RAY AND WILLUGHBY 123 



divisions of the seed-vessel. Eay, in a late stage of his 

 career, found it better to take his characters wherever he 

 could find them, from flower, fruit, seedling, or anything 

 else.^ Whatever logic might seem to teach,^ there were 

 natural affinities which must on no account be violated. 

 " Ab una parte quacunque, sive Flos ea sit, sive Fructus, 

 non posse Plantas omnes in Genera sen Classes dividi, 

 ita ut nulla vis Naturae inferatur, hoc est, ut quae mani- 

 feste cognatae sunt non separentur, nee quae alienae 

 consocientur." ^ When he said^ that a perfect method 

 is not to be expected, " cum natura (ut diximus) intra 

 limites Methodi cujuscunque coerceri repugnet," he was 

 feeling after the truth which Linnaeus was not long after 

 to express more clearly : — " Quae in uno genere ad genus 

 stabiliendum valent, minime idem in altero necessario 

 praestant," and "Scias characterem non constituere genus, 

 sed genus characterem."^ 



The great fault of Eay's different classifications of 

 plants is of course the retention of the division into 

 trees, shrubs and herbs. Jung ^ and Eivinus had shown 



1 Reply to Rivinu8 and Tournefort (1696). 



'^J. D. Titius, professor of mathematics and physics at Wittenberg, who 

 was also the first to announce that what is called Bode's law of planetary 

 distances, objected to the employment of heterogeneous characters in Linmeus' 

 Syatcma Naturce, because it conflicted with the rules of sound classification 

 (Z)e dividone animalium generali, 1760). Darwin, by showing that natural 

 classifications all rest upon one and the same property, viz. affinity, due to 

 common descent, nearer or more remote, reconciled the claims of practical 

 systematists with logic (Origin of Species, Chap. XIII). 



3 Preface to Methodus Plantarum, 2nd ed. 1703. Linnaeus was evidently too 

 concise when he said that Ray from a Fruoticist became a Corollist (Phil. 

 Bot. §59) ; in his laat years Ray strove to detach himself from these and all 

 other sects. 



*Hist. Plant. Vol. I, p. 51. ^ Phil. Bot. §169. 



^Joachim Jung, physicist, botanist and in the end schoolmaster at Ham- 

 burg (1587-1657), exerted a distinct and beneficial influence on the teaching of 

 botany. His Doxoscopice Phyncicce Minoren and his Isagoge Phytoncopica \\oro 

 published by pupils after his death. Jung's improved boUnical terminologj', 



