"
Similar work went on in England, but under more distinctly
theological limitations. In the same seventeenth century a very
famous and popular English book was published by the naturalist
John Ray, a fellow of the Royal Society, who produced a number of
works on plants, fishes, and birds; but the most widely read of all
was entitled _The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of
Creation_. Between the years 1691 and 1827 it passed through nearly
twenty editions.
Ray argued the goodness and wisdom of God from the adaptation of the
animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings.
In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of
the Royal Society, published his _Cosmologia Sacra_ to refute
anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design.
Discussing "the ends of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is
scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and
partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty."
He points to the fact that "those of value which lay few at a time
sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove.
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