ray] 
BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY 
487 
The former entry being that which records the baptism 
of John Ray the naturalist . 1 
He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was 
ordained in 1660, but in 1662 was deprived of his fellowship 
for Nonconformity. In 1660 he published a Catalogue of 
the plants growing in the vicinity of Cambridge, and this 
branch of science (botany) seems to have always been his 
favourite study, for although working and travelling with 
Willughby over various parts of the British Isles and the 
Continent, it appears that he devoted his attention chiefly 
to the floras of the places visited, while his share in the 
zoological works of Willughby appears to have been practi- 
cally confined to the revision and publication of the manu- 
scripts left by the latter on his untimely death in 1672. 
Ray was appointed one of the executors, with an annuity 
of £60, charged with the education of Wilhighby’s two young 
sons and with the publication of his manuscript works. 
He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667, 
and several contributions from his pen appear in the Philo- 
sophical Transactions. He was responsible for the English 
translation, with additions, of Willughby’ s Ornithology , which 
was originally published in Latin. He also edited the same 
author’s Historia Piscium , to which he is stated to have 
contributed the first two books. The Synopsis Methodium 
Avium et Piscium , published posthumously in 1713, under 
Ray’s name, appears to have been based on the two works 
mentioned, the system and names being largely the 
same. 
Ray’s various botanical and other works, however, would 
alone earn for him a place as one of the greatest of our early 
naturalists. He died January 17, 1705, and was interred 
at his native place Black Notley, where his grave and monu- 
ment have recently been restored. 
1674. A | Collection | of | English VVords | Not Generally used, with 
1 For further particulars of Ray, vide an article by Mr. Mullens in British Birds, 
Feb. 1909, in which the errors of ascribing Ray’s birth as above mentioned were first 
confuted and corrected. 
