234 Britain's Heritage of Science 



a monograph on the Umbelliferce, the first British mono- 

 graph devoted exclusively to the elucidation of a single 

 large Natural Order. The book was illustrated by some of 

 the first copper plates which were produced in these islands. 

 Morison endeavoured to trace the systematic relations of the 

 members of the family by the aid of a linear arrangement, 

 and even attempted a genealogical tree. He divided the 

 flowering plants into fifteen classes ; but he was only able 

 to deal with five of these before his death, though he left 

 the four succeeding ones finished. The remainder were 

 completed by Jacob Bobart, the Superintendent of the 

 Gardens at Oxford. 



Morison's families were too few in number, and conse- 

 quently often overcrowded with what later observation has 

 shown to be a heterogeneous collection .of plants. He 

 worked from the particular to the general, beginning with 

 the smallest subdivisions and working up to the larger ones. 

 Like Ray, he accepted the division of plants into herbs, 

 shrubs, and trees; but, unlike Ray, he ignored the dis- 

 tinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons. He 

 seems to have been a somewhat selfish man of science, 

 self-assertive, taking every credit to himself, while allowing 

 little to his predecessors and contemporaries. 



During the latter half of the seventeenth century the 

 second name of quite outstanding merit in the history of 

 British Botany second to that of Ray is that of Nehemiah 

 Grew (1641-1712). Like Turner, he was educated at Pem- 

 broke College, Cambridge, and he subsequently studied 

 medicine at Leyden, where he took his doctor's degree in 

 1671. For a time he practised medicine at Coventry, and 

 later removed to London. He and his contemporary, the 

 Italian Malpighi, with whom he was always on good terms, 

 are regarded as the founders of vegetable anatomy. He 

 was the author of numerous works not all by any means 

 confined to botany. The greatest of his contributions to 

 that science was the " Anatomy of Plants," issued in 1684. 

 Sections I., II., and III. of this volume were second editions 

 of the " Anatomy of Vegetables Begun." The anatomy 

 of roots and the anatomy of trunks followed. The fourth 

 section included the anatomy of leaves, flowers, fruits, and 



