A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. 155
of the then-known world of living beings. Here, again, he brought
the study of anatomy and development to bear upon classification,
practically adopting the modern division into Metabola and
Ametabola—those which do and those which do not undergo
metamorphosis—thus, as Kirby said, combining ''the system
of Aristotle with that of Swammerdam and clearing the way
for Linnaeus." Although, in his letters, he protested that this
work should rather have been undertaken by the younger
William Derham, to whose lot it fell to edit it, the Methodus
Insectorum, published in 1705 and the Historia Insectorum,
issued in 1710, were both practically completed by Ray before
his death.
I must not omit to mention two carefully-edited volumes
of travels, with catalogues of Levantine plants, a systematic
rearrangement of his former European lists, and nearly all
the English county lists in Gibson's editions of Camden's Bri-
tannia, which were published in 1693, 1694, and 1695 respectively,
while the third volume of the Historia Plantarum was also in
preparation.
But the end was come to the life of toil. He speaks of
himself as a thin body, subject to colds, and whose lungs are
apt to be affected, while his house was exposed to north-east
winds ; as early as 1693, he speaks of sleeplessness ; and in 1704
he expresses his doubt if he will ''over-live this winter." From
October of that year, he was unable to work. On 7th January
1705, he wrote a brief farewell letter to Sir Hans Sloane : we
have the record of the visit of Mr. Pyke, rector of Black Notley,
to the dying man, who professes himself in death, as in life, a
priest of the Church of England ; and then we have Dale's
letters to Sloane's apothecary, Petiver, on the 17th to say that
he had paid his last visit to his friend the day before ; and then
—doubtless in the "hall chamber" in which his mother had
died 25 years before—about 10 in the morning of 17th January
1705 (N.S.) the great naturalist passed away.
I have mentioned journeys, experiments, dissections, and
collections to show that, in spite of his prodigious literary
research, Ray was no mere compiler, no mere critic of the labours
of others. I have quoted the opinions of zoologists such as
Cuvier, Kirby, and Newton and of foreign botanists, such as
Sachs, as testimony to the permanent value of his work. I need