January 9.] THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 231 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
M W 
1 ) l) 
Weather near Lo 
JANUARY 9—15, 1851. 1 
Barometer. (Thermo. 
NDON IN 1850. 
Wind. Rain in In. 
Sun 
i Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
It, & S. 
Moon’s 
Age. 
Clock 
bef. Sun. 
Day of 
Year. 
9 Th 
Linnets congregate. 30.201 — 30.065 33 —29 
N.E. 
— 
6 a. 8 
8 a. 4 
11 a.31 
7 
7 20 
9 
10 F 
Rooks resort to their nests. 1 29-908 — 29.821 34—28 
N.E. 
— 
6 
10 
morn. 
3 
7 41 
10 
11 S 
Snowdrop blooms. |,20*791— 2 £)./Go] 34— 2 7 
S.E. 
5 
11 
0 38 
9 
8 8 
11 
12 Sun 
1 Sunday after Epiphany. 129.922 — 29 . 88:1 32 —27 
N.E. 
— 
4 
13 
1 47 
10 
8 32 
12 
13 M 
Hilary. Cambridge Term begins. 29-912 — 29.882 3J—22 
N.E. 
— 
4 
14 
2 59 
11 
8 55 
13 
14 To 
Oxford Term begins. 29-797 — 29.544 31—26 
E. 
— 
3 
16 
4 13 
12 
9 17 
14 
15 W 
Perfoliate Honeysuckle in leaf. 129.433 — 29.3Q0 31—25 
E. 
— 
2 
17 
5 26 
13 
9 38 
15 
If a pilgrim loving to visit the places where the good and the great 
have dwelt and rest from their labours, will convey himself to the good 
old Essex town of Braintree, and, staff in hand, will turn down by the 
| east end of its stately church—a structure that will live in all legal 
memories for ever in connection with its never ending “Church Rate 
Case,”—and will pass on for some two miles along the road that leads to 
Witham, he will arrive at a little white church, plain and unattractive, 
with cottages appropriately nestling near it, and among them that of the 
village blacksmith. His forge, with the exception of the broad brick 
chimney, wears but a modern and no markedly thriving aspect; but that 
chimney must have vibrated with the echoes of the hammer’s measured 
blows two centuries since ; and who then stood by its side, and submitted 
the iron to their blows ? No other than the father of the most excellent 
botanist that England numbers among its natives—even the father of the 
English Linnaeus, John Ray. In the cottage attached to that smithy 
was this admirable man born on the 29 th of November, 1627 —by the 
side of that smithy chimney was his childhood passed;—but he was no 
common boy ; and the squire of the parish—a Mr. Wyvill, if we remem¬ 
ber correctly—hearing of his rapid progress as a scholar at Braintree 
school, aided to sustain him at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, and subse¬ 
quently at Trinity College in the same University, whither he removed 
“because in Catherine Hall they chiefly addicted themselves to disputa¬ 
tions, while in Trinity the politer arts and sciences were principally 
I cultivated.” In 1(319 he was, at the same time as Isaac Barrow, elected 
a Fellow of his college ; and the learned Dr. Duport, famous for his skill 
' in Greek, used to say that of all his pupils none were comparable to these 
two. That he was not deceived in his estimate of Ray is evidenced by 
the fact that, before he was twenty-seven, in 1655, he had been succes¬ 
sively elected Greek Lecturer, Mathematical Lecturer, and Humanity 
Reader of his college. He was also tutor to many gentlemen of high 
standing, but with none did he acquire so close a friendship as with 
Francis Willoughby, and with whom in after years he was intimately 
associated in scientific researches. Ray was always fond of Natural 
History, but he especially became attached to Botany from one of those 
providences we are so prone to characterise as accidents, which, though 
apparently evils, are in reality the seed-time of a future rich harvest of 
good. A violent illness—probably the result of intense sedentary study— 
rendered necessary' the remedy of much out-door exercise; and as Ray 
was not of that class who can endure mere mechanical exertion without 
an accompanying object of mental improvement, he devoted his walks to 
the collection and examination of wild plants—researches which he con¬ 
