ROBERT MORISON AND JOHN RAY 



1620 1683 1627 1705 



By SYDNEY HOWARD VINES 



Early systems of classification Theophrastus the Herbalists Cesalpino's 

 De PlaniisCsiS\>ax Bauhin's Pinax Theatri BoianiciMoKlSOti 

 narrative Botany at Oxford the garden established Jacob Bobart 

 the elder Morison's Historia Plantarum completion by the younger 

 Bobart personal characteristics Morison's works the Praeiudmihe 

 HalhicinationesXht. Z?//^^z/j principles of method in his Plantarum 

 Umbelliferaruni Distributio Nova- posthumous publication of System- 

 indebtedness to Cesalpino Linnaeus' estimate of Morison Ray nar- 

 rative first attempt at a System quarrel with Morison the Methodus 

 Nova Dicotyledones and Monocotyledones Linnaeus' criticisms 

 later Systems the French school Morison and Ray compared. 



The literature of Botany can be traced back to a quite 

 respectable antiquity, to the period of Aristotle (B.C. 384 322) 

 who seems to have been the first to write of plants from the 

 truly botanical point of view. Unfortunately, his special treatise 

 on plants dewpia rrrepl (jivrwv is lost ; and although there are 

 many botanical passages scattered throughout his other writings 

 (which have been collected by Wimmer, Phytologiae Aristotelicae 

 Fragmenta, 1836), yet none of them gives any indication of what 

 his ideas of classification may have been. An echo of them 

 is perhaps to be found in the works of his favourite pupil, 

 Theophrastus Eresius (B.C. 371 286), who among all his fellows 

 was the most successful in pursuing the botanical studies that 

 they had begun under the guidance of the master. Theophrastus 

 left behind him two important, though incomplete, treatises on 

 plants, the oldest that have survived : the more familiar Latin 

 titles of which are De Historia Plantarum and De Causis 



