's hand-coloured copy of the
Ornithology|alt=A set of coloured bird prints As well as being a friend, John Ray was one of five
executors of Willughby's will, in which he was left the sum of £60 a year for life. He saw it as his duty to complete and publish his colleague's work on animals. Its innovative features were an effective
classification system based on
anatomical features, such the bird's beak, feet and overall size, and a
dichotomous key, which helped readers to identify birds by guiding them to the page describing that group. The authors also placed an asterisk against species of which they had no first-hand knowledge, and were therefore unable to verify. Willughby had been keen to add details of "
characteristic marks" to help with identification. The authors also largely avoided the practice of previous writers, such as
Conrad Gessner, by not including extraneous material relating to the species, such as proverbs, references in history and literature, or use as an
emblem. The book was published in
Latin as
Ornithologiae Libri Tres (
Three Books of Ornithology) in 1676. The first of the three sections included an introduction to bird biology, an explanation of the new classification system and the dichotomous key. The second and third sections described land birds and
seabirds respectively. Emma Willughby paid for the 80
metal-engraved plates that completed the work, and this is acknowledged on the title page. The English-language version,
The Ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton, published in 1678, included additional material, including a section on
fowling to broaden its appeal, but had no mention of Willughby's widow. Its commercial success is unknown, but its influence was profound.
Fish The next book, on fish, was many years in the making; Willughby's widow had remarried, and her new husband,
Josiah Child, had barred Ray from accessing his friend's papers. Furthermore, there were far more known species of fish than there were birds to describe, and Ray was working on his own
History of Plants. The
Historia Piscium was finally published in Latin in 1686 with a dedication to
Samuel Pepys, President of the Royal Society, who had made a generous financial contribution to the project. The book had four sections: an introduction to fish biology;
cetaceans;
cartilaginous fish (sharks and
rays); and
bony fish, the last group being further classified by the number and nature of their fins. 187 plates completed the work, their cost making the book a financial disaster for the Royal Society, which had largely funded its publication.
"Insects" , named by
Kirby in 1802 as
Megachile willughbiella.|alt=a bee on a flower In the seventeenth century, the term "insect" had a much wider meaning than it does today, so the third major book,
Historia Insectorum, included many other
invertebrates, such as worms, spiders and
millipedes. It excluded
molluscs, perhaps because
Martin Lister, another Fellow of the Royal Society, was writing his own
Historia Animalium that covered that group. Ray's problems with completing this publication were much the same as with the fish book, although in 1704 he was able to see manuscripts prepared independently by Sir Thomas Willoughby and the scholar Thomas Man, Sir Thomas having moved into Wollaton Hall in 1687 and regained access to Middleton and his father's papers and possessions. Ray died in January 1705, and little happened with the
Historia Insectorum until
William Derham and the Royal Society finally published it in 1710 in Latin, incomplete, unillustrated and under Ray's name only. including, for example, 20 pages of beetle descriptions. The book had four sections, starting with an innovative
classification system based on
metamorphosis. Plates prepared by Sir Thomas Willoughby were not used, and they have now been lost, as have the manuscripts Sir Thomas showed to Ray. For each entry he included the rules, equipment and manner of play. He also studied the first games that babies and children play, As with his biological works, the
Book of Games is organised on the empirical principles of observation, description, and
classification. which may have been titled
The Book of Dice ("
Historii Chartitudii"). Willughby was a competent mathematician, and there is evidence that the lost text considered
probability with regard to card and dice games.
Illustrations and sources The numerous plates illustrating the species in the bird and fish books came from a number of sources. Willughby's own extensive collection included paintings he had bought on his European travels, and he also borrowed pictures owned by friends like Skippon and Sir
Thomas Browne. Many illustrations were taken from previous publications by other writers, and some were based on
Francis Barlow's oil-paintings of birds in
Charles II's aviary in
St James's Park. The illustrations taken from earlier books were from many sources, particularly the earlier natural histories or ornithologies by
Ulisse Aldrovandi,
Pietro Olina,
Georg Marcgrave and
Willem Piso. Where feasible, Willughby and Ray compared the available illustrations with life or specimens, or, if that were not possible, against each other, to select the most accurate version for publication. Olina's
Ucelliera, at least, seems to have been revisited between the Latin and English editions of the
Ornithology, since the later version contains a description of
territorial behaviour by the
nightingale absent from the earlier work. == Legacy ==