The New International Encyclopædia/Willughby, Francis

WILLUGHBY, wĭl′lŭ-bĭ, Francis (1635-72). An English naturalist, born at Middleton, in Warwickshire. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1656. He became much interested in natural history, and about 1662 he and his former teacher, John Ray (q.v.), planned a work on natural history, the botany to be written by Ray and the zoölogy by Willughby. The two traveled on the Continent and in England collecting material, but before the work was completed Willughby died. Ray later published some of the results of Willughby's study, first in Latin in 1676, and then in English in 1678, under the title of The Ornithology of Francis Willughby. In the work there was for the first time a rational system of classifying birds, which has been asserted to be the basis of the Linnæan classification. In 1686 Ray published also the results of Willughby's study of ichthyology. Other results of his researches were collected by Ray in the Methodus Insectorum (1705), and by Derhorn, in his Historia Insectorum (1710).