SOURCES

The need for a fresh study of the life of Ray has long been recognised. Not only are the existing biographical notices (they cannot be called ‘lives’) admittedly defective, but thanks largely to the energy of G. S. Boulger and R. W. T. Gunther we have now available all the material that is likely to be recovered. It may be that the manuscript of his ‘Catalogue of plants grown in the Cambridge gardens’, which he seems to have written in or before 1662 and used in his Historia Plantarum, may yet be found: it will not add much to our knowledge of him or its subject. There may possibly be a few additional letters, perhaps even the letters to Robinson which Derham used and epitomised, but it is unlikely; and under present conditions search for them is impossible.

Apart from his own books the main sources are as follows:

1. The Life by ‘a worthy friend’, certainly Samuel Dale of Braintree, printed in A Compleat History of Europe for the year 1706 under the heading ‘Additions to the Remarkables of the year 1705’: in 1705 the editor announcing Ray's death had complained that he had failed to obtain a worthy notice of him. This is the Life printed by R. W. T. Gunther, Further Correspondence of John Ray, London, 1928, from a MS. in the Bodleian: Dr Gunther was apparently not aware that it had been printed before.

2. […]