John Ray and the Study of Plants

14 The seventeenth-century English scholar and botanist John Ray was well aware that he lived through, and participated in, a profound revolution in the way people interacted with nature. In the preface to his Synopsis of British Plants, published in 1690, he gave thanks that he had been born at a time when traditional dependence on the teaching of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, 384--322 BCE, had given way to a new philosophy, based on experiment and observation of the real world, that we now call science.

15 Ray was born in 1627. His father was a village blacksmith, and his mother was also a respected member of the community, a healer who was an expert in folk medicine and the use of herbs to treat ailments. Ray must have stood out as an unusually bright boy among his schoolmates, and his talents were recognised by a church official, Samuel Covell, who had graduated from Cambridge University in 1600, and maintained his links with his university. Through his influence, Ray was admitted to Cambridge University in 1644 at the age of seventeen -- a huge step for a village blacksmith’s son. There he made a solid start, and quickly gained a reputation as a brilliant student. He studied the classics, Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and mathematics, but there was nothing yet we would now call science in the curriculum. After graduating in 1648, he became a minor member of staff at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was appointed Lecturer in Greek in 1651, Lecturer in Mathematics in 1653, and Lecturer in Humanities in 1655.

16 Almost immediately after graduating, Ray also seems to have developed the interest to which he would devote the rest of his life: the study of the natural world. He explains this conversion into a naturalist -- in particular into a botanist -- in the preface to his first book, the Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants. Here Ray tells us that he suffered an illness in his early twenties, and was advised to take long walks and ride in the fresh air while recovering. While doing this, he became interested in the local flora, and finding nobody able to teach him, Ray investigated it for himself. He then went on to pass on the knowledge he acquired to others.

17 By the mid-1650s, even the first-year students at Trinity College were able to identify the plants and flowers around Cambridge, as they were being taught unofficially -- none of this was part of their formal education -- by Ray. Many of them were the sons of landowners, and so had a natural, if amateurish, interest in country matters. But a few of them took his efforts to understand the natural world much more seriously. One of these, Francis Willughby, later played an important part in Ray’s life.

18 Having himself had no authority on the subject of plants on which to draw, Ray also started work on what would become his Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants. The work was not published until 1660 because, as Ray explained in the preface, he had to start from scratch:

"I had first to become familiar with the literature, to compare the plants that I found with the pictures, and when there seemed to be a resemblance, to go fully into any unknown descriptions. Gaining skill by experience, I acquired at last the ability to recognise to what tribe and family similars could be assigned; this taught me to search for similarities and saved a vast deal of labour, which others would have spent in their difficulties. I was eager to make the most of this and was fortunate to share my enthusiasm with my friends …"

19 Ray’s Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants was much more than a simple list of species. It gave the names of plants found in the area around Cambridge and included information about where they grew and how common they were. In doing this, Ray was producing something that would be of practical use to students and other readers interested in the local natural world. At the same time, the book showed his determination to describe plants accurately, on the basis of direct examination rather than reliance on old authorities. In this respect, it reflected the spirit of the new learning that Ray admired.

20 Ray’s studies of plants were only the beginning of a much larger ambition. With the support of Francis Willughby, he began to imagine a more comprehensive investigation of nature, one that would attempt to classify living things according to careful observation of their shared characteristics. This was an ambitious undertaking, especially at a time when many aspects of the natural world remained poorly described. Yet Ray believed that by collecting evidence systematically and comparing related forms, it would be possible to build a more reliable understanding of nature than scholars had possessed before.