their relation to the Progress of Science. 185 
nantia, Pachydermata, Proboscidea, and Primates, not under 
these names, but very much as those orders are now limited. 
Eay next set to work to arrange a Synopsis of Birds and 
Fishes, which, however, though finished by February, 1694, 
was laid on one side by the publishers until 1718, when it 
was issued under Dr. Derham’s supervision. In this work he 
has added many species to the Histories prepared previously 
from Willughby’s notes, and it is highly commended by both 
Cuvier and Brisson. In it he classifies birds by the beak 
and claws, the webbing of their feet, and the nature of their 
food; and, though he includes whales among fishes, he 
expressly explains, in a letter to Dr. Tancred Bobinson, that 
he does so only in deference to custom. 
Whatever he undertook, Bay could never perform any 
work in an incomplete or perfunctory manner. Accordingly, 
when Dr. Hans Sloane, having read with interest Dr. Bau- 
wolf’s account of his eastern travels, published in 1588, had 
a translation of them made, and placed it in Bay’s hands for 
revision, the result was a work in two volumes, embodying 
all that was then known of the Levant, with a catalogue of 
the plants then known as growing there, which was, however, 
subsequently much added to, from Bauwolf’s herbarium, in 
Gronovius’s ‘ Flora Orientalis.’ 
His attention being thus turned, in compiling his * Collection 
of Travels,’ once more to exotic plants, Bay next proceeded 
to recast, in a systematic and much extended form, the cata¬ 
logue of continental plants which he had appended in 1673 
to his own volume of travels. This appeared in 1694 as 
‘ Stirpium Europeanarum extra Britannias nascentium 
Sylloge,’ though it includes the flora of Egypt and the 
Levant. In the Preface to this work Bay, for the first time, 
entered into controversy, criticising unfavourably the classi¬ 
fication of plants published in 1690 by Bivinus, based upon 
the flower alone. 
About the same time he was engaged upon the county lists 
of plants that appeared in 1695 in Gibson’s edition of 
Camden’s ‘ Britannia,’ all of which were from his pen, with 
the exception of Middlesex, which was supplied by his friend 
