FRANCIS WILLUGHBY. 
55 
standing at the time Mr Willughby went to 
College. 
Their friendship was founded upon the most 
complete congeniality of tastes and dispositions, 
and was so intimate and unbroken, as that the 
narrative of their respective lives will henceforth, 
to a considerable extent, be interwoven. The 
general events of Mr Ray’s life will also be as 
often introduced in the following pages as may 
be consistent with the principal object. Mr Ray 
is justly characterized by a celebrated student in 
the same department of Natural History, in which 
he so conspicuously excelled, as “ the most accu- 
rate in observation, the most philosophical in 
contemplation, the most faithful in description 
amongst all botanists of his own or of any other 
time.”* It is asserted by many writers, that Mr 
Ray acted in the capacity of tutor to Mr Wil- 
lughby while at the University, and that their 
friendship resulted from the mutual knowledge 
they acquired of each other in that relation, — an 
assertion far from impossible in itself, when 
their respective stations in the University, at the 
time Mr Willughby first entered, and the age 
of each of them, are considered. But no proof 
has ever been offered for the assertion ; not the 
slightest evidence of it occurs in the letters or 
works of the parties themselves; and what is still 
more remarkable, is, that Dr Derliam, who was 
* Life of Ray, by Dr James Edward Smith, in Rees’s 
Cyclopaedia. 
