- 

 wise continued throughout the greater part of his 

 life to engross the largest share of his attention. 

 Little had hitherto been done for this science, either 

 in Britain or on the Continent. When Ray first 

 turned his attention to it, it was nearly in the same 

 condition in which Turner had found it about a 

 century before. Almost the only works that treated 

 of plants were styled " Herbals," of which the in- 

 dividual just named might well say, that they were 

 " al full of unlearned cacographees, and falsely 

 naming of herbs." Their use in medicine was the 

 only consideration that recommended plants to at- 

 tention ; and while all the works relating to the sub- 

 ject were, to quote from the title-page of one of them, 

 " compyled, composed, and auctorysed by divers 

 and many noble Doctours and expert Maysters in 

 Medycynes," the object at which they aimed may 

 be gathered from the title of the " Grete Herball," 

 which professed to give " parfyt knowledge and un- 



