CUVIER AND A. D. THOUARS. 



101 



four petals from the Cingfoil, which has five. He makes 

 the same observation with respect to fruits, which are 

 employed to distinguish, by the number of their locula- 

 ments, the secondary divisions in the system of Kivinus ; 

 but it is with the greatest respect for his adversary that he 

 expresses his opinion : " Rivini equidem opus vehementer 

 laudo/' is the expression he uses. Rivinus replied in the 

 same tone, and in the letter which he addressed to Ray 

 on this subject, he acknowledged him to be the most 

 skilful botanist that had ever existed : " Et botanicorum 

 quotquot fuerunt facile principem noveram." He com- 

 mences his reply by defending himself against the charge 

 of confounding the two classes of plants, and he not un- 

 frequently strengthens his arguments by the words of Ray 

 himself ; and as regards the separation of plants, founded 

 solely on the number of their petals, or of the loculaments 

 of their fruits, he answers, as Linnaeus afterwards did, 

 and whose precursor he was, that his object was simply 

 to afford a method by which plants might be easily known. 

 This letter of Rivinus was printed at Leipsic in 1694. 

 Ray's reply to it appeared under the title of ' Joannis 

 Raii Responsoria,' in 1696. It preserves the same re- 

 spectful tone as the former, and contains a great many 

 interesting observations ; but, although Ray is occasion- 

 ally right in the details, yet, in spite of the subtlety of 

 his reasoning, he is unable to destroy the solidity of his 

 adversary's principles. In a postscript he refers to the 

 ' Elements of Botany' of Tournefort, which had then just 

 appeared, and he does so for the purpose of defending 

 himself; for he says, that " beginning to tm"n over the 

 pages carelessly he frequently saw himself quoted, and 

 always to be blamed," and this chiefly because he had 

 added to his generic characters particulars which were 

 not necessary and to which he replies by asserting, that 



* The fact is that Tournefort, having endeavoured to show that the 

 generic characters should be taken from the parts of fructification only, says, 

 whenever the opportunity offers, and after giving his own characters, " Thus 

 Mr. Hay is wrong in adding such a 'particular''' For example, under the 

 genus Mandragora, he says, " that it is not essential to this genus that its 



