2<)4 A HISTORY OF GARDEXIXG IX EXGLAXD. 



work, Hortus Blcsensis, 1669, and further developed in his 

 Plantanim Umhelliferitm, 1672, and his History of Plants* 

 1680. Ray's complete system, shown in his Methodus 

 Plantarum, did not appear until two years later, his Synopsis in 

 i6go, and the revised Methodus in 1703. Morison professes 

 to have worked out the system entirely from Nature, but Ray, 

 with perhaps more honesty, owns his indebtedness to Caesalpinus 

 and other foreign writers, and even to Morison. It was Ray 

 who first separated the Monocotyledons from Dicotyledons, and 

 thus laid the basis of the " Natural System " now universally 

 followed. Ray (1628-1705) was the son of a blacksmith, near 

 Braintree, in Essex ; he was educated at the Grammar School 

 there, and in 1644 went to Cambridge, where he soon showed 

 his love of natural history, and especially of botany, and 

 published liis catalogue of plants round Cambridge in 1660. 

 He travelled much about England, and also spent three 

 years abroad with his friend, also a naturalist, Francis 

 Willoughby. In 1667 he was made a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, and contributed many writings to their " trans- 

 actions." He settled near his native place in 1679, and there 

 passed the remainder of his life in study, and the production 

 of his great works on Natural History and Botany. Morison 

 (1620-1683) was a native of Aberdeen. Being a staunch Royalist, 

 when the war broke out he joined the army, and on the failure 

 of the King's cause went to France. There he studied Natural 

 History, and became so distinguished a botanist that he was 

 appointed Curator of the fine gardens of the Duke of Orleans at 

 Blois, in 1650. Charles II., on his Restoration, invited Morison 

 to return to England, and gave him the supervision of the Royal 

 Gardens. In 1669 he was appointed Professor of Botany, at 

 Oxford, with the degree of Doctor of PliNsic, and there he 

 lectured and laboured at his Historia Plantarum Oxoniensis, 

 until his death, caused by an accident, in 1683. The svstems 

 evolved by these two men differed from those of all preceding 

 Botanists ; inasmuch as they were the first to classify plants 



* Plantarum Historice Universalis Oxoniensis, pars scciincl.t. The first 

 part was nc\cr published. 1680. 