tinued for ten years, and which gave birth, in 1660 , to his Catalogue of 
Plants produced in the Neighbourhood of Cambridge. In its preface he 
describes the difficulties he had to overcome in the prosecution of his 
botanical studies, especially the absence of a guide in the determination 
of species ; yet he surmounted all difficulties, and succeeded in de¬ 
scribing alphabetically 626 . Many notes, abounding with original 
observations on plants and insects, are dispersed throughout the volume, 
all evincing signs of that excellence and celebrity to which he afterwards 
attained. At the Restoration of Charles II., in 1660, Ray was ordained a 
clergyman of the Church of England ; but he never held any preferment, 
nor performed regularly parochial duty ; and two years afterwards he was 
obliged to resign even his Fellowship, whereby his entire living was taken 
from him, because his conscience would not permit him to subscribe 
the Act of Uniformity. Yet there was no fanaticism, but the purest 
tolerant spirit within him; and how fitted he was to adorn his profession 
may be appreciated from that excellent little volume by which he is most 
popularly known— The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the 
Creation. Although deprived of the chief means of his subsistence, yet 
he was not left destitute, for he found a home with Mr. Willoughby, at 
Middleton Hall, in Warwickshire ; and he occupied the remainder of his 
days in the pursuit of science. With Mr. Willoughby lie traversed the chief 
, southern countries of continental Europe, in a tour of which he published a 
narrative. But in 1672 a heavy blow' descended upon him in the death of 
his friend. “ He died,” says Ray, “ at the early age of thirty-seven, to 
the infinite grief of myself, his friends, and all good men.” But Mr. 
Willoughby, even in death, did not forget his tutor and friend; for he 
I made him one of the executors of his will, confided to him the education 
! of his two sons, and bequeathed to him a life annuity of sixty pounds. 
I For more than seven years he devoted himself to the education of his 
! pupils, and then, after one or two intermediate sojourns, returned to pass 
j nis last days at the place of his birth. 
I If the pilgrim turns from the smithy to the church of Black Notley, he 
I will find a plain pyramidal monument, near the door of its south side, 
I recording the burial place of this one of the most worthy of England, 
I and that his death occurred on the 17 th of January, 1704—5. When we 
visited that tomb, now twenty-five years since, some previous pilgrim had 
written on the marble—“ Why did Linmeus dedicate such a plant as 
j llajania to such a man ? ” I 11 assumed humility the great Swedish 
! botanist accepted the dedication to himself of Linncea borealis— “ a 
depressed abject plant, long overlooked, flowering at an early age,” 
and rendered still more appropriate by having some beauty and being 
native of northern Europe ; but what fitness w as there in dedicating to 
Ray an exotic climber of no beauty or worth ? 
Resuming his staff, let the pilgrim pursue his walk ; and passing to¬ 
wards Witham—some mile or rather more from Notley Church—he will 
find a neat looking cottage on his right hand, w'ith a small flower-garden 
between it and the road. It is of too modern appearance to be now as 
it was when Ray dwelt beneath its roof. Its front is plaistered and divided 
into panels by grey-coloured pebbles being splashed in parallelograms 
upon its front; and nothing but the old chimney remains to satisfy the j 
mind that “here is something Ray also has looked upon.” But it 
is gratifying to ponder over a dwelling within the old oak timbers of 
which such a man sat by “ the bonnic blythe blink of his ain fireside,” 
and wrote such works as The New Arrangement of Plants (Methodus 
Plantarum Nova), and The History of Plants —that vast work in which 
he has described and related the uses of the 18,625 species then known 
to botanists. 
