124 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS 



how unnatural was the separation of, for example, the 

 arboreal from the herbaceous Leguminosse, but Ray, 

 though he admitted the similarity of structure, could 

 never bring himself to discard a division so obvious and 

 so generally received.^ In the same way he refused to 

 separate the cetaceans from the fishes, although he was 

 well aware of the important peculiarities which they 

 share with quadrupeds.^ Buffon is the only naturalist 

 of eminence who has since maintained that system must 

 conform to common usage, instead of guiding it. Eay 

 strangely asserted that while trees and shrubs are 

 furnished with winter buds, herbs are not. 



Whatever his deficiencies, Ray did a useful service to 

 systematic botany by gathering up all that he found 

 valuable in his predecessors, producing thereby the 

 best arrangement of plants hitherto published. Long 

 afterwards it facilitated the more lasting system of A. L. 

 de Jussieu. 



THE HISTOEIA PLANTAEUM 



is a vast compilation, a proof no doubt of Ray's industry 

 and candour, but little memorable on other grounds. 

 The accounts of exotic plants, taken from Marcgraf, 

 Bontius and many other authors, are quite unreadable. 

 The introduction expounds the structure and physiology 

 of plants, as understood in the latter part of the seven- 

 teenth century. Linnseus studied this introduction with 



based upon a far sounder knowledge of structure than had hitherto prevailed, 

 was made known to Ray by Samuel Hartlib, a young German, who also 

 diligently propagated the teaching of Comenius (Gat. Camb. Plants, p. 87). 

 Bay adopted some of Jung's reforms in his Historia Planlarum, and LinnsSus 

 in a later generation drew valuable suggestions from the same source. 



1 The ancient division reappears in Tournefort (Institutiones rei herbarim, 

 1700) and Magnol (Character plantaruvi novus, 1720) and was only finally 

 expelled by Linnseus. 



'Supra, p. 112. 



