210 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
he received Ray’s assistance, which is very possible, as they 
worked so much in common. This elaborate “Table ” appeared 
in Wilkins’s “ Real Character And a Philosophical Language,” 
which was printed in 1668, and in it eight pages are devoted 
to a scientific arrangement of birds by Willughby. The 
system on which it is based divides all known genera into 
nine groups, viz., six for the reception of land species, com- 
mencing with the carnivorous birds (with which he associates 
the Cuckoo, Raven, Parrot and Woodpecker) ; and three for 
aquatic species, that is such as live “ near wet places,” or are 
“much in the water.” At the conclusion of the List, 
Willughby adds a few remarks which as coming from his pen 
are interesting, but they treat of only six or seven species, 
namely, the Wild Swan, of which he remarks, “‘ Hooper, having 
the wind-pipe going down to the bottom of the breastbone ” 
—wild geese ‘“ whereof one {kind] is black from the breast to 
the middle of the belly, called Brant-Goose ’’—‘‘ the Widgeon- 
kind,’ and “the Teal-kind,”’ to which ‘‘ should be reduced that 
other fowl . . . called Gargane.” He concludes with one 
observation, to which naturalists would hardly now assent, viz., 
that “to the Gull-kind doth belong that other Bird, of a long 
slender bill bending upwards, called Avosetta recurvirostra.”’ 
I am indebted to Lord Middleton for permitting me the 
use of what must certainly have been Willughby’s own copy 
of Wilkins’s ‘‘ Real Character.” It is interleaved, and ten or 
eleven pages, commencing with p. 122, are translated into 
Latin in Ray’s hand, but there are no notes by Willughby, and 
this is disappointing; also the owner’s name, written on the 
first page, is not his, but that of his son, Sir Thomas Willughby. 
This volume is preserved with other treasures, at Wollaton 
Hall in Nottinghamshire, a stately edifice built by one of the 
Willughbys in the reign of Elizabeth, and here are also many 
other works on Natural History which belonged to Sir Thomas 
Willughby, the son of the naturalist, for they bear his name 
on the fly-leaf. One of these, the ‘‘ Libri de Piscibus Marinis ” 
of Rondeletius (1554) is furnished with a manuscript index, 
incomplete and roughly written on the back of a letter, which 
has been identified by Mr. W. H. Stevenson* as being in the 
* Inspector to The Historical MSS. Commission, and Editor of The 
Middleton Papers. (Report on MSS. 1911.) 
