48 
MEMOIR OF RAY. 
This method, like the former, is in a considerable 
degree founded on the fruit, but the other parts 
are adopted without hesitation whenever they afford 
strongly marked characters of distinction. One of 
its principal merits consists in assigning a distinct 
class to the palms, which had scarcely been recog- 
nised in any previous system. The arrangement of 
the other trees, according to the nature of the fruc- 
tification, which was the most defective part of the 
first method, is also deserving of high commenda- 
tion. “ But the chief glory of Ray’s second method,” 
says the Rev. Mr Wood, 66 arises from its taking the 
lead in distributing plants according to the number 
of their cotyledons. This, indeed, no one would 
suspect from the tabular view of it, as it stands in 
Philosophia Botanica ; nor does it appear in Ray’s 
own table of contents, which Linnaeus has very 
carelessly transcribed and unwarrantably abridged. 
But the distinction is clearly pointed out and ex- 
plained in the w r ork itself, into which one would 
think that Linnaeus had never looked. “ Floriferas 
divideinus,” is the perspicuous language of Ray, 
“ in dicotyledones , quarum semina sata binis foliis 
anomalis seminalibus dictis, quae cotyledonum usum 
praestant, e terra exeunt, vel in binas saltern lobos 
dividuntur, quamvis eos supra terram foliorum spe- 
cie non efferant ; et monocotyledones , quae nec folia 
seminalia bina efferunt, nec binos lobos condunt. 
Haec divisio ad arbores etiam extendi potest; si- 
quidem palmae et congeneres hoc respectu eodem 
