FRANCIS WILLUGHBY. 
93 
is very valetudinary, and you have often alarmed 
me with liis illnesses.” 
It can scarcely be doubted but that, under the 
advantage of a good bodily constitution, which 
Mr Ray represents Mr Willughby to have origi- 
nally possessed, these frequent attacks of indispo- 
sition, and even his premature death itself, are, 
partly at least, to be attributed to the excitement 
of a mind overwrought by incessant exercise. In 
his case, as in that of many other self-devoted 
victims to the cause of science, these premonitions 
of disease are regarded merely as hinderances, 
instead of being carefully obeyed ; and the first 
opportunities afforded by an imperfect conval- 
escence, are employed with redoubled energy as 
reprisals for previous delay. Hence those nume- 
rous instances in which the brightest expectations 
of usefulness and excellence have been annihilated 
in an early grave. 
The accounts Which remain of Mr Willughby’s 
last illness are brief and indistinct. All that can be 
ascertained is, that, in the beginning of June, 1672, 
“ he was seized with a violent pain in his head, 
which, in consequence of his using diascordium, 
removed to his side, and that. he fell into a pleu- 
risie, which terminated in that kind of fever called 
Cattarrhalis, within less than u month after he took 
to his bed.” * 
He died on the 3d of July, 1672. His faithful 
* Raj’s Preface to the English edition of Willughby’s 
Ornithology. 
t 
