A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. 149
spring to ebb and flow simply with the tide. You will remember,
doubtless, the anecdote of Charles II., wisest of the House of
Stuart, asking the Fellows of the Royal Society, which he had
incorporated, why, when a fish was introduced into a vessel full
of water, the water does not overflow. Many excellent theoretical
reasons were doubtless forthcoming, until the King solved his
own problem by experiment. The water does overflow. This
was the spirit of the age.
During the long vacation of 1658, Ray made the first of his
botanical itineraries of which we have a record, travelling on
horseback through the Midland counties and North Wales ; and
in 1660, when he was already thirty-three, he published his first
work, a modest little duodecimo, of 285 pp., containing an
alphabetical catalogue of the plants of Cambridge, with
synonymy, notes on uses, and glossary. This was the first
local list of plants, and a model for the scrupulously pains-
taking accuracy of its statements. "I resolve," writes Ray
some seven years later, "never to put out anything which is
not as perfect as is possible for me to make it." He was,
however, as we know from his letters, many of which are pre-
served in the Botanical Department of the British Museum,
already planning his Catalogue of British Plants and another of
cultivated plants, when came the great turning point in his life.
In December 1660, he was ordained deacon and priest by
Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln, in his lordship's London chapel
in Barbican ; but continued at Cambridge as a resident fellow
for nearly two years. In the summer of 1661, he made his second
botanical tour, in company with his pupil, Philip Skippon,
going through Northumberland into southern Scotland and re-
turning through Cumberland ; and, in the following year, with
another pupil, Francis Willughby, eight years his junior, who was
for the next ten years to be his intimate fellow-worker, he tra-
versed the Midlands, Wales, and the South-Western counties. The
diaries of these journeys, full not only of botany, but of careful
observations on many other topics, were published after his
death. Then came the Bartholomew Act of 1662, which forced
every cleric in the country to consider his position. Ray had
never himself taken the Solemn League and Covenant : he
even considered it an unlawful oath ; and he had received, as I
have just mentioned, episcopal ordination ; but he declined to