MORISON'S WORKS 21 



Probably it was the critical study of the works of the Bauhins 

 that led Morison to frame a system of classification of his own. 



The third and last treatise is the Dialogus \ a dialogue 

 between himself, as Botanographus Regius, King's Botanist, and 

 a Fellow of the Royal Society, on the theme of classification. 

 Here again Morison asserts the superiority of his own method : 

 " Methodum me observasse fateor : estque omnium quae tinquam 

 adhuc fuerunt exhibitae, praestantissima et certissima quippe a 

 natura data?' But he still fails to give any definite account of 

 it : all that he says amounts merely to this, that the " nota 

 generica " is not to be sought in the properties of a plant, nor in 

 the shape of its leaves, as had been suggested by earlier writers, 

 but in the fructification, that is, in the flower and fruit (essentiam 

 plantarum desumendam...a florum forma et seminum conforma- 

 tione). 



The mention of a system of classification based on the form 

 of the leaf evoked from Botanographus a pointed allusion to a 

 book recently published by a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 which such a classification had been used, with the following 

 severe comment : " Ego tantum confusum Chaos : illic, de plantis 

 legi, nee quicquam didici, ut monstrabo tibi et lapsus et confusionem, 

 alias" The book so criticised was the encyclopaedic work 

 edited by Dr John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and published by 

 the Royal Society in 1668, entitled, "An Essay towards a Real 

 Character and a Philosophical Language" to which John Ray 

 had contributed the botanical article * Tables of Plants' This 

 criticism was the beginning of the unfriendly relations between 

 Morison and Ray, of which some further account will be given 

 subsequently. 



Another point of interest in the Dialogus is the definite 

 assertion (p. 488) that Ferns are ' perfect ' plants, having flower 

 and seed (quia habent flores, qui fugiunt quasi obtutum, et semina 

 quasi pulvisculum in dorso alarum), an assertion which was 

 repeated with even greater emphasis in Morison's preface to his 

 edition of Boccone's Icones et Descriptions Rariorum Plantarum 

 etc. (Oxon. 1674), in opposition to the views of earlier writers, 

 Cesalpino in particular. Cesalpino had, it is true, said of the 

 group in which he had placed the Ferns and other Cryptogams 



