122 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS 



plants.^ From a collection of examples, no doubt very 

 inadequate, he drew a sweeping inference, which wider 

 knowledge has luckily confirmed, and gave definiteness 

 to L'Obers unnamed series of grasses, bulbous plants and 

 the like, a series hitherto characterised only by the form 

 and venation of the leaves. It was not till the second 

 edition of his Methodus (1703) that he gave the names 

 of Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons to his new divi- 

 sions.^ Even then, he did not make them primary 

 divisions of flowering plants, for he clung to the last to 

 the ancient separation of trees and herbs. He remarks, 

 however, in the edition of 1703, that the distinction of 

 monocotyledons and dicotyledons might be extended to 

 trees, if it should appear that palms differ from other 

 trees in the same way that monocotyledonous herbs 

 differ from other herbs. 



Kay*s contribution to the philosophy of natural classi- 

 fication consists in this, that after trying a variety of 

 expedients, some of them very unpromising, he at last 

 recognised that single-organ characters often break up 

 natural groups. He found, for instance, that he had at 

 one time relied too exclusively upon the fruit ; the 

 palms, which constitute a truly natural group, may bear 

 either a succulent berry, or a drupe with a hard stone. 

 Kivinus, going solely by the flower, had unnaturally sepa- 

 rated Tormentil from the other Potentillas, Echium from 

 the Borages, &c. Tournefort had relied too exclusively 

 on characters taken from the corolla ; Hermann on the 



^ Ray's mention of the variety of structure exhibited by the cotyledons, and 

 his advice that his readers should study for themselves the contrivances of the 

 germinating seed, imply personal knowledge on his part. His definite state- 

 ment that bulbous plants have only one cotyledon {Synopsis Stirpium, 2nd ed. 

 1696) would be unjustifiable if he had never verified the fact. 



'^The distinction is recognised in the table on pp. 56-9 of the first edition of 

 the Methodus, where the flowering plants are divided into "foliis seminalibus 

 binis," and "singulis aut nullis." 



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