40 ROBERT MORISON AND JOHN RAY 



temporary arrest almost everywhere, except in France, of the 

 quest of the natural system. Though this was the effect of 

 the introduction of his method, it was not at all the intention 

 of Linnaeus: for in his Classes Plantarum (1738, p. 485) he 

 said, " Primum et ultimum in parte Systematica Botanices quae- 

 situm est Methodus Naturalist On the same page of that work 

 he laid down, in a series of aphorisms, the principles upon which 

 alone the construction of such a method can be successfully 

 attempted; and he gave special emphasis to this one, that the 

 classificatory characters should not be taken from a single 

 structure but from all : " nee una vel altera pars fructificationis, 

 sed solum simplex symmetria omnium partium" It was just 

 because they had failed to formulate this principle that the 

 earlier systematists, whether Fructists, as Cesalpino, Morison, 

 Ray, Knaut and Hermann ; or Corollists, as Rivinus and 

 Tournefort ; or Calycists, as Magnol were not more success- 

 ful, and that their systems, even the Methodus emendata of Ray, 

 were more or less artificial. 



It was in France that the carving out, as it were, of the 

 Natural Orders from the solid block of genera was carried on 

 with the greatest success. This process had become much less 

 difficult since Tournefort had begun to constitute genera in the 

 modern sense of the term. Before his time the word "genus" 

 had been applied indiscriminately to every kind of plant-group 

 (see the systems of Cesalpino and Ray, pp. 12, 32): the 

 largest groups were the summa genera \ the smaller, the genera 

 subalterna or infima. Tournefort limited the application of 

 the term to the smallest groups of species, designating by the 

 term Classe the largest groups which he subdivided into Sections 

 (Elemens de Botanique, 1694). It was Linnaeus (Classes Plan- 

 tarum, p. 485) who introduced the term Ordo to designate the 

 subordinate groups of the classes. 



Tournefort himself succeeded, by means of his corollist 

 method, in distinguishing for the first time the following 

 Sections, describing their flowers by terms which are now 

 familiar as the names of natural orders ; Flore Labiato, Cruci- 

 formi, Rosaceo, Caryophyllaceo, Liliaceo, Papilionaceo, Amentaceo; 

 though these sections do not all exactly agree with the modern 



