18 
MEMOIR OF RAY. 
John Ray was born on the 29th November 1628, 
at a place named Black Notley, in Essex. Although 
the name of his family was Ray, he continued all 
the time he attended the university to write it 
Wray, a form in which it accordingly appears in the 
college registers, and in some of his earliest publi- 
cations. This alteration was soon however aban- 
doned, and he confesses himself to have adopted k 
inconsiderately, and contrary to the usage of his fore- 
fathers. His parents were of humble condition, but 
they were enabled to provide for the liberal educa- 
tion of their son. His early studies were pursued at 
the grammar school of Braintree, which was not far 
distant from the place of his birth. In his maturer 
years he used to lament that so much of his time 
had been spent there unprofitably, owing to the 
imperfect mode of education pursued — a complaint 
pretty generally applicable to such institutions at 
the period of which we speak. 
We possess no detailed or circumstantial account 
of Ray’s boyhood, nor is it probable that there was 
much deserving of being recorded in the early part 
of a life, which was never marked, even at its most 
active period, by great variety of incident. What- 
ever may have been the deficiencies of his education 
at school, they were speedily repaired by his ex- 
treme assiduity and aptitude for learning. His at- 
tention seems for a time to have been chiefly de- 
voted to the acquisition of languages, and other 
branches of knowledge bearing immediate relation 
