John Ray


John Ray was an English Christian naturalist and one of the earliest English parson-naturalists. Until 1670 he wrote his name as John Wray; from then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him". He published important works in the fields of botany, zoology and natural theology.
His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division, by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceived series of characteristics they have or have not, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species, as "a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor". Another significant contribution to taxonomy was his division of plants into those with two seedling leaves or only one, a division used in taxonomy today.

Life

Early life

John Ray was born in the village of Black Notley in Essex in the Kingdom of England on 29 November 1627. He is said to have been born in the smithy, his father having been the village blacksmith. After studying at Braintree school, he was sent at the age of sixteen to the University of Cambridge, studying at Trinity College. Initially at Catharine Hall, his tutor was Daniel Duckfield, and later transferred to Trinity, where his tutor was James Duport, and his "intimate friend" and fellow-pupil the celebrated Isaac Barrow. Ray was chosen minor fellow of Trinity in 1649, and later major fellow. He held many college offices, becoming successively lecturer in Greek, mathematics, and humanity, praelector, junior dean, and college steward ; and according to the habit of the time, he was accustomed to preach in his college chapel and also at Great St Mary's, long before he took holy orders on 23 December 1660. Among these sermons were his discourses on The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the creation, and Deluge and Dissolution of the World. Ray was also highly regarded as a tutor and he communicated his own passion for natural history to several pupils. Ray's student, Isaac Barrow, helped Francis Willughby to learn mathematics and Ray collaborated with Willughby later. It was at Trinity that he came under the influence of John Wilkins, when the latter was appointed master of the college in 1659.

Later life and family

After leaving Cambridge in 1663 he spent some time travelling both in Britain and the continent. In 1673, Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton in Oxfordshire; in 1676 he went to Middleton Hall near Tamworth, and in 1677 to Falborne Hall in Essex. Finally, in 1679, he removed to his birthplace at Black Notley, where he afterwards remained. His life there was quiet and uneventful, although he had poor health, including chronic sores. Ray kept writing books and corresponded widely on scientific matters, collaborating with his doctor and contemporary Samuel Dale. He lived, in spite of his infirmities, to the age of seventy-seven, dying at Black Notley. He is buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul, where there is a memorial to him. He is widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.

Work

At Cambridge, Ray spent much of his time in the study of natural history, a subject which would occupy him for most of his life, from 1660 to the beginning of the eighteenth century. When Ray found himself unable to subscribe as required by the Act of Uniformity 1662 he, along with 13 other college fellows, resigned his fellowship on 24 August 1662 rather than swear to the declaration that the Solemn League and Covenant was not binding on those who had taken it. Tobias Smollett quoted the reasoning given in the biography of Ray by William Derham:
His religious views were generally in accord with those imposed under the restoration of Charles II of England, and he continued as a layman in the Established Church of England.
From this time onwards he seems to have depended chiefly on the bounty of his pupil Francis Willughby, who made Ray his constant companion while he lived. They travelled extensively, carrying out field observations and collecting specimens of botany, ornithology, ichthyology, mammals, reptiles and insects. Initially they agreed that Ray would take responsibility for the plants, and Willughby for birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. Willughby arranged that after his death, Ray would have 6 shillings a year for educating Willughby's two sons.
In the spring of 1663 Ray started together with Willughby and two other pupils on a tour through Europe, from which he returned in March 1666, parting from Willughby at Montpellier, whence the latter continued his journey into Spain. He had previously in three different journeys travelled through the greater part of Great Britain, and selections from his private notes of these journeys were edited by George Scott in 1760, under the title of Mr Ray's Itineraries. Ray himself published an account of his foreign travel in 1673, entitled Observations topographical, moral, and physiological, made on a Journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France. From this tour Ray and Willughby returned laden with collections, on which they meant to base complete systematic descriptions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
In 1667 Ray was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 he and Willughby published a paper on Experiments concerning the Motion of Sap in Trees. In 1671 he presented the research of Francis Jessop on formic acid to the Royal Society.
Following Willughby's death in 1672, Ray took on the responsibility of bringing both Willughby's work and his own to publication. Ray was left with an ornithology and ichthyology to edit as well as his own work dealing with mammals, reptiles and insects. Although he presented the Ornithologia as Willughby's, he made extensive contributions to the work. His task became more difficult after the death of Lady Cassandra, Willughby's mother, on July 25, 1675. Lady Cassandra had supported Ray's continued work, but the widow Willughby had no interest in her late husband's scientific interests or his scientific friends. Ray was no longer allowed to instruct the children, and Ray and his wife Margaret Oakley were forced to leave the Willughby household in Middleton. Critically, Ray lost access to the Willughby collections, notes and manuscripts at this time. The plants gathered on his British tours had already been described in his Catalogus plantarum Angliae, which formed the basis for later English floras. He had likely already used the botanical collections to lay much of the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova. His great Historia generalis plantarum appeared in 3 volumes in 1686, 1688 and 1704.
In the 1690s he published three volumes on religion—the most popular being The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, an essay describing evidence that all in nature and space is God's creation as in the Bible is affirmed. In this volume, he moved on from the naming and cataloguing of species like his successor Carl Linnaeus. Instead, Ray considered species' lives and how nature worked as a whole, giving facts that are arguments for God's will expressed in his creation of all 'visible and invisible'. Ray gave an early description of dendrochronology, explaining how to find the ash tree's age from its tree-rings.

Taxonomy

Ray's work on plant taxonomy spanned a wide range of thought, starting with an approach that was predominantly in the tradition of the herbalists and Aristotelian, but becoming increasingly theoretical and finally rejecting Aristotelianism. Despite his early adherence to Aristotelian tradition, his first botanical work, the Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium, was almost entirely descriptive, being arranged alphabetically. His model was an account by Bauhin of the plants growing around Basel in 1622 and was the first English county flora, covering about 630 species. However at the end of the work he appended a brief taxonomy which he stated followed the usage of Bauhin and other herbalists.

System of classification

Ray's system, starting with his Cambridge catalogue, began with the division between the imperfect or lower plants, and perfect higher plants. The latter he divided by life forms, e.g. trees, shrubs, subshrubs and herbaceous plants and lastly grouping them by common characteristics. The trees he divided into 8 groups, e.g. Pomiferae. The shrubs he placed in 2 groups, Spinosi and Non Spinosi. The subshrubs formed a single group and the herbs into 21 groups.
Division of Herbae;
  1. Bulbosae
  2. Tuberosae
  3. Umbelliferae
  4. Verticellatae
  5. Spicatae
  6. Scandentes
  7. Corymbiferae
  8. Pappiflorae
  9. Capitatae
  10. Campaniformes
  11. Coronariae
  12. Rotundifoliae
  13. Nervifoliae
  14. Stellatae
  15. Cerealia
  16. Succulentae
  17. Graminifoliae
  19. Oleraceae
  20. Aquaticae
  21. Marinae
  22. Saxatiles
As outlined in his Historia Plantarum :
Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of species, in his 1686 History of Plants:

Publications

Ray published about 23 works, depending on how they are counted. The biological works were usually in Latin, the rest in English. His first publication, while at Cambridge, was the Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium, followed by many works, botanical, zoological, theological and literary. Until 1670 he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".