DE S. -F. aRAY 27 



Note A. 



« The fate of this work — the first attempt to apply the 

 natural System to British plants — wasmost unfortunate. Few 

 copies appear to hâve been sold, and virtually it fell still-born 

 from the press, and has been overlooked alike by British and 

 foreign botanists... \Ve must not forget that those were times 

 of great political excitement. The year 1821 , when Gray's work 

 appeared, was the year of Napoleon's death ; and the legacy of 

 debt, and suffering, and wrong, bequeathed by a génération of 

 warfare, was not soon to be forgotten. This feeling extended 

 even to scientific truths, and the natural System, which was 

 conceived in the stormy epoch of the French Révolution, was 

 looked upon as a product of Atheism and Jacobinism — stam- 

 ped with the mark of the Beast. » Benj. Oarrington, Dr. Gray's 

 Arrangement of the Hepaticœ. (Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinb. X, 

 1870, p. 305.) 



Note B. 



« Gray's arrangement had the misfortune to be in advance 

 of its time ; it was the earliest attempt to introduce the Natural 

 System to English botanists, and partly from the suspicion 

 which always clings to new methods, but chiefly from the 

 inveterate animosity called forth by anything French at that 

 period, the disciples of Linnaeus were powerful enough to dis- 

 crédit, and effectually « damn » one of the best handbooks ever 

 produced.»B. OarrinCtTOn, Bristih Hepaticœ, part IV, p. 67. 1875. 



Note C. 



« Gray's work fiUs two octavo volumes, is well printed, and is 

 adorned with several plates in the introductory portion, on 

 morphology ; but it is so obviously and entirely a compilation 

 from other sources, with no new facts added, or any novelty 

 beyond an eccentric terminology and an occasional arbitrary 

 change of name, that it has been completely neglected, even by 

 his own countrymen, who hâve allowed his very names to fall 

 into oblivion. » Richard Spruce, On Marsupella Stableri n. 

 sp. and some allied species of European Hepaticœ. (Revue 

 bryologique, 8^ année, 1881, n° 6, p. 90.) 



