212 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



and other, foreign writers, and even to Morison. It was Ray 

 who first separated the Monocotyledons from Dicotyledons, and 

 thus laid the basis of the " Natural System " now universally 

 followed. Ray (1628-1705) was the son of a blacksmith, near 

 Braintree, in Essex ; he was educated at the Grammar School 

 there, and in 1644 went to Cambridge, where he soon showed 

 his love of natural history, and especially of botany, and 

 published his catalogue of plants round Cambridge in 1660. 

 He travelled, much about England, and also spent three 

 years abroad with his friend, also a naturalist, Francis 

 Willoughby. In 1667 he was made a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, and contributed many writings to their " trans- 

 actions." He settled near his native place in 1679, and there 

 passed the remainder of his life in study, and the production 

 of his great works on Natural History and Botany. Morison 

 (1620-1683) was a native of Aberdeen. Being a staunch Royalist, 

 when the war broke out he joined the army, and on the failure 

 of the King's cause went to France. There he studied Natural 

 History, and became so distinguished a botanist that he was 

 appointed Curator of the fine gardens of the Duke of Orleans at 

 Blois, in 1650. Charles II., on his Restoration, invited Morison 

 to return to England, and gave him the supervision of the* Royal 

 Gardens. In 1669 he was appointed Professor of Botany, at 

 Oxford, with the degree of Doctor of Physic, and there he 

 lectured and laboured at his Historia Plantarum Oxoniensis, 

 until his death, caused by an accident, in 1683. The systems 

 evolved by these two men differed from those of all preceding 

 Botanists ; inasmuch as they were the first to classify plants 

 according to some real likeness in the fruit or flower, and not 

 merely from similarity of habit or place of growth. Morison 

 divided herbaceous plants into fifteen classes; Ray into twenty- 

 five, and trees and shrubs into eight. These systems, which 

 paved the way, so to speak, for Jussieu, Robert Brown, and 

 others, came at a time when they were most needed. From East 

 and West, from the Old World and from the New, plants were 

 pouring in yearly in increasing numbers ; and the necessity of 

 arranging these newly-acquired treasures, was the foremost task 

 of Botanists. 



