42 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



mining the different groups, he seems to lay most weight 

 on general vegetative habit ; he appears also to have used 

 anatomical characters in classification. He studied the 

 structure of buds with care but failed to find them in 

 herbaceous plants. The flower is made use of to a cer- 

 tain extent and it is quite obvious that Ray had some hazy 

 idea that plants had sex. He examined the seed carefully 

 and showed it to consist of an embryo and a "medulla" 

 or " pulpa " — our endosperm. He used the number of 

 cotyledons as a distinguisliing mark between the two 

 sections into which he divided his trees and herbs. To 

 Ray therefore we owe the f amihar names Monocotyledons 

 and Dicotyledons as terms for these large groups of 

 flowering plants.^ 



The Historia, in addition to formulating his scheme 

 of taxonomy, gives a summary of morphology, anatomy, 

 and physiology founded on Jung, Grew, and Malpighi. 

 " Here may be found," says one of his biographers, 

 " the principal discoveries in the nature of plants made by 

 Caesalpino, Columna, Grew, Malpighi, and Jung, in 

 addition to those made by Ray himself, and in this way 

 resulted the most complete treatise which has yet appeared 

 on vegetation in general." " The description of species," 

 writes Sir John Smith, the first President of the Linnean 

 Society, " is faithful and instructive, the remarks original, 

 bounded only by the whole circuit of the botanical 

 learning of that day ; nor are generic characters neglected 

 however vaguely they are assumed. Specific differences 

 do not enter regularly into the author's plan, nor has he 

 followed any uniform rules of nomenclature. So ample 

 a transcript of the practical knowledge of such a botanist 

 cannot but be a treasure." 



Another work from Ray's pen, pubhshed in 1690, 

 was the Synopsis methodica stirpium Britannicarum, a 



^ Ray was the first to define the word " species " as indicating the 

 total of individuals which show constant characters from generation 

 to generation. 



