128 Natural Historx}, 



very confused and imperfect state. Numetous 

 had been the attempts to arrange the vegetable: 

 tribes into an intclHgible system, but great dis- 

 order and deficiency appeared in every plan. 

 Among these attempts the most respectable and 

 successful were those of Ray and Rivinus. The 

 former, an English clergyman, before mentioned, 

 had proposed iiis method to the v^orld in 1682; 

 but afterwards presented it in a new and im- 

 proved form in 1700, He arranged all known 

 vegetables under thirty-three classes, deriving the 

 distinguishing character of each chiefly from the 

 fruit. His system, though undoubtedly much 

 superior to any which had been devised by his pre- 

 decessors, was still very defective; and the cha- 

 racters of his plants were so many and various, as 

 to create an intricacy in a high degree perplexing 

 and painful to the student- To the method of 

 Ray, succeeded that of Rivinus, a Professor of 

 Botany in the University of Leipsic. This learned 

 man was the first who laid aside the distinction 

 between herbs and trees, which had been univer- 

 sally adopted by those who went before him. 

 Relinquishing also the pursuit of natural af^nities, 

 and convinced of the insufficiency of character- 

 istic marks drawn principally from the fruit, he 

 attached himself to the flower, as furnishing cha- 

 racters abundantly numerous, distinguishing and 

 permanent. He reduced the number of the classes 

 to eighteen, which were distinguished from each 

 other by the perfection and distribution of the 

 flowers, and particularly by the regularity and 

 number of the petals. Rivinus did not live to 

 complete the publication of his system; the whole 

 of which was finally laid before the world in 1711, 

 by one of his disciples. 



' After the system of Rivinus, the next worthy 

 of attention is that of Tournefort. This great 



