34 ROBERT MORISON AND JOHN RAY 



De Fruticibus. 



Genus i. Bacciferi sempervirentes : e.g. Vaccinium, Ruscus, Hedera, 



Vt'scum, Jtmiperus. 

 ii. foliis deciduis, non spinosi : e.g. Vth's, Lonicera, 



Cornus, Satnbuciis. 

 iii. foliis deciduis, spinosi : Crataegus sp., Ribes sp., 



Rosa, Berberis, &c. 

 iv. Seminibus nudis, aut vasculis siccis inclusis; e.g. ViteXy Rhus., 



Spiraea., Erica. 

 V. Floribus papilionaceis : e.g. Acacia., Genista., Cytis7ts, Colutea. 

 vi. Suffrutiscentes : a miscellaneous collection of species. 



A comparison between the classification of the Methodiis 

 Nova and that of the Tables of Plants shows that whilst he left 

 the Trees and the Shrubs almost unaltered, Ray remodelled his 

 arrangement of the Herbs. Whereas, in the Tables, he had 

 proceeded along three distinct lines of classification indicated 

 by the characters of leaf, flower, and seed-vessel respectively, all 

 regarded as equally important ; in the MetJiodus, the leaf- 

 character is subordinated to those of flower and fruit, and these 

 are not kept distinct but are combined ; a fundamental change 

 of principle which is no doubt to be attributed to Morison's 

 criticisms on the Tables. As Ray put it in his Preface : MetJio- 

 dus haec differentias siimit a similitudine et convenietitia partiuin 

 praecipuarmn, radicis puta, floris et ejus calicis, seminis ejusque 

 conceptaculL The result is that many of the sub-divisions consist 

 of groups of plants which are really natural, the precursors of 

 several of the recognized Natural Orders of Phanerogams ; such 

 as Polygonaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Compositae, Umbelliferae, 

 Rubiaceae, Boraginaceae, Labiatae, Cucurbitaceae, Scrophularia- 

 ceae, Cruciferae, Leguminosae, Gramineae. The principles 

 adopted were capable of yielding even better results, had they 

 been more rigorously applied and had the investigation of the 

 plants been more minute. For instance, in genera xxi and xxii, 

 with a little more attention to floral characters, the Ranuncula- 

 ceous might have been separated from the Rosaceous genera, 

 and all of them from the Malvaceae : similarly in genera xxvi 

 xxviii, the Scrophulariaceous, and possibly also the Campanula- 

 ceous genera, might have been segregated. One of the principal 

 achievements is the recognition of the group Stellatae (Rubia- 



