RAY AND WILLUGHBY 115 



The mention of the two Bauhins reminds us that 

 in the interval between L'Obel and Eay systematic 

 botany had made real progress. Reverence for the 

 ancients had grown less servile, the demands of 

 pharmacy less exorbitant, figures of common plants 

 less indispensable. Caspar Bauhin had rectified the 

 intolerable confusion of plant-names. Jung {infra, 

 p. 123 n.) had framed a well-considered botanical termi- 

 nology. The sense of natural affinities had become more 

 enlightened, though the best naturalists were still 

 misled by adaptive resemblance, and plants were 

 brought together merely because they agreed in being 

 aquatic, or in climbing, or in possessing trefoil leaves. 

 One old and laudable practice was firmly adhered to ; 

 botanists sought first to discern, and then to define, 

 the groups which exist in nature ; no one imitated 

 Cesalpini in proposing a new classification simply 

 because it struck him as precise and logical. The 

 natural families recognised were however so few (less 

 than a dozen), that Ray at first employed an alphabetical 

 sequence of genera, and this is what we find in the 

 Catalogue of Cambridge Plants. 



The Catalogue of 1660 contains 671 species of wild 

 plants. An appendix (1663) added 37 species, and 

 Peter Dent's edition of this appendix (1685) 59 more. 

 In the Catalogue of English Plants (1670, 1677) Ray 

 marked the Cambridgeshire species by the letter C, 

 so that this catalogue is a kind of supplement to the 

 Cambridge one. The Martyns (father and son), Relhan 

 and Babington have since revised the flora of Cambridge- 

 shire, and the last-named botanist has noted the changes 

 due to the interference of man since Ray's time. 



To many of the plants Ray appends notes, and here 

 he allows himself great latitude, quoting sayings of 



