RAY AND WILLUGHBY 121 



THE METHODUS PLANTAEUM 



A great part of this little book is occupied by tables, 

 in which the families are laboriously compared with 

 respect to a number of characters. 



Long before 1682 real progress had been made towards 

 a natural system of flowering plants. Eay was of 

 opinion that the best of the families (" summa genera ") 

 inherited from earlier botanists were the Fungi, 

 Mosses, Algse, Ferns, Umbelliferse, Labiates, Borages, 

 Stellates, Leguminosse, Pomiferse, Composites (in three 

 divisions), Bulbous plants, Grasses and Grass-like plants 

 (united).^ He might have included the Crucifers, which 

 were usually kept more or less together, and some others. 

 Botanists of every age had informally and without 

 attempt at definition recognised, as country-folk still do, 

 poppies, mallows, pines, nightshades, &c. Ray did not 

 succeed in making permanent additions to the number. 

 Nevertheless his life-long exertions were not in vain, 

 for as we shall see, he was able (1) to name and charac- 

 terise the Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons, and (2) 

 to discover an important principle of natural classi- 

 fication, which was afterwards to guide the practice of 

 Linnaeus. 



It was no doubt from Malpighi that Eay got the 

 notion of a diff'erence in seedlings, which might serve to- 

 divide the flowering plants into large sections. In his 

 tract De Seminum Vegetatione Malpighi had described 

 and figured the seedlings of cucumber, French bean, 

 common bean, pea and wheat. ^ It is probable that Eay 

 studied in gardens the germination of many common 



'Some of these, e.g. the umbellifers, leguminous plants, bulbous plants and 

 two divisions of the composites had been more or less clearly recognised by the- 

 ancients. 



^See also Anatome Plantarum, p. 77. 



