APPRECIATION 43 



Tables of Plants from his Methodus Emendata et Aucta, he had 

 time to revise and remodel his system. Morison, on the con- 

 trary, was prevented by unfavourable circumstances from begin- 

 ning the publication of his Method until late in life, and he was 

 not permitted to see more than a fragment of it issue from the 

 press. 



It is probable that Ray was more truly a naturalist than was 

 Morison : for in addition to his works on Method, he published 

 not only his Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascetithmt 

 (1660), but also a Catalogus of British plants (1670, 2nd ed, 

 1677), almost the earliest work of the kind, only preceded by 

 William How's Phytologia Britannica (1650), which developed 

 into the first British Flora arranged systematically, the Synopsis 

 Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum ( 1 690, 2nd ed. 1 696). Morison 

 published nothing on field-botany ; his volume of the Historia 

 contains, it is true, occasional mention of plants found in or near 

 Oxford, but the finder of them seems always to have been the 

 younger Bobart. Ray included in the Synopsis a list of plants 

 that had been communicated to him by Bobart, with whom he 

 seems to have been intimate, and expressed his indebtedness to 

 Bobart's botanical skill. 



But whether the palm be bestowed upon the one or the 

 other, the fact remains that both were men of exceptional 

 capacity, and that both did good work for British Botany, 

 raising it to a level which commanded the respect and admira- 

 tion of the botanical world ; from which, as the succeeding 

 lectures of this course will show, it was not allowed to sink. 

 What Linnaeus said of Morison may be applied equally to 

 Ray, " Roma certe non iino die, nee ab tino condebatiir viro. Ille 

 tamen faces extinctas incendit, a quibus ignem miitnati sunt sitbse- 

 quentes, quibus datum ad lucidum magis focum objecta rimare " 

 {Classes Plantarum, p. 33). 



