SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 211 
handwriting— oblique and very scratchy—of Francis Willughby. 
Besides this, there are a few other volumes, such as the works 
of Gesner, Aldrovandus and Piso, and the “ Dell’ Historia 
Naturale” of Ferranti (1590), which probably belonged to 
Francis Willughby, but there are no marginal notes, nor 
anything to indicate ownership, and the bulk of the books 
appear to have been purchased by his son. When on the 
continent in 1663—(a full account of which journey will be 
given later)—Willughby is recorded to have bought a 
volume of coloured pictures of birds at Nuremberg, and this 
relic is still in Lord Middleton’s safe keeping at Wollaton, 
although in a somewhat tattered condition. Willughby, in 
his zeal for information, may have got together a good 
many pictures of birds and fish at one place and another, 
and either he or Ray, or possibly Sir Thomas Willughby, evi- 
dently pasted some of them into the same volume with the 
Nuremberg collection, adding sundry engravings at the end. 
These engravings are taken from Pietro Olina’s “ Vecelliera ” 
(1622), a book of which Ray subsequently made great use, and 
from Adrian Collaert’s ‘‘ Avium vivae Icones”’ (circa 1580), 
which is not so often quoted. No manuscript, beyond a few 
names in German, accompanies the Nuremberg plates, which 
represent about eighty species of birds, some well painted, 
some badly. A few of them bear brief memoranda in Ray’s 
hand, but of little importance, e.g., where he remarks satirically 
on the picture of the Sand Grouse (Pterocles alchata) that the 
colours have been “‘ corrupted ”’ by the painter, which perhaps 
partly accounts for his subsequently omitting the species 
altogether from the “ Ornithologia.”” Another painting re- 
presents a hybrid duck, but although in this case the colour 
has been artistically laid on, it is difficult to put a name to 
the anomalous bird. 
Willughby’s bird skins, if he ever possessed a collection, 
have passed to the mite and the moth, except a few tough 
beaks of the Toucan and Albatross, and the foot and head of 
an Ostrich, but the remnant of his egg collection still exists in a 
cabinet at Wollaton Hall. Most of the eggs have been written 
upon, and the writing is still legible, although the eggs them- 
selves are very faded and mostly cracked. Some Heron’s eggs 
remain intact, and these and an inscribed Shoveler Duck’s egg 
