82 



MEMORIALS OF RAY : 



each party should correct himself, instead of aggravating 

 the defects of his adversary. Some notice is taken in the 

 preface to this edition both of the system of Tournefort 

 and that of Hermann, which last was much congenial to 

 the principles of Ray. The work was finished in 1698, 

 but not given to the public till 1703, recourse having been 

 had to a Dutch bookseller, who thought it for his interest 

 to place an English publisher's name in the title-page, a 

 proceeding which, however harmless, shocked the honest 

 feelings of the author, and this, perhaps, excited the thrifty 

 Hollander's surprise. By his exertions, however, the 

 book and the fame of its author became more widely dif- 

 fused, and continental botanists were much further ini- 

 tiated into Ray's system than they had previously been. 



But now the mortal career of this eminent man was 

 drawing towards a close. He complained in his letters, 

 that so far from being able to visit the London gardens as 

 he wished, in order to make observations upon plants, for 

 the greater perfection of this last edition of his ' Methodus,' 

 he was not able to walk into his neighbouring fields. He 

 still, nevertheless, kept up to the last his correspondence 

 with his friends, in the vivacity and clearness of style 

 which was natural to him. Latin and Enghsh, it is said, 

 were equally ready to his pen. So indefatigable was he 

 in the cultivation of the study of nature, that within a 

 year or two of his death he began to collect his scattered 

 notes for a work on insects, and actually drew up a ' Me- 

 thodus Insectorum,' which was printed, soon after his 

 decease, in a little octavo of sixteen pages, and republished 

 in the front of his ' Historia Insectorum.' This last book, 

 comprising all his ovm and Mr. Willughby's descriptions 

 of insects, came from the press in 1710, at the expense of 

 the Royal Society, and under the superintendence of Dr. 

 Derham. It consists of 375 quarto pages, besides an 

 appendix of 23 more, on British Beetles, by Lister. Ray 

 attributes to Willughby that part of his system which 

 concerns insects supposed to undergo no metamorphosis. 

 These are mostly the aptera of Linneeus, excluding the 



