MEMOIR OF 
1 0-2 
genius lay chiefly to animals, therefore he under- 
took the birds, beasts, and fishes, and insects, as Mr 
Ray did the vegetables.” This account Dr Der- 
ham professes to give as he had it from Mr Ray 
himself, a statement which Sir James Edward 
Smith could not have sufficiently weighed, when 
he pronounces, as he does in his introductory 
discourse to the Linncean Society, p. 18, that 
“ certainly it is by no means a fair statement of 
the case, to say, with Dr Derham, that Mr Wil- 
lughby had taken the animal kingdom for his 
task, as Mr Ray had the vegetable one.” 
Dr Derham also remarks, “ that Mr Willughby 
carried his province as far as the utmost applica- 
tion and diligence of a short life would enable 
him and that “he laboured so incessantly in 
his studies, that he allowed himself little or no 
time for those recreations and diversions which 
men of his estate and degree are apt to spend so 
much of their time in, but that he prosecuted his 
design with as great application as if he had had 
to get his bread thereby.”* 
Mr Ray’s own account of the book is of great 
importance, as tending to set in a clear light the 
distinction between Mr Willughby ’s share in it 
and his own. “ Observing,” he says,f “ in this 
busie and inquisitive age the history of animals 
to have been in a great measure neglected by 
Englishmen, (for that, since Turner and MoufFet, 
* Derham’s Lie of Ray, p. 49. 
t Preface to the English edition of Willughby "s Orni- 
thology. 
