18 



MEMORIALS OF RAY 



for the use of the universal character; in gathering up 

 into a catalogue all such plants as I had found at any 

 time growing wild in England, not in order to the present 

 publishing of them, but for my own use ; possibly, one 

 day they may see the light ; at present, the world is glutted 

 with Dr. Merret's'^ bungling ' Pinax.' I resolve never to 

 put out anything which is not as perfect as is possible for 

 me to make it. I wish you would take a little pains this 

 summer about grasses, that so we might compare notes ; 

 for I would fain clear and complete their history. I in- 

 tend, this summer, to travel farther, either northward or 

 westward, or both, in quest of plants and fishes." 



These tables, which Mr. Ray saith were framed for 

 Bishop Wilkins,t were partly drawn up by Mr. Willughby 



* Merrett, Christopher, m.d., was born in Gloucestershire in 1614, and 

 practised in London as a physician. He published books on a variety of 

 subjects, medical and natural-historical. The work to which Ray alludes 

 here was called ' Pinax Rerum naturalium Britannicarum continens Yegeta- 

 bilia, Animaha et Possilia in banc Insula reperta,' London, 12nio, 1666. 

 He also pubKshed some papers in the ' Pliilosophical Transactions,' and a work 

 on ' the Acts of Parliament, Charters, Trials at Law, and Judges' Opinions 

 concerning the Grants to the College of Physicians, London ; ' London, 4to, 

 1680. He died in 1695. 



t Wilkius, John, was Bishop of Chester in the reign of Charles 11, and, 

 according to Anthony a Wood, was " a person endowed with rare gifts," " a 

 noted theologist and preacher, a curious critic in several matters, an excel- 

 lent mathematician and experimentalistj^ and one as well seen ia mechanisms 

 and new philosophy (of which he was a great promoter) as any of his time." 

 Ee was the son of Walter Wilkins, a goldsmith and citizen of Oxford, but 

 was born at the residence of his maternal grandfather, John Dod (a non- 

 conformist of some note, and author of several theological works, from one 

 of which, ' An Exposition of the Ten Commandments,' he is styled " the 

 Decalogist,") at Pawsley, near Daventry in Northamptonshire, in the year 

 1614. Wilkins appears to have remained with his grandfather until he ar- 

 rived at a proper age for entering a grammar-school, when his father placed 

 him under Mr. Edward Sylvester, an Oxford schoolmaster. In Easter Term, 

 1627, at the age of tliirteen, he was admitted a student at New Inn HaU, 

 whence he shortly removed to Magdalen Hall, where for a short time he was 

 under the tuition of John Tombes, the celebrated Anabaptist and opponent 

 of Baxter. Tombes left the university while Wilkins was an under-graduate, 

 and he did not proceed to his first degree at the usual time ; but he took 

 the degree of B.A. October 20, 1631, and that of M.A. June 11, 1634. 

 Having then arrived at the age of twenty-one, he took orders, and became 

 successively chaplain to William, Lord Say; George, Lord Berkeley, and 

 Charles, Count-palatine of the Rhine, with whom he resided for a consi- 

 derable time wliile he was in England. The skill of Wilkins in the mathe- 

 matics, to which that prince was much attached, is said to have been his 