Again journeying on, and within a short distance of Witham, the 
pilgrim will pass Falkborne Hall, one of Ray’s places of temporary 
sojourn before he finally removed to Notley; and if the pilgrim turns 
aside and visits the garden of that Hall, he will see, in one of the finest 
cedars of England, an object with which llay unquestionably was familiar, 
and from which he probably derived some of those particulars which if 
we had space we would quote from his History of Plants , as a fair [ 
specimen of the good knowledge locked up from most gardeners in those 
huge Latin folios. 
Travelling on through Witham, that town of neatness and quakers, 
down by the White Hart corner, away through the Wickham Bishop’s 
woods, and “peaceful Totham, where (once) every joy was found,” and 
Langford, near where many barrows mark the burying places of warriors 
slain in the contests between the Saxons and the Danes, the pilgrim will 
reach Maldon, the Camelodunum of the Romans; nor would we have 
him put aside his staff until he can rear it in the corner of the little Ship 
Inn at the Hythe adjoining, for there we found resident the last de¬ 
scendant of our national botanist. It is now a quarter of a century 
since we visited that little water-side ale-house and conversed with the 
great-grand-daughtcr of John Ray. She was a tall, quiet, maiden lady 
of some seventy years ripening; and John Sirrett, who was then our 
host, could tell her name and present whereabouts, but our own notes of 
the interview are lost, and memory is treacherous. Ray had married, in 
1673 , a Miss Oakley, of Launton, in Oxfordshire, by whom he had three 
daughters, from one of whom the good dame we visited was descended; but 
she preserved no traditions of her great ancestor, though she prized among 
her scanty store of books Derliam’s Life of John Ray , and had an 
engraving of him in a little black frame on the wall beside her oak-armed 
chair. 
We have no space remaining to notice Ray’s other works, all excellent, 
and holding an important position in our Botanical, Zoological, and 
Theological literature, but we must pay the tribute so justly due to him 
as a systematic botanist. In 1682 was published his Methodus Plantarum 
Nova, which, improved by himself a few years after, formed, beyond all 
controversy, the foundation of that Natural System which Jussieu, 
Brown, De Candolle, and others have since done no more than modify 
and correct according to the lights afforded by discoveries subsequent to 
the death of its first suggestor. A very good outline of Ray’s system is 
given in the Penny Cyclopaedia, where it is justly observed that this 
system was too far in advance of the knowledge of the day, and conse¬ 
quently was little appreciated by his contemporaries, who, instead of 
improving the arrangement so ably sketched out, set about establishing 
others on artificial principles, all of which are rapidly sinking into disuse, 
while the principles of Ray are tacitly admitted, and many of his funda¬ 
mental divisions adopted. Haller, of all his contemporaries, alone affords 
him a due measure of praise; for he speaks of him as the elevator of 
botany into a science, and dates from his period a new era in its history. 
Let us observe, in conclusion, that no one improves the science of botany 
without aiding the advance of horticulture ; for whether the collector 
detects new plants desirable for their beauty, whether he explains more 
certainly their habits and the phenomena of their life, or whether he 
teaches us how most easily to detect their names and history,—in each 
and all of those modes does he facilitate the gardener’s onward progress. 
But Ray did more than this—for he was one of the first to demonstrate 
that the Creator is clearly “visible in the things that are made,” and that 
in every plant is an evidence not only of contrivance, but of wisdom, 
providence, and kindness the most transccndant. 
Meteorology of the Week.— From observations at Chiswick during 
the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest temperatures 
of these days are 40.9° and 30./°, respectively. During the period there 
were 92 fine days, and 76 on which rain fell. 
I We once knew a lady who was infected with the most 
harmless, or rather the most interesting, of manias, a 
fondness for the genus Anemone superior to that which 
she entertained for any other flower; and she succeeded 
hy some means in having some one or other of the spe¬ 
cies in bloom nearly throughout the year. In her shrub¬ 
beries she had in profusion what she called “ her pretty 
pages”—the Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa), with 
No. CXIX., Vol. V. 
