152
A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN.
Professor Alfred Newton, "the foundation of scientific ornitho-
logy," and it is impossible to separate in it the work of Willughby
from that of Ray. "From the affectionate care with which
Ray has cherished the fame of his departed friend, we are in
danger," says Sir James Edward Smith, "of attributing too much
to Willughby and too little to himself." The classification of
birds by their claws and beaks was the first serious attempt of
the kind since the days of Aristotle. It was adopted, in the main,
by Linnaeus, and can hardly be said to be superseded even to-day.
Two years later, Ray published an enlarged edition of the work
in English.
On the death of Willughby's mother, in 1676, Ray's pupils
were taken from him; and, after a year's residence at Sutton
Coldfield, he returned to his native county, living for two years
at Falkbourne Hall, near Witham, probably as tutor to the son
of the owner, Mr. Edward Bullock. Possibly, as tradition has
it, the fine cedar alongside the Hall may have been planted at
this time by Ray.
in March 1670, Ray's mother, Elizabeth Ray, died at the
Dewlands, the pretty little home that he had built for her at
Black Notley : thither he himself moved in the following June ;
and there he spent the remainder of his days, the twenty-five
most productive years of all. We must all deplore the
destruction by fire of ibis sacred shrine of English science,
since last the Essex Field Club visited Black Notley !
Not till 1682 have we any other work from Ray's pen ; but
the Methodus Plantarum Nova of that year, an elaboration of the
tables prepared for Wilkins, fourteen years before, is not only one
of the corner stones of his philosophical fame, but is also a land-
mark in the history of systematic botany. In it he describes
the true nature of buds, speaking of them as annual plants
springing from the old stock, recognises the division of flowering
plants into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons, and indicates
many of the principal Natural Orders of which we now make use.
He bases his system mainly, it is true, upon the fruit ; but also
upon characters derived from flower and leaf. As he always
does, Ray hilly acknowledges his indebtedness to his predecessors,
to Caesalpinus, a century before, whom he styles "the parent of
system," and to his acute but less generous contemporary, Robert
Morison, of Oxford ; but the system here sketched out, though