66 



HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



in 1705, in the 77th year of his age, after having acquired great cele- 

 brity. 



Li N N ^ u s gave a still more unfavourable opinion of him. He draws 

 his chara6ter in the above mentioned letter as follows: Ray cer- 

 " tainly was a most laborious man in colleftions and descriptions; but 

 " in that branch of botanical knowledge which relates to the genera of 

 " plants, he was less than nothing; and in the examination of flowers a 

 " mere nonentity. Compare the first edition of his botanical system 



with the second and third. Every thing it contains he borrowed from 

 " TouRNEFORT. I am at a loss to divine why nobody takes notice of 

 " the discoveries of C^salpinus, and wishes to ascribe every thing 

 *' to Ray *. Both Morison and Ray derived their botanical systems 

 " from the fruit of plants." 



To these authors of systems maybe added Augustus Rivin, a 

 Saxon, professor of botany at Leifzick, where he died in 1723, in the 

 seventy-first year of his age. He classified the plants by the number 

 of their petals or the leaves of their flowers, and divided them into 

 eighteen classes — a division subje8; to many material defeftst. 



thodica Stirfium Britanmcorumy London, 1690, Historia Plantarum Generalis, London, 

 1693. 



* Certe vir laboriosissimus in coUigendo, describendo, &c. at in generhis minus nihilo, in 

 examinandis floribus plane nulliis. Quasso, confer ejus primam editionem Methodi cum se- 

 cunda et tertia, ubi a Tournefortio edoftus fuit omnia. Nesclo cur nuUus C^esalpini 

 observare potuit inventa. — See a full opinion on the merits of Ray in Dr. Rich. Pulte- 

 ney's Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progress of Botany in England, from its 

 origin to the introduftion of the Linn^an system. Vol. i, London, 1790, o6T:avo. 



•}■ His principal botanical writings are — IntroduBio Generalis in retn Herbariam. Lip. 

 1690. Ordines Plantarum Irregularium Flore Monopetalo, Tetrapetalo et Pentapeialo. 

 Lips, 1690. 



1 Thus 



