Ray.--John Ray, the forerunner of Linnæus, built upon the foundations of Gesner and others, and raised the natural-history edifice a tier higher. He greatly reduced the bulk of publications on natural history, sifting from Gesner and Aldrovandi their irrelevancies, and thereby giving a more modern tone to scientific writings. He was the son of a blacksmith, and was born in southern England in 1628. The original form of the family name was Wray. He was graduated at the University of Cambridge, and became a fellow of Trinity College. Here he formed a friendship with Francis Willughby, a young man of wealth whose tastes for natural history were like his own. This association proved a happy one for both parties. Ray had taken orders in the Church of England, and held his university position as a cleric; but, from conscientious scruples, he resigned his fellowship in 1662. Thereafter he received financial assistance from Willughby, and the two men traveled extensively in Great Britain and on the Continent, with the view of investigating the natural history of the places that they visited. On these excursions Willughby gave particular attention to animals and Ray to plants. Of Ray's several publications in botany, his _Historia Plantarum_ in three volumes (1686-1704) is the most extensive. In another work, as early as 1682, he had proposed a new classification of plants, which in the next century was adopted by Jussieu, and which gives Ray a place in the history of botany. [Illustration: Fig. 33.--John Ray, 1628-1705.] Willughby died in 1662, at the age of thirty-eight, leaving an annuity to Ray, and charging him with the education of his two sons, and the editing of his manuscripts. Ray performed these duties as a faithful friend and in a generous spirit. He edited and published Willughby's book on birds (1678) and fishes (1686) with important additions of his own, for which he sought no credit. After completing his tasks as the literary executor of Willughby, he returned in 1678 to his birthplace and continued his studies in natural history. In 1691 he published "The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation," which was often reprinted, and became the forerunner of the works on natural theology like Paley's, etc. This was an amplification of ideas he had embodied in a sermon thirty-one years earlier, and which at that time attracted much notice. He now devoted himself largely to the study of animals, and in 1693 published a work on the quadrupeds and serpents, a work which gave him high rank in the history of the classification of animals. He died in 1705, but he had accomplished much good work, and was not forgotten. In 1844 there was founded, in London, in his memory, the Ray Society for the publication of rare books on botany and zoölogy.