Chap, ii.] from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 69 



knew how to adopt all that was good and true in the works of 

 his predecessors, and to criticise and complete them from his 

 own observations, but could also joyfully acknowledge the 

 services of others, and combine their results and his own into 

 a harmonious whole. He wrote many botanical works ; but 

 none display his character as a man and a naturalist better 

 than his comprehensive ' Historia Plantarum,' published in 

 three large folio volumes without plates in the period from 

 1686 to 1704. This work contains a series of descriptions of 

 all plants then known ; but the first volume commences with a 

 general account of the science in fifty-eight pages, which, printed 

 in ordinary size, would itself make a small volume, and which 

 treats of the whole of theoretic botany in the style of a modern 

 text-book. If morphology, anatomy, and physiology, in which 

 latter subject he relies on the authority of Malpighi and Grew, 

 are not kept strictly apart in his exposition, yet it is easy to 

 separate the morphological part, and his theory of systematic 

 botany is in fact given separately. Jung's definitions of the 

 subject-matter of each of the chapters on morphology are first 

 given, and Ray then adds his own remarks, in which he 

 criticises, expands, and supplements those of his predecessor. 

 Omitting all that is not his own, and the anatomical and 

 physiological portions, we will describe some of the more 

 important results of his studies on system. First and foremost 

 Ray adopted the idea which Grew had conceived, but in a very 

 clumsy form, that difference of sex prevails in the vegetable 

 kingdom, and hence the flower had a different meaning and 

 importance for him from what it had had for his predecessors, 

 though his views on the subject were still indistinct. Ray 

 perceived more clearly than Cesalpino that many seeds contain 

 not only an embryo but also a substance, which he calls ' pulpa ' 

 or ' medulla,' and which is now known as the endosperm, and 

 that the embryo has not always two cotyledons, but sometimes 

 only one or none ; and though he was not quite clear as regards 

 the distinction, which we now express by the words dicotyle- 



