It was, as we have seen, on 18 April 1684 and after the completion of the Historia Piscium that Tancred Robinson, writing from Geneva, revived Willughby's project for a General History of Nature. The proposal in its main outline was clear—that he should produce a series of hand-books or Synopses surveying the whole order of Nature, and anticipating the work carried out in the next century by Linnaeus. According to the classification then in vogue this would have meant surveys of Animals, Reptiles, Birds, and Fishes; Exanguia, that is Cephalopods, Crustaceans, Shell-fish, and Insects; Plants; and Fossils—these including Minerals as well as ‘formed stones’. Ray had got the material for some of these: to condense the Ornithology and the Ichthyology and even the Plants would not be a very serious business. But to deal with Animals and Reptiles was to break new ground; and the rest, except for some small notes of Insects, were wholly untouched. We have seen that he very rapidly put together the Synopsis Stirpium Britannicarum and followed it up with the Sylloge Europeanarum.