SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 211 



Firretree," " Arbutus," " Strawberry tree," " Arbor Judae," 

 "Judas tree," "Ash tree," &c. Among the flowers are about 

 twenty sorts of Roses, including "York and Lancaster, 

 Provence, Austrian and Cinnamon, n violas, 9 clematis, 7 

 Colchicum and 9 crocus, double and single peony, 4 foxgloves, 

 10 Lychnis, Campian, Bee orchis, orchis serapius," &c. The 

 list also contains " Nicotiana, English Tabacca," " Yucca, 

 Indian Bread," " Stinging nettle," and 4 sorts of moss, " cup, 

 club, hard sea, and tree mosse."* The plant names follow 

 each other in alphabetical order, quite regardless of any 

 classification. The first attempt to separate indigenous from 

 foreign plants was made by William How, in his work entitled 

 Phytologia Britannica (1650). 



Although this is not a history of the progress of Botany, a 

 task well performed by Richard Pulteney, with chronological 

 accuracy rather more than a century ago, that science is so 

 intimately connected with gardening, that some references to 

 it cannot be left out, for how could the immense number of 

 plants now cultivated, be understood or identified, if it were not 

 for systematic classification ? The two great pioneers in this 

 work are John Ray and Robert Morison. Their relative merit 

 has been the subject of some discussion. Both began to work 

 out a system about the same time. Ray gave an outline of his 

 classification in 1668, in the tables in Bishop Wilkins's Real or 

 Universal Character. Morison's first ideas are embodied in his 

 work, Hortus Blesensis, 1669, an d further developed in his 

 Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio, 1672, and his History of 

 Plants,^ 1680. Ray's complete system, shown in his Methodus 

 Plantarum, did not appear until two years later, his Synopsis in 

 1690, and the revised Methodus in 1703. Morison professes to 

 have worked out the system entirely from Nature, but Ray, with 

 perhaps more honesty, owns his indebtedness to Caesalpinus 



* A second and enlarged edition was published in 1658, with the 



co-operation of Philip Stephens and William Brown, both botanists of 



Oxford. It is a great improvement on the first, and makes frequent 

 reference to Gerard and Parkinson. 



"f* Plantarum Histories Universalis Oxoniensis, pars secunda. The first 

 part was never published. 1680. 



i 4 * 



