148 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