their relation to the Progress of Science. 185
nantia, Pachydermata, Proboscidea, and Primates, not under
these names, but very much as those orders are now limited.
Ray next set to work to arrange a Synopsis of Birds and
Fishes, which, however, though finished by February, 1694,
was laid on one side by the publishers until 1713, when it
was issued under Dr. Derham's supervision. In this work he
has added many species to the Histories prepared previously
from Willughby's notes, and it is highly commended by both
Cuvier and Brisson. In it he classifies birds by the beak
and claws, the webbing of their feet, and the nature of their
food; and, though he includes whales among fishes, he
expressly explains, in a letter to Dr. Tancred Robinson, that
he does so only in deference to custom.
Whatever he undertook, Ray could never perform any
work in an incomplete or perfunctory manner. Accordingly,
when Dr. Hans Sloane, having read with interest Dr. Rau-
wolf's account of his eastern travels, published in 1583, had
a translation of them made, and placed it in Ray's hands for
revision, the result was a work in two volumes, embodying
all that was then known of the Levant, with a catalogue of
the plants then known as growing there, which was, however,
subsequently much added to, from Rauwolf's herbarium, in
Gronovius's 'Flora Orientalis.'
His attention being thus turned, in compiling his 'Collection
of Travels,' once more to exotic plants, Ray next proceeded
to recast, in a systematic and much extended form, the cata-
logue of continental plants which he had appended in 1673
to his own volume of travels. This appeared in 1694 as
'Stirpium Europeanarum extra Britanniae nascentium
Sylloge,' though it includes the flora of Egypt and the
Levant. In the Preface to this work Ray, for the first time,
entered into controversy, criticising unfavourably the classi-
fication of plants published in 1690 by Rivinus, based upon
the flower alone.
About the same time he was engaged upon the county lists
of plants that appeared in 1695 in Gibson's edition of
Camden's 'Britannia,' all of which were from his pen, with
the exception of Middlesex, which was supplied by his friend