and, though long preserved by the Royal Society, is now lost. In the summer of 1667 Ray and Willughby made another journey into Cornwall, making notes on the mines and smelting works as well as on the plants and animals; and, having returned through Hampshire to London, Ray was persuaded to become a fellow of the Royal Society, and was admitted 7 Nov. 1667.
Willughby married a little later, and Ray made his summer journey in 1668 alone, visiting Yorkshire and Westmoreland, but returning to Middleton Hall for the following winter and spring. The two friends then began a series of experiments on the motion of the sap in trees, which were partly described in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1669, but were continued for some years later.
In 1670 Ray published anonymously the first edition of his ‘Collection of English Proverbs,’ and also his ‘Catalogus Plantarum Angliæ,’ which, though only alphabetical in its arrangement, and confined to flowering plants, far surpassed in accuracy Merrett's ‘Pinax,’ its chief predecessor. In the same year he declined, owing to poor health, an offer to travel abroad with three young noblemen; but in 1671 he made a tour into the northern counties, taking Thomas Willisel [q. v.] with him as an assistant in collecting.
The death of Francis Willughby, 3 July 1672, made a great change in Ray's life. He was left an annuity of 60l., which seems to have been his main income for the rest of his career. The education of Willughby's two sons occupied much of his time during the next four years, while the editing of his friend's unfinished zoological works formed one of his chief labours for his last twenty-seven years. Having taken up his residence at Middleton Hall, he married, in 1673, Margaret Oakeley, a member of the household, who assisted him in teaching the children. His account of his foreign travels published in the same year, ‘with a catalogue of plants not native of England,’ contained also a narrative of Willughby's journey through Spain; and the first edition of his ‘Collection of English Words not generally used,’ a valuable glossary of northern and southern dialect (1674), contained ‘Catalogues of English Birds and Fishes, and an account of the … refining such metals … as are gotten in England,’ which were also partly Willughby's work. Besides the preparation for his young pupils of a ‘Nomenclator Classicus’ or ‘Dictionariolum Trilingue’ in English, Latin, and Greek, which was first published in 1675, Ray completed Willughby's Latin notes on birds, which he published in 1676 as ‘Francisci Willughbeii Ornithologia,’ illustrated with copperplates engraved at the expense of Mrs. Willughby. Ray then translated the work into English, in which language it was issued, ‘with many additions throughout,’ in 1678. With regard to this and subsequent works Sir James Edward Smith truly observes that ‘from the affectionate care with which Ray has cherished the fame of his departed friend, we are in danger of attributing too much to Willughby and too little to himself.’
On the death of Lady Cassandra Willughby, the mother of his friend, in 1676, Ray's pupils were taken from his care. He removed to Sutton Coldfield, about four miles from Middleton, and thence, at Michaelmas 1677, to Falkbourne Hall, near Witham, Essex, then the residence of Edward Bullock, to whose son he probably acted as tutor. In March 1679 Ray's mother, Elizabeth Ray, died at the Dewlands, a house which he had built for her, at Black Notley, to which he moved in the following June, and in which he lived for the remainder of his life.
In 1682 Ray published his first independent systematic work on plants, the ‘Methodus Plantarum Nova,’ an elaboration of the tables prepared for Wilkins fourteen years before. In this he first showed the true nature of buds, and employed the division of flowering plants into dicotyledons and monocotyledons. He recognised his indebtedness to Cæsalpinus and to Robert Morison [q. v.]; but, by basing his system mainly upon the fruit and also in part upon the flower, the leaf and other characteristics, he both indicated many of the natural orders now employed by botanists and made practically the first decided step towards a natural system of classification. Unfortunately he retained the primary division of plants into herbs, shrubs, and trees, and denied the existence of buds on herbaceous plants.
The death of Morison in 1683 redirected his attention to the ambitious scheme previously abandoned in his favour, the preparation of a general history of plants, such as that attempted by the Bauhins in the preceding generation. The first volume was issued in 1686 and the second in 1688, each containing nearly a thousand folio pages, the whole being completed without even the help of an amanuensis. A comprehensive summary of vegetable histology and physiology, including the researches of Columna, Jungius, Grew, and Malpighi, is prefixed to
