38 



MEMORIALS OF RAY 



settle, for the short pittance of time I have yet to live 

 in this v^^orld." And accordingly he made his words 

 good. 



Being settled at Black Notley, and by that means 

 eased of the disquietude and interruptions in his studies, 

 which he had met with the four or five last years, by his 

 removal from place to place, he then began to resume 

 his wonted labours, and particularly in Botany ; and one 

 of the first things he finished was his ' Methodus Plan- 

 tarum nova which was published in the year 1682.* 



* The nature and importance of this work have been well pointed out by 

 Dr. Lindley in his notice of John Ray in the ' Penny Cyclopaedia.' The fol- 

 lowing passage is interesting, as coming from one who, from his own labours, 

 is well calculated to form a correct opinion of the value of the writings of 

 Ray in systematic botany : — 



"In 1682 appeared his 'Methodus Plantarum Nova,' 1vol. Sfo, in which 

 he proposed a new method of classifying plants, which, when altered and 

 amended, as it subsequently was by himself at a later period, unquestionably 

 formed the basis of that method which under the name of the system of 

 Jussieu is universally received at the present day. In the formation of the 

 principal groups into which he divided the vegetable kingdom, Ray derived 

 his characters sometimes from the fruit, sometimes from the flower, and 

 sometimes from other parts of the plant, as each in its turn seemed to offer 

 the most strongly marked points of distinction. He first proposed the di- 

 vision of plants mto dicotyledons and monocotyledons. ' Ploriferas di vidi- 

 mus,' he says, 'in dieotj/ledones, quarum semina sata binis foHis anomalis 

 seminalibus dictis quse cotyledonum usum praestant e terra exeunt, vel in 

 binos saltem lobos dividuntur quamvis cos supra terram foliorum specie non 

 efferant ; et monocotyledones, quae nec folia seminalia bina efferunt nec lobos 

 binos condunt.' (Methodus Plantarum, 2d edit. p. 2.) He extended these 

 divisions both to trees and herbs, stating that pahns differ as much in this 

 respect from other trees, as grasses and lilies do from other herbs. Though 

 he made these great discoveries and improvements, Ray obstinately continued 

 in the old error of separating woody from herbaceous plants, or trees from 

 herbs, and he held a long control? ersy with Rivinus on this point : he even 

 went so far as to state that one of these divisions might be distinguished 

 from the other by the presence of buds, which he says are only developed in 

 woody plants. To hmi is due, however, the honour of the discovery of the 

 true nature of buds, for he says that they are points at wliich new annual 

 plants spring up from the old stock, but he stopped short in Ms discovery in 

 not extending them to herbaceous plants. In the first edition of the ' Me- 

 thodus' he formed twenty-five classes, taking the woody plants first, which 

 he divided into trees and shrubs. In tliis system he fell into many errors, 

 one of the most glaring of which, as he himself afterwards observed, was the 

 separation of different species of corn from the other grasses. He subse- 

 quently altered this, and revised the whole arrangement, making thirty-four 

 groups instead of twenty-five ; many of which are almost exactly the same as 

 are adopted by botanists of the present day under tlie name of natural orders. 



