and at Chester he noticed the red stone of the cathedral, which he considered had little beauty within or without. He visited Swindon, and got home by Shrewsbury and Gloucester. This was a journey done in the old-fashioned manner, on horseback. It opened Ray’s eyes to the immense amount of nonsense that was talked about nature, and especially about any unusual natural phenomenon. He seems especially to have visited the wells and springs, and he expressed his doubts of the wonderful cures, attributing his want of belief to his scientific frame of mind. At this period, it was usual for young men of ability and learning, though not in orders, to deliver sermons and common-place readings, as they were called, not only in the chapels or halls of their own colleges, but even before the University body at St. Mary’s church. In these Ray eminently distinguished himself. He was among the first who ventured to lead the attention of his hearers from the unprofitable subtleties of scholastic divinity and the trammels of the old Greek philosophy to an observation of nature and a practical investigation of truth. The rudiments of many of his subsequent writings originated in these juvenile essays, particularly his celebrated book on the “Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation,” known all over the world by its numerous editions and translations, and universally admired for its rational piety, sound philosophy, and solid instruction. This book is the basis of the labours of all those divines who have made the book of nature a commentary on the book of revelation, a confirmation of truths which nature has not authority of herself to establish. In it the author inculcates the doctrine of a constantly superintending Providence, as well as the advantage, and even the duty, of contemplating the works of God. “This,” he says, “is part of the business of a Sabbath-day, as it will be, probably, of our employment through that eternal rest of which the Sabbath is a type.” Archbishop Tenison is recorded to have told Dr. Derham that “Mr. Ray was much celebrated in his time at Cambridge for preaching solid and useful divinity, instead of that enthusiastic stuff which the sermons of that time were generally filled with.” It would be refreshing to hear a Ray in the nineteenth century. Two of his funeral discourses are mentioned with particular approbation; one, on the death of Dr. Arrowsmith, master of his college; the other, on that of one of his most intimate and beloved colleagues, Mr. John Nid, likewise a Senior Fellow of Trinity, who had a great share in Ray’s first botanical publication, the “Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium,” printed in 1660 (a catalogue of plants growing around Cambridge). Before this little volume appeared, its author had visited various parts of England and Wales for the purpose of investigating their native plants, as he did several times afterwards. Nor were his observations