CXVl FLORA OF BERKSHIRE 



1661, was not unknown to Morison, who might certainly have found 

 in it much that suited his purjDOse. Sprengel also says that the 

 ' Hallucinationes ' are a well-grounded criticism of the arrangement of 

 plants which the Bauhins had chosen ; that Morison goes through the 

 Pinax page by page, and shows what plants occupy a false position, 

 and that it is certain that he laid the first foundation of a better 

 arrangement and a more correct discrimination of genera and species. 

 Sachs is of opinion that the Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distrihutio nova 

 shows considerable advance, and is the first monograph which was 

 intended to carry out systematic principles strictly within the limits 

 of a single large family ; and that one of its merits is that it contains 

 for the first time careful representations of separate parts of plants, 

 executed in copper-plate. Criticizing the Historia, Sachs says that the 

 systematic arrangement in it is to be seen in Linnaeus' Classes 

 Plantarum, but that Morison's merit lay less in the quality of what he 

 did than in the fact that he was the first to renew the cultivation of 

 systematic botany on a comprehensive scale. The number of Morison's 

 adherents "was never large ; in Germany Paul Ammann, Professor at 

 Leipsic, adopted his views in his Character Plantarum Naturalis (1685), 

 and Paul Hermann, Professor at Leyden (1679-1695), after collecting 

 plants in Ceylon for eight years, proposed a system founded on that 

 of Morison, but which can scarcely be called an improvement 

 upon it. 



. ' Morison,' says Antony Wood {Athenae Oxon. vol. ii. p. 852), * designed 

 to go forward with one or more volumes, but being suddenly cut off the 

 work ceased. However, there is now in the press at Oxford a volume, 

 in folio, in continuance or pursuit of the last volume of Dr. Morison, 

 written by Jacob Bobart, Keeper of the Physic Garden in Oxford, with 

 annotations thereunto of the Eastern names by Dr. Thos. Hyde, Chief 

 Keeper of the Bodleian Library. After which is done, there will come 

 out another volume of Trees by the same hand. This Dr. Morison, 

 who was esteemed the best in the woi'ld for his profession, taking 

 a journey from Oxford to London and Westminster in order for the 

 carrying on of his great designs of publishing one or more volumes of 

 plants, did when in Westminster receive a bruise on his breast by the 

 l^ole of a coach, as he was crossing the street between the end of 

 St. Martin's Lane and Northumberland House near Charing Cross on 

 the ninth day of November, 1683 ; and whereupon being soon after 

 carried to his home in Green Street in Leycester fields, died next day 

 to the great reluctancy of all those that were lovers and admirers of 

 his faculty. Afterwards he was bviried in the Church of St. Martin 

 in the Field within the liberty of Westminster.' 



The portrait prefixed to the posthumoiis volume is a copy by White, 

 from the oil-painting preserved in the Library of the Botanic Garden 



