SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 199 



not for systematic classification ? The two great pioneers in 

 this work are John Ray and Robert Morison. Their relative 

 merit has been the subject of some discussion. Both began to 

 work out a system about the same time. Ray gave an outline 

 of his classification in 1668, in the tables in Bishop Wilkins's 

 Real or Universal Character. Morison's first ideas are embodied 

 in his work Hortus Blesensis, 1669, and further developed in 

 his Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio, 1672, and his 

 History of Plants, 1 1680. Ray's complete system, shown in his 

 Methodus Plantarum, did not appear until two years later, his 

 Synopsis in 1690, and the revised Methodus in 1703. Morison 

 professes to have worked out the system entirely from Nature, 

 but Ray, with perhaps more honesty, owns his indebtedness to 

 Caesalpinus and other foreign writers, and even to Morison. 

 It was Ray who first separated the Monocotyledons from 

 Dicotyledons, and thus laid the basis of the " Natural System " 

 now universally followed. Ray (1628-1705) was the son of a 

 blacksmith near Braintree, in Essex ; he was educated at the 

 Grammar School there, and in 1644 went to Cambridge, where 

 he soon showed his love of natural history, and especially of 

 Botany, and published his catalogue of plants round Cambridge 

 in 1660. He travelled much about England, and also spent 

 three years abroad with his friend, also a naturalist, Francis 

 Willoughby. In 1667 he was made a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, and contributed many writings to their Trans- 

 actions. He settled near his native place in 1679, an( i there 

 passed the remainder of his life in study, and the production of 

 his great works on Natural History and Botany. Morison 

 (1620-1683) was a native of Aberdeen. Being a staunch 

 Royalist, when the war broke out he joined the army, and on 

 the failure of the King's cause went to France. There he 

 studied, and became so distinguished a botanist that he was 

 appointed Curator of the fine gardens of the Duke of Orleans at 

 Blois in 1650. Charles II. invited Morison to return to 

 England, and gave him £200 a year and the title of Royal 

 Professor of Botany and Superintendent of the Royal Gardens. 2 



1 Plantarum Histories Universalis Oxoniensis, Pars Secunda. The 

 first part was never published. 1680. 



2 Pulteney's Sketches, 1790. 



