The name of this distinguished man was John Ray, and he was the son of Roger Ray and Elizabeth his wife, being born in 1628. His father was a blacksmith, of Black Notley, near Braintree, in Essex, and the boy was sent to school at the Grammar School at Braintree. There he found the kindness of Mr. Love, the master, in teaching him, a set-off against the general want of education in the establishment; and he had reason to be thankful, for before he was sixteen years of age he was sent, from the school, to Cambridge. He entered at St. Catherine’s Hall, under the tutorship of Mr. Duckfield. But the youth did not like the Hall; he wished to study, and the inmates, he said, chiefly addicted themselves to disputations; so he went to Trinity, where he found the politer arts and sciences were principally minded and cultivated. Ray worked hard, and had an excellent tutor, who was a great Greek scholar, and soon made up for the defective teaching he had had at Braintree. He acquired much Latin and Greek, and some Hebrew, and it soon became evident that the youth could speak well and fluently. His leisure was that of a student; he loved to observe nature, to study the little gems of the garden and country, and all these things brought him speedily before the notice of the authorities of the College. When he had been there three years, he was elected a Minor Fellow, together with his great friend Isaac Barrow, who had been a Charterhouse boy, and subsequently a scholar at Felsted, an Essex school. They were the favourite pupils of their master. Ray took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, and then that of Master of Arts, becoming then a Major Fellow. In 1651 he was chosen the Greek Lecturer to the College; two years afterwards Mathematical Lecturer, and in 1655 Humanity Reader. Then he was made Junior Dean and College Steward, and he became the tutor to many men of subsequent worth, especially to Mr. Francis Willughby, of Middleton Hall, in Warwickshire. During these years Ray wandered over the country collecting and studying plants. He wrote the story of his journeys in and about England, calling them “Itineraries.” His first journey was in 1658, and he rode from Cambridge to Northampton; he passed by Higham Ferrers and saw the outside of a great stone building called a college, and he wrote that Northampton was indifferently handsome, the houses being built of timber, notwithstanding the plenty of stone dug in that county. He saw in a Mr. Bowker’s garden “divers physical plants,” and he noticed the luxuriance of the lupinus there. Then he went to Warwick by Daventry, and saw Holdenby House. At Shuckborough he did not see the star-stones he had heard of. He visited Warwick, but cared more for Guy’s Cliff than for the rib of the dun cow and Guy’s sword; and then he went into Derbyshire, and investigated the Pool’s-hole, near Buxton, and noticed the wild flowers of the hills. Travelling on to North Wales, he visited the brine-pits of Northwych,