200 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



In 1669 he was appointed Professor of Botany at Oxford, with 

 the degree of Doctor of Physic, and there he lectured and 

 laboured at his Historia Plantarum Oxoniensis until his death, 

 caused by an accident, in 1683. The systems evolved by these 

 two men differed from those of all preceding botanists, inas- 

 much as they were the first to classify plants according to some 

 real likeness in the fruit or flower, and not merely from 

 similarity of habit or place of growth. Morison divided her- 

 baceous plants into fifteen classes ; Ray into twenty-five, and 

 trees and shrubs into eight. These systems, which paved the 

 way, so to speak, for Jussieu, Robert Brown, and others, came 

 at a time when they were most needed. From East and West, 

 from the Old World and from the New, plants were pouring in 

 yearly in increasing numbers ; and the necessity of arranging 

 these newly-acquired treasures was the foremost task of 

 botanists. 



