28 ROBERT MORISON AND JOHN RAY 



Morison, full as much as the latter was indebted to Cesalpino, 

 though Tournefort himself was a conscientious investigator. 

 All that is good in Morison is taken from Cesalpino, from whose 

 guidance he wanders in pursuit of natural affinities rather than 

 of characters" (see Smith's Correspondence of Linnaeus, vol. ii. 

 p. 281). If only Morison had frankly assumed the role of the 

 restorer of a method that had been forgotten, instead of posing 

 as its originator, his undoubted merits would have met with 

 their just recognition, and his memory would have been free 

 from any possible reproach. 



Before Morison's method of classification could have come 

 into general use, there was a rival system in the field, which was 

 destined to achieve success, and in its course to absorb all that 

 was good in Morison's : this was the system of John Ray. 



Ray was born at Black Notley, near Braintree, Essex, on 

 Nov. 29, 1628 ; so that he was not much junior to Morison. 

 He studied and graduated with such distinction at the University 

 of Cambridge, that he was in due course elected a Fellow of, 

 and appointed a Lecturer in, his College (Trinity). Here he 

 remained until 1662, when he resigned his Fellowship on his 

 refusal to sign the declaration against 'the solemn league and 

 covenant' prescribed by the Act of Uniformity of 1661. After 

 leaving Cambridge he spent some years travelling both in 

 Britain and on the Continent ; and eventually settled at his 

 birth-place. Black Notley, where he died on Jan. 17, 1704-5. 



During his residence in Cambridge, Ray devoted much of his 

 time to the study of natural history, a study which afterwards 

 became his chief occupation. The first fruit of his labours in 

 this direction was the Catalogus Plantariim circa Cantabrigiam 

 nascentiiim, published in 1660, followed in due course by many 

 works, for he was a prolific author, botanical and zoological as 

 well as theological and literary, of which only those can be 

 considered at present which contributed materially to the deve- 

 lopment of systematic botany. 



The first such work of Ray's was his contribution of the 

 Tables of Plants to Dr John Wilkins's Real Character and a 

 Philosophical Language, published in 1669, which has already been 

 mentioned in the course of this lecture (p. 21). The following 



