Ray was one of the most travelled British naturalists of the 1600s. His travels covered most of the British Isles and continued through Europe as far south as the islands of Sicily and Malta. It is the number of plants, insects and animals that he had personally studied in the field, together with his foundation of field studies and behavioural ecology across the natural world, that makes his work so remarkable

Ray was accompanied on most of his British and Continental tours between 1658 and 1671 by Francis Willughby, who would become his collaborator and patron, and Philip Skippon, the son of Cromwell’s Major-General.