MEMOIR 
OF 
FRANCIS WILLUGHBY, ESQ. F.R.S. 
To Francis Willughby, Esq. or Willoughby, as it 
is now commonly written, an English gentleman, 
who died a. d. 1672 , in the thirty-seventh year of 
his age, is ascribed, by eminent authorities, the 
honour of having greatly contributed to advance 
the science of Natural History,* and of having 
* “ Francis Willughby was the first naturalist who 
treated the study of birds as a science, and the first who 
made anything like a rational classification.” — Neville 
Wood’s Ornithologists' Text-book. “ Willughby was the 
most accomplished zoologist of this or any other country, 
for all the honour that has been, given to Kay, so far as 
concerns systematic zoology, belongs . exclusively to him. 
In botany, and in no other science, was Ray the author of 
a system, for he confessedly adopted Willughby’s both in 
ornithology and ichthyology, while his arrangement of 
quadrupeds, and of insects, was doubtless derived from 
the same source.” — Swainson, in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. 
B 
