192 YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS' UNION. 



he refused to sign, and was in consequence expelled from his 

 college, and this led to his devoting the remainder of his long 

 life mainly to natural history. In 1663, Ray, Willoughby, and 

 two others paid a long visit to the contiaent, not returning to 

 England till 1666. In 1668 they made a second journey into 

 the north of England. In 1670 he published his first Catalogue 

 of English Plants, and in 167 1 he made his third journey into 

 Yorkshire, accompanied by Thomas Willisel, an uneducated 

 man, who worked a good deal for them as a collector. In 

 1672 Willoughby died suddenly in the prime of life, leaving to 

 Ray the task of educating his two young sons and working out 

 his unfinished treatises on birds and fishes. These tasks Ray 

 faithfully performed, and then turning to his plants again he 

 published in 1690 the first edition of his 'Synopsis of British 

 Plants,' a second in 1696, and the two first volumes of his great 

 ' Historia Plantarum,' a history of all known plants, in 1686 

 and 1687, adding a third volume, which is mainly a compila- 

 tion, several years later. His last work was his ' Methodus 

 Emendata,' published in 1703, in which the foundations of the 

 natural system of the present day are laid by the clear separa- 

 tion from one another of the Phanerogamia and Cryptogamia, 

 and the separation of the former into Monocotyledons and 

 Dicotyledons, with an accurate diagnosis of the two classes. 

 A full account of what Ray knew about Yorkshire botany is 

 drawn up by him in 1695, for Gibson's edition of Camden's 

 ' Britannia.' This list contains the names of sixty-two rare 

 plants of the county, with their localities. 



Ray's principal friend and correspondent in Yorkshire was 

 Dr. Martin Lister, after whom the genus Listera is named. Lister 

 was a native of Buckinghamshire and was born in 1638. He was 

 the nephew and namesake of Sir Martin Lister, who was president 

 of the CoUegeof Physicians and physician in ordinary to Charles I. 

 He was educated at Cambridge and in 1670 settled at York, 

 where he became eminent in his profession, spending his 

 leisure in the study of natural history and antiquities. In 1670 



Trans.Y.N.U., 1S83 (pub. 1885). Series E 



