48 



MEMORIALS OF RAY : 



pium Europaearum extra Britanniam/ which he wrote 

 about this time ; the occasion of which was this, his 

 ' Catalogus Stirpium in exteris Regionibus, &c/ being 

 out of print, the booksellers were very pressing for another 

 edition, with improvements, which Mr. Ray was minded 

 to gratify them in ; and, therefore, to the vegetables 

 which he had himself observed, he added others that he 

 had omitted in the places through which he had travelled. 

 But his learned friend Dr. Tancred Robinson, not content 

 herewith, persuaded him to make it more complete and 

 useful, by taking in the vegetables of all Europe, growing 

 out of Britain, and of all other parts, except India and 

 America ; by which means, travellers or others might 

 know what vegetables they might expect in all places 

 where they should come. 



This book was published in the year 1694 ; about two 

 years before which, Rivinus* published his ' Introduction' 

 and presented Mr. Ray with it, and therein makes use of 

 a different method from Mr. Ray's. And this ' Sylloge' 

 being the next thing which Mr. Ray published, he took 

 occasion in the preface to examine Rivinus's method, and 

 showed the deficiencies of it ; which Rivinus soon an- 

 swered in November following, in a printed letter to Mr. 

 Ray ; wherein he useth great complaisance and civility to 

 Mr. Ray in appearance, but could not forbear giving him 

 now and then some angry strokes, and too superciliously 

 and contemptuously runs down Mr. Ray's, and en- 

 deavours to establish his own method ; which usage Mr. 



* Rivinus, Augustus Quirinus, was born at Leipsic in 1652. He was 

 educated and graduated in medicine in the university of his native city, and 

 subsequently became appointed professor of anatomy and botany. The work, 

 which attracted Ray's attention, and which procured for its author a high 

 position amongst systematic botanists, was entitled ' Introductio generalis in 

 Rem Herbariam,' and was published at Leipsic in 1690. He divided the 

 vegetable kingdom into eighteen classes or orders, founded on the form of 

 the corolla. This rendered his system very artificial, and on that account 

 inferior to the one of Ray. The great merit of Rivinus's method consisted 

 in the abolition of the distinction iDctween trees and herbs, wliich formed a 

 primary division of plants in the system of Ray. Rivinus commenced a 

 great work, consisting of illustrations of his orders. He only lived to com- 

 plete three of them. He died in 1725. 



