RAY. 179 



according to his abilities." His merits have been 

 duly appreciated;, both by foreigners and his own 

 countrymen; and although, in the last century, 

 they seemed in danger of falling into oblivion, amid 

 the blaze of the numerous discoveries and improve- 

 ments then made, they are, at the present day, 

 brought more prominently into view, when men have 

 begun to compare systems, and to shake off the in- 

 fluence of party-spirit. An interesting commemora- 

 tion of him was made in London on the 29th No- 

 vember 1828. A genus of plants was dedicated to 

 his memory by Plumier, under the name of Jan 

 Raia, which Linnaeus changed into Rajania, and 

 Smith into Raiana. Raia would have been more 

 appropriate ; but unfortunately it was previously oc- 

 cupied by the skate, and therefore could not be al- 

 lotted to him of whom Sir James Smith says, that 

 he was " the most accurate in observation, — the 

 most philosophical in contemplation, — and the most 

 faithful in description, amongst all the botanists of 

 his own, or perhaps any other time." Several spe- 

 cies of fishes, however, are named after him, in con- 

 sequence of his having been the first who made men- 

 tion of them. 



'^ Mr Ray," says Dr Pulteney, in his Sketches of 

 the Progress of Botany, " had the singular happiness 

 of devoting fifty years of his life to the cultivation 

 of the sciences he loved. Incited by the most ar- 

 dent genius, which overcame innumerable diflicul- 

 ties and discouragements, his labours were, in the 

 end, crowned with a success before almost unequal- 

 led. He totally reformed the studies of botany and 

 zoology ; he raised them to the dignity of a science, 

 and placed them in an advantageous point of view ; 



