Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/318

Rh 300 RAY The rays of the sixth and last family, Mylidbatidse, are popularly known under various names, such as "Devil-fishes," "Sea-devils," and ' ' Eagle-rays. " In them the dilatation of the body, or rather the development of the pectoral fins, is carried to an extreme, whilst the tail is very thin and sometimes long like a whip-cord (fig. 3). Caudal spines are generally present and similar to those FIG. 3. Aetobatis narinari (Indo-Pacific Ocean). of the sting-rays ; but in the pectoral fin a portion is detached and forms a "cephalic" lobe or pair of lobes in front of the snout. The dentition consists of perfectly flat molars, adapted for crushing hard substances. In some of the eagle-rays the molars are large and tessellated (fig. 4), in others extremely small. Of the twenty FIG. 4. Jaws of au Eagle-Ray, Myliobatis aquila. species which are known, from tropical and temperate seas, the majority attain to a very large and some to an enormous size : one mentioned by Risso, which was taken at Messina, weighed 1250 lt. A fostus taken from the uterus of the mother (all eagle-rays are viviparous), captured at Jamaica and preserved in the British Museum, is 5 feet broad and weighed 20 ft>. The mother measured 15 feet in width and as many in length, and was between 3 and 4 feet thick. At Jamaica, where these rays are well known under the name of " devil-fishes," they are frequently attacked for sport's sake, but their capture is uncertain and sometimes attended with danger. The eagle-ray of the Mediterranean (Myliobatis aquila) has strayed as far northwards as the south coast of England. (A. C. G.) RAY or WRAY (as he wrote his name till 1670), JOHN (1628-1705), sometimes called the father of English natural history, was the son of the blacksmith of Black Notley near Braintree in Essex. There he was born on 29th November 1628, or, according to other authorities, some months earlier. From Braintree school he was sent at the age of sixteen to Catherine Hall, Cambridge, whence he removed to Trinity College after about one year and three- quarters. His tutor at Trinity was Dr Duport, regius pro- fessor of Greek, and his intimate friend and fellow-pupil the celebrated Isaac Barrow. Ray was chosen minor fellow of Trinity in 1649, and in due course became a major fellow on proceeding to the master's degree. He held many college offices, becoming successively lecturer in Greek (1651), mathematics (1653), and humanity (1655), praelec- tor (1657), junior dean (1657), and college steward (1659 and 1660) ; and according to the habit of the time he was accustomed to preach in his college chapel and also at Great St Mary's before the university, long before he took holy orders. Among his sermons preached before his ordination, which was not till 23d December 1660, were the famous discourses on The Wisdom of God in the Crea- tion, and on the Chaos, Deluge, and Dissolution of the World. Ray's reputation was high also as a tutor; he communicated his own passion for natural history to several pupils, of whom Francis Willughby is by far the most famous. Ray's quiet college life came to an abrupt close when he found himself unable to subscribe to the Act of Uni- formity of 1661, and was accordingly obliged to give up his fellowship in 1662, the year after Isaac Newton had entered the college. We are 1 told by Dr Derham in his Life of Ray that the reason of his refusal " was not (as some have imagined) his having taken the ' Solemn League and Covenant,' for that he never did, and often declared that he ever thought it an unlawful oath ; but he said he could not declare for those that had taken the oath that no obligation lay upon them, but feared there might." From this time onwards he seems to have depended chiefly on the bounty of his pupil Willughby, who made Ray his constant companion while he lived, and at his death left him .60 a year, with the charge of educating his two sons. In the spring of 1663 Ray started together with Willughby and two other of his pupils on a Continental tour, from which he returned in March 1666, parting from Willughby at Montpellier, whence the latter con- tinued his journey into Spain. He had previously in three different journeys (1658, 1661, 1662) 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. Willughby under- took the former part, but, dying in 1672, left only an ornithology and ichthyology, in themselves vast, for Ray to edit ; while the latter used the botanical collections for the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova (1682), and his great Historia generalis plantarum (1685). The plants gathered on his British tours had already been described in his Catalogus plantarum Angtise. (1670), which work is the basis of all later English floras. In 1667 Ray was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 he published in conjunction with Willughby his first paper in the Philosophical Transactions on " Ex- periments concerning the Motion of Sap in Trees." They demonstrated the ascent of the sap through the wood of the tree, and supposed the sap to " precipitate a kind of white coagulum or jelly, which may be well conceived to be the part which every year between bark and tree turns to wood, and of which the leaves and fruits are made." Immediately after his admission into the Royal Society he was induced by Bishop Wilkins to translate his Real Character into Latin, and it seems he actually completed a translation, which, however, remained in manuscript ; his Methodus plantarum nova was in fact undertaken as a part of Wilkins's great classificatory scheme. In 1673 Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton (Oxford); in 1676 he went to Sutton Coldfield, and in 1677