8 



BOTANY. 



History, the genera of plants, is done quite in the manner of 



< \, - Linnaeus. Had his works been better known, and 



had he been situated more favourably for acting more 



at large, botany would perhaps have advanced at his 



time as far aa it is now actually advanced." 



Morison. Plants, as we have before remarked, had been hi- 



Born 1628. t jj er to chiefly treated of in a loose and uncertain way ; 



Died 1660 or t j le j^gg O f systematic arrangement proposed by 



Morison's 



arrange- 

 Blc ?- 



Caesalpinus, may be said to have died with him. To- 

 wards the close of this period, however, an attempt 

 was made to revive it by Dr Robert Morison, a native 

 of Aberdeen. This gentleman, having retired into 

 France about the year 1650, after having borne arms 

 as a royalist in the civil wars, was long superinten- 

 dent of the garden then lately formed at Blois, by 

 Gaston, Duke of Orleans : and on the restoration of 

 Charles the II., being recalled by that prince to Eng- 

 land, he was first appointed one of his physicians and 

 botanist royal, with a salary of 200 per annum, and 

 afterwards elected professor of botany at Oxford ; in 

 which capacity he died in 1683. While he was in 

 France, he made several botanical journies through 

 different parts of that country at the expence of his 

 patron, which served to enlarge his acquaintance with 

 the vegetable kingdom very considerably : and by 

 improving the opportunities which he enjoyed in a 

 more especial manner, as superintendent of the well 

 furnished gardens at Blois and Oxford, of examining 

 and comparing a great number of plants, both fo- 

 reign and indigenous, in the various stages of their 

 growth, he became a better judge of their affinities 

 than any preceding naturalist. He had particularly 

 made the fruit a subject of investigation, and beir.g 

 3t the same time well acquainted with the use which 

 Caesalpinus had made of it as a systematic writer, he 

 endeavoured, in the formation of his classes, to im- 

 prove upon his ideas, and borrowed the more essen- 

 tial characters of arrangement from this part of the 

 vegetable also. His system, of which the professed 

 aim, as we learn from the title of his great work, as 

 well as from what he has said in the preface to 

 it, was to bring plants together, as much as possible, 

 according to their natural affinities, comprehended 18 

 classes, and was as follows : 



f- Lignosa, arbores. 



2 ...... frutices. 



3 ...... suffrutices. 



4. Herbaceas, scandentes. 



5 ....... leguminosx. 



6 ....... siliquosse. 



7 ....... tricapsulares. 



8 ....... anumero capsularem dictas. 



9 ....... corymbifene. 



10 ..... . . lactescentes, seu papposae. 



11 ....... culmifera, seu calmarisc. 



12 ....... umbelliferae. 



13 ...... . tricoccK. 



14 ....... galeatz. 



15 ....... multicapsulares. 



16 ....... bacciferae. 



17.. ...... capillares. 



18. . ..... heteroclitse. 



From this outline of Morison's system, it appears, 

 that he set out by distinguishing plants somewhat in 



7 



the way of Caeealpinus, according as they are either History, 

 of a woody or herbaceous texture : and by distribu- ' 

 ting those of the first division, from their size, into the ^on' 

 three classes of trees, shrubs, and under shrubs. The Morison'a 

 plants of the second division, on the other hand, he arrangc- 

 formed into 15 classes : of which the characteristic mem. 

 distinctions were taken from the number, figure, and 

 substance of the fruit ; the disposition of the flowers ; 

 the presence or absence of the downy crown of the 

 seed, termed pappus ; the lactescence or milkiness of 

 some plants ; the number of the petals ; and the habit, 

 port, or general appearance. The fourth class, for 

 instance, was made to consist of those plants which 

 are climbing, and have a pulpy fruit of the berry or 

 apple kind, as passion-flower, briony, and cucumber ; 

 the fifth and sixth classes, of those which are pod 

 bearing, the ground of distinction between them be- 

 ing, that the former have a legume or pod, without 

 a partition, as the pea kind, and the latter a siliqua 

 or pod, with a partition, as mustard, and wall-flower ; 

 the seventh class, of those which have a tricapsular, 

 or three-celled fruit, and six petals, as the liliaceous, 

 or bulbous rooted tribe j and the eighth, of a variety 

 of plants, which are brought into a sort of arrange- 

 ment according to the number of cells in the fruit, 

 connected with the number and disposition of the pe- 

 tals. The ninth and tenth classes were made to com- 

 prehend theplants with compound flowers; the ground 

 of distinction between them being, that those of the 

 former, which are termed corymbiferous, (their flowers 

 growing in clusters like ivy berries,) as tansy, fe- 

 ver-few, and wormwood, have neither a pappus nor a 

 lactescent stalk ; while those of the latter, as hawk- 

 weed, dandelion, ragweed, and thistle, have either the 

 one or the other. The eleventh class again was made 

 to include the plants which are denominated culmifc- 

 rous, that is to say, the grasses, and such as are allied 

 to them, having a single seed in each flower ; and the 

 twelfth, those which are called umbelliferous, having 

 two naked seeds joined at their origin, and flowers 

 consisting of five petals, which grow in an umbel ; 

 the thirteenth class, those which have a tricoccous, 

 or triple-like capsule, as spurge ; the fourteenth, 

 those which have four naked seeds and one petal, as 

 the rough leaved tribe ; the fifteenth, those that have 

 several capsules, as paeony, house-leek, and water- 

 lilly; and the sixteenth, those which have fruit of 

 the berry or apple kind, but are not climbing, as 

 deadly night-shade, arum, and cyclemen. The two 

 last classes were formed so as to comprehend what 

 are called the cryptogamic plants ; t'e ferns being re- 

 ferred to the one, and the mosses, flags, mushrooms, 

 and corals, to the other. 



Of the method of arrangement thus devised by Mo- 

 rison, some idea was first communicated to the world 

 by him in an enlarged edition of Brunyere's Hortus 

 Blesensis, or catalogue of plants growing in the gar- 

 den at Blois, which he published in 1669. But the 

 work into which he introduced it fully, and in its 

 more perfect form, was his general history of plants, 

 of which the second vol. in fol. (for the first, contain- 

 ing the trees, shrubs, and under shrubs, was somehow 

 never published,) appeared in 1676, during hislife time, 

 and the third in 1699, a considerable time after his 

 death, under the care of James Bobart, the garden- 



