72 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE EARLY BOTANISTS 



St. Paul's, and was also a Fellow of the Royal College of 

 Physicians. He travelled extensively both in Britain and on 

 the Continent, and was highly esteemed by his contem- 

 poraries. Gerarde calls him a " second Dioscorides," and 

 Clusius named after him a Hypericum he collected in the 

 Balearic isles. He was also distinguished as an entomologist. 



John Ray, born 1627, died 1705. For a century after the 

 death of Turner nothing material was added to our knowledge 

 of the botany of Northumbria. The English writers of that 

 period, Lobel, Gerarde, and Parkinson, do not appear to 

 have visited Northumbria. Johnson, writing in 1641, gives 

 as plants of Northumberland, in addition to Dofonicum, 

 Lycopodium clavatum from Cheviot, Mertensia viarititna from 

 "the salt-pans between Barwicke and the Holy Island," 

 Vaccininm vitis-idcea " from the wilde moores of Northumber- 

 land," and Angelica saiina, by which he probably intends 

 Ligiisticum scoiicum, Irom "amongst the rocks not far from 

 Barwicke." During the last fifty years of the 17th century, 

 during the reigns of Charles the Second, James H., and 

 William and Mary, the progress of botany is closely connected 

 with the name of John Ray, and it is to him we first owe the 

 separation of the Monocotyledons from the Dicotyledons. Ray 

 was the son of a blacksmith, who lived at Black Notley, in 

 Essex. At the age of sixteen he was sent to Cambridge, 

 where he made such excellent progress and was esteemed so 

 highly, that in 1651 he was appointed lecturer in Greek in 

 Trinity College, in 1654 lecturer in Mathematics, and in 1659 

 College Steward. His attention was first drawn to natural 

 history as a recreation in the intervals of his severer studies. 

 In 1660 he published his first botanical work, a catalogue of 

 the wild plants of the neighbourhood of Cambridge, in which 

 upwards of 600 kinds are enumerated. It met with a favour- 

 able reception from the younger collegians, and led to his 

 acquaintance with his principal patron and fellow-worker, 

 Francis Willoughby, the son of a gentleman of considerable 

 fortune, whose estate was in Warwickshire. In 1661 they 

 undertook together what was then considered a long journey 



