I48 A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. 
ledge of plants soon after completing his thirtieth year. Chosen 
Greek lecturer of his college in 1651, Mathematical lecturer in 
1653, and Humanity Reader—which meant, I believe, Latin 
Tutor—in 1655, not to mention other college offices held in the 
five following years, it has been stated that an illness—perhaps 
induced by his intense application—led to his taking up the 
study of Nature as a healthy relaxation. 
The philosophical bent of his mind, a rationalised theism 
supported by a reverent but carefully worked out teleology, 
is seen in his Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the 
Creation and in the Three Physico-Theological Discourses concern¬ 
ing the Dissolution and Changes of the World, which, though not 
published until 1691 and 1692, were, in their original form, 
delivered as college exercises, or “ common-places,” as they 
were termed, before he took Holy Orders, i.e. before 1660. We 
have the contemporary testimony of Archbishop Tenison to the 
solid learning of these sermons. They achieved considerable 
success and may be said to have anticipated by nearly a century 
the methods of Butler and Paley. Paley made, indeed, 
considerable use of them. Incidentally, Ray argues in the 
former that the study of nature is a pious duty, one suited 
to a Sabbath day, and perhaps destined to be one of the main 
occupations of the endless Sabbaths hereafter. In the latter 
volume, amongst much interesting geological speculation, based 
upon many carefully observed facts and accurate views as to the 
nature of fossils, we have one characteristic criticism that is so 
typical of the man and of all that was best in his period that I 
cannot refrain from detailing it. Dr. John Woodward, well 
remembered, by name at least, as the founder of the Woodwardian 
Professorship, in his Natural History of the Earth, explained 
the occurrence of fossils in one stratum differing from those in 
another, by the suggestion that in the Deluge they sank in the 
order of their specific gravities. To this Ray simply replies 
that it is not the fact, for light and heavy fossils occur side by 
side. Similarly, during one of his interesting tours, he was 
informed of a spring near Llandaff that ebbed when the tide in 
the neighbouring sea was at flood and flowed when the tide 
ebbed ; but this fact, which would have been so extremely 
interesting if true, he does not take for granted, but puts to the 
test of his own observation, with the result that he finds the 
