332 DESTRUCTION OF JOHN RAY'S HOUSE.
all will regret that the sum does not at all represent the loss Mr.
Turner has sustained in furniture and personal property.
We have been unable to obtain any recent photograph or
drawing of "Dewlands" and therefore reproduce the view given
in The Correspondence of John Ray, published by the Ray Society in
1848. The birthplace of Ray, in the opinion of Prof. Boulger,
was probably a house adjoining the village forge at Black
Notley, but it is almost certain that he built Dewlands for his
mother, and in this house she died. Ray wrote in his diary :—
"March 15th, 1678, being Saturday, departed this life my most
Dewlands, Black Notley, Essex. The Residence of John Ray.
Burnt down September 19th, 1900.
dear and honoured mother, Elizabeth Ray, of Black Notley, in
her house on Dewlands, in the hall-chamber, about three o'clock
in the afternoon, aged, as I suppose, seventy-eight." Prof.
Boulger writes "the naturalist was probably with her at the
time, and on the 24th June, 1679, i.e., of the following June, he
moved to the Dewlands, 'where,' he says, 'I intend, God
willing, to settle for the short pittance of time I have yet to live
in this world,' and where he did actually pass the remaining
twenty-five and a half years of his life in industrious scientific
research." ("The Domestic Life of John Ray at Black Notley,"
by Prof. G. S. Boulger, Journ. of Proceedings, E.F.C. vol. iv.