OF NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 7^ 



of exploration, passing through Durham and Northumberland, 

 as far north as Stirling and Glasgow, and returned by West- 

 morland, Ray attending specially to plants, and Willoughby 

 to birds. A full account of what they saw is printed in Ray's 

 " Itineraries," the portion devoted to Durham and Northum- 

 berland occupying eight pages (178 to 185) in Derham's 

 " Life of Ray." They visited Stockton, Durham, Newcastle, 

 Morpeth, Alnwick, and Berwick. Ray had been ordained as 

 a clergyman, but when the Act of Uniformity came into 

 operation he refused to sign, and was in consequence expelled 

 from his college, and this led to his devoting the rest of his 

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

 two others paid a long visit to the Continent, not returning till 

 1666. In 1668 they made a second journey into the North of 

 England. In 1670 he published his "Catalogue of English 

 Plants," and in 167 1 they made a third journey to the 

 North of England, accompanied by Thomas Willisel,* 

 an uneducated man who worked a great deal for them and 

 others as a collector. In this journey they collected Asperugo 

 procumbens on Holy Island, Alerteusia maritima at Scremerston, 

 and Diplotaxis tenuifolia and Sisyinbriiim In'o on the walls of 

 Berwick, and made a list of the birds that breed on the Fern 

 Islands. In 1672 Willoughby died suddenly in the prime of 

 life, leaving to Ray the task of educating his two sons, and 

 working out his unfinished treatises on birds and fishes. 

 These tasks Ray faithfully performed, and then, turning to 

 botany again, published in 1690 the first edition of his 

 " Synopsis of British Plants," which forms the first solid 

 ftiundation of all succeeding floras of the island. Volumes 

 I. and II. of his great " Historia Plantarum," a history of all 

 known plants, were published in 1686 and 1687, and a third 

 volume, which is mainly a compilation, seven years later. 

 The three volumes average a thousand folio pages each. 



* Thomas Willisel collected not only for Ray and Willougliby, but also for 

 Merrett, Morison, Sloane, and the Royal Society. He is said by Britten and Boulger 

 to have been a native of Lancashire, to have served as a soldier under Cromwell, and 

 to have travelled all over the United Kingdom. Besides the plants already mentioned 

 he regathered Cornus suecica on Cheviot, and gathered Trientalis eurojxea beyond 

 the Roman Wall five miles north of Hexham, and on the moors west of Harbottle. 



