A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. I47 
the botanists of the 16th century. As mathematics had long 
been studied as the science of abstract number, so it was to be 
recognised that the anatomy and functions of plants and animals 
were to be studied by direct observation and experiment, apart 
altogether from the authoritative statements of antiquity, and 
that a knowledge of them w r as worth having for its own sake, 
and not merely as a branch of pharmacology. 
Of this seventeenth century renaissance, Ray was, so far 
as biology is concerned, by far the most illustrious representative. 
John Ray was born at Black Notley, probably on 29th 
* 
November 1627. As his father Roger Wray vras the village black¬ 
smith, I like to think that the existing forge may mark his 
birthplace. He was baptised, in the parish church no doubt, 
on 6th December 1627. In the Grammar School of this town, 
he was educated until he w r as more than sixteen, a Mr. Love 
being then the master ; and, though Ray afterwards expressed 
his regret that the school was not a good one, we cannot but 
think—judging from the rapidity of his advance at Cambridge— 
that he must have been well grounded in mathematics and Latin. 
Recognised when at school, it is said, as a “ lad of parts/’ he 
w r as sent to Cambridge at the expense of a neighbouring 
squire named Wyvill, a form of practical benevolence more 
frequent in the good old days than it is at present. In June 
1644, he entered Catherine Hall, Cambridge ; but, in 1646, 
migrated to Trinity College, apparently in order to be under 
the tuition of Dr. James Duport, Regius Professor of Greek, 
who in later years stated that no other pupils of his were com¬ 
parable to John Ray and Isaac Barrow. The latter having come 
up to the University from Felstead, a year after Ray left Brain¬ 
tree, w r as destined to become Master of Trinity and to succeed 
Duport as Professor of Greek. Ray graduated B.A. in 1647 
and, in September 1649, about seven months alter the execution 
of King Charles, was elected, simultaneously w 7 ith Barrow', to a 
Minor Fellowship of his College, and six months later to a Major 
Fellowship, apparently before proceeding to the degree of Master 
of Arts, which he did in 1651. He had, we are told, acquired 
great skill not only in Greek and Latin, but also in Hebrew’, though, 
perhaps, the testimony to his eloquence as an orator and to the 
beginnings of his study of natural history belong to a somewhat 
later time. It is clear, however, that he had an accurate know’- 
