cir. xvii. RATS CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. 145 



But Ray's greatest work was upon Plants, which he 

 classified much more perfectly than Caesalpinus had done. 

 He divided them first into imperfect plants, or those whose 

 flowers are invisible, as mosses and mushrooms ; and perfect 

 plants, or those having visible flowers. The perfect plants 

 he divided into two classes first, the dicotyledons, or those 

 whose seeds open out into two seed-leaves, like the wall- 

 flower or the bean, in which last you can see the two cotyle- 

 dons very clearly if you take off the outer skin ; and secondly, 

 the monocotyledons, or those whose seeds have only one large 

 seed-leaf, like a grain of wheat. The dicotyledons he again 

 divided into those having simple flowers, like the buttercup, 

 and those whose flowers are compound, like the daisy ; for if 

 you pick a daisy to pieces you will find that the centre is 

 made up of a number of little flowers, each of them perfect 

 in itself. It will have its own green calyx and coloured 

 corolla, and its own stamens and seed-vessel ; therefore each 

 daisy is a branch of little flowerets, or a compound flower. 

 Ray went on next to class the simple flowers according to 

 the number of seeds they bore, and the way in which the 

 seeds were arranged in the seed-vessel. In this way he 

 made a rough but complete classification of all the known 

 plants. Linnaeus, the great botanist of the eighteenth 

 century, adopted many of Ray's divisions, which had mean- 

 while been made more perfect by Joseph Tournefort, a 

 Frenchman, born at Aix. in Provence, in 1656. 



Ray outlived his friend Willughby more than thirty 

 years, and died in 1705 at the age of seventy-seven. His 

 death brings us to the end of the Natural History of the seven- 

 teenth century, so far as we have been able to notice it. But 

 I cannot too often remind you that these four men, Malpighi, 

 Grew, Ray, and Willughby, are merely a few among an 



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