86 



MEMORIALS OF RAY : 



will do well to consult Dr. Pulteney's ' Sketches of the 

 Progress of Botany in England/ The ' Philosophical 

 Letters,' collected and published in 1718 by Dr. Derham, 

 containing sixty-eight written by Ray, and many more by 

 his correspondents, throw much light on his character and 

 pursuits. We cannot help remarking that his hand- 

 writing was peculiarly fair and elegant. A specimen of 

 it exists among Sir Henry Spelman's vast and curious 

 collection of manuscripts, now in the possession of John 

 Patterson, esq. late m.p. for Norwich. 



The portraits of Ray are not numerous. One in oil, 

 taken at an advanced period of his life, remains in the 

 British Museum, and Dr. John Sims is possessed of a 

 miniature of an earlier date, of which its owner has given 

 an engraving by way of frontispiece to the first volume of 

 the 'Annals of Botany,' published in 1805. The latter 

 is rather deficient in that strength of character which ap- 

 pears in the more common prints after a picture by 

 Eaithorne, often prefixed to the third edition of the 

 ' Synopsis,' and sometimes to the ' Historia Plantarum.' 

 One of these prints was engraved by Elder, the other by 

 Vertue. Neither of them is strictly appropriated to any 

 particular book. That in the German edition of his 

 'Wisdom of God in the Creation,' published at Leipsic 

 in 1732, appears to be copied from one of these, and yet 

 it is so unlike them in expression, that if it were possible 

 one would suppose it taken from some other portrait of 

 the same person. (Ray's Works. His Life, by Dr. 

 Derham. Haller's Bibl. Bot. Pulteney's Sketches. 

 Aikin's General Biography.) — S, 



