XXXIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



it nearly a century after tlie founder's death, and at tlie 

 moment of writing this, his house is still standing, although 

 doomed to speedy demolition by the progress of building 

 operations. 



Robert Morison was too prominent in his day to be passed 

 over in silence. Of his most important work, the second volume 

 came out during his lifetime, the third volume was edited by 

 Bobart, whilst the first was never printed. The copper-plate 

 engravings in this work are very good, although small, but are 

 cumbrous to quote, being arranged in sections separately 

 numbered, so that three numerals must be used to designate 

 a particular figure. Morison pretended that he had elaborated 

 his system without deriving help from his predecessors, a state- 

 ment which, coupled with his caustic criticisms on Caspar 

 Bauhin's Pinax, does not exhibit his disposition in a very 

 favourable light. 



The attention of John Evelyn was chiefly given to garden- 

 ing, but his work Si/va is included in my selection. About 

 this time British botany was diligently studied by some, re- 

 sulting in Dr. William How issuing the first British flora, 

 under the title of Phytologia hritannica. Ten years later an un- 

 pretentious work, anonymous like the last, issued from the press, 

 the maiden essay of one of the most distinguished naturalists of 

 any country, John Ray. The Catalogus circa Cantahrigiam 

 was afterwards followed by Br. Christopher Merrett's Pinax, in 

 turn succeeded by Ray's Catalogus plantarum AngUae. William 

 Sherard, Leonard Plukenet, James Petiver, Sir Hans Sloane, 

 were contemporaries of Ray. Sherard' s endeavours to con- 

 struct a Pinax on the plan of C. Bauhin ended in the work 

 remaining unfinished at his death ; Plukenet published his 

 Phytographia and similar works, consisting of plates of new 

 exotics ; Petiver in a somewhat similar but more modest scale ; 

 whilst Sloane's publications were limited to his Jamaica plants ; 

 the collections of many botanists came into his hands, now 



