A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. 147
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 was 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 was 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 was 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
was 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, was 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 after the execution
of King Charles, was elected, simultaneously with 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-