SIR J. E. SMITH. 



75 



folly in his youth, who shall say that politics or ambition 

 might not have dazzled his riper age ? or that he would 

 always have escaped that ruinous vanity which grasps at 

 universal knowledge, or rather at universal fame, and 

 knowing nothing deeply, is most flattered with any 

 praise which is least deserved. So often has this last been 

 the case with literary men that one cannot but mistrust a 

 character of the fairest promise. What Ray has done we 

 know and can appreciate. Equal to his friend in learn- 

 ing, talents, and zeal, the advantages of ample fortune 

 were compensated by the leisure and tranquillity of a 

 sequestered country life. His duties went hand in hand 

 with his studies and recreations, and he enjoyed, as 

 Haller observes, the rare felicity of giving fifty years un- 

 interruptedly to his favourite science. His long protracted 

 studies and ripened experience enabled him to achieve 

 what at first he could but regard at a distance as a great 

 object of his wishes, a systematic arrangement of the 

 animal as well as the vegetable kingdoms. Everybody 

 had hitherto been content with Aristotle's classification of 

 animals, of whose imperfections Ray, daring to think for 

 himself, could not but be aware. He invented a new one, 

 founded on the structure of the heart. " The Harveian 

 experiments and doctrines of the circulation had called 

 the peculiar attention of philosophers to every organ 

 which has a share in that phenomenon ; and to this cause, 

 probably, we owe the method of Ray.'' The mode of 

 breathing in animals, whether by lungs or by gills, and 

 the single or double structure of the heart in the former 

 case, constitutes the basis of his system, which in these 

 particulars at least succeeding naturalists have adopted. 

 His subordinate characters of the principal classes evince 

 great skill and sagacity, and the Linnsean system of 

 quadrupeds is highly indebted to that of our illustrious 

 countryman. 



His zoological publications, indeed, did not follow each 

 other in rapid succession, for after the ' Ornithology' had 

 come forth in English, eight years elapsed before the 



