than a translation from the Synopsis; and Buffon has extracted from Willughby almost all the anatomical part of his History of Birds. Daubenton and Hauy have translated the History of Fishes, in great part, for their Dictionary of Ichthyology, in the ‘Encyclopédie Methodique.’ ‘The Wisdom of God in the Creation’ is the work upon which the popular fame of Ray most deservedly rests. It is a book which perhaps more than any other in our language unites the precision of science to the warmth of devotion. It is delightful to see the ardour with which this good man dedicated himself to the observation of nature entering into his views of another state of existence, when our knowledge shall be made perfect, and the dim light with which we grope amidst the beautiful and wondrous objects by which we are surrounded, shall brighten into complete day. “It is not likely,” says he, “that eternal life shall be a torpid and inactive state, or that it shall consist only in an uninterrupted and endless act of love; the other faculties shall be employed as well as the will, in actions suitable to, and perfective of their natures: especially the understanding, the supreme faculty of the soul, which chiefly differs in us from brute beasts, and makes us capable of virtue and vice, of rewards and punishments, shall be busied and employed in contemplating the works of God, and observing the divine art and wisdom manifested in the structure and composition of them; and reflecting upon their Great Architect the praise and glory due to him. Then shall we clearly see, to our great satisfaction and admiration, the ends and uses of those things, which here were either too subtle for us to penetrate and discover, or too remote and unaccessible for us to come to any distinct view of, viz. the planets and fixed stars; those illustrious bodies, whose contents and inhabitants, whose stores and furniture we have here so longing a desire to know, as also their mutual subserviency to each other. Now the mind of man being not capable at once to advert to more than one thing, a particular view and examination of such an innumerable number of vast bodies, and the great multitude of species, both of animate and inanimate beings, which each of them contains, will afford matter enough to exercise and employ our minds, I do not say to all eternity, but to many ages, should we do nothing else[10].” Footnote 10: Wisdom of God in the Creation, p. 199, fifth edition. In addition to his ‘Wisdom of God,’ Ray published three ‘Physico-Theological Discourses, concerning the Chaos, Deluge, and Dissolution of the World.’ “This last presents to us,” to use the words of Cuvier, “a system of geology as plausible as any of those which had appeared at this epoch, or for a long time afterwards.” He also printed a work expressly of a theological character, ‘A Persuasive to a Holy Life.’