Plants, publiHi'd a few Years before, to have been very curious iti 
Flowers, could not have been without it. 
Dr. Moriforiy and Mr. Ray y the next Authors in order of 
time who have mentioned the Guernfay Liliyy have both fatisfied 
themfelves with barely copying Cornutus. One would have thought 
that fo extraordinary a Plant, brought into England in fo extraordi- 
nary a Manner, as (hajl be related in another Place, and thus as it 
were by chance made Englijhy might have been thought worthy of 
a more particular Notice, by thefe two great Englijh Botaniiks. But 
it is not in this inftance only, that they appear to have been fo wholly 
taken up, in ranking of Plants into fevcral Clafles, in dividing and 
fubdividing them into innumerable Genera and Species, in inventing 
and improving the various Methods j that they could not allow them- 
felves the time to examine any Plant which had been any how De- 
feribed before them, even the moft Curious and Remarkable, with 
all the accuracy they deferv*d. 
Thus far therefore it is certain, that properly fpeaking, there has 
been but one Defeription ever given of the Guernfay Lilly s neither 
lhall we meet with any more, if we look down from Mr. Ray, all 
the way to our own Times, 
The great Tournefort, and incomparable Boerhaave have indeed 
told us, what Genus, Sedion, Clafs, and Order, this Plant ought to 
be ranked under ; but as their Dcfign is only to give us a methodical 
Index, or Catalogue of Plants, and a fummary View of the feveral 
Genera's of them, we are not to expert from them particular Deferip- 
tions. The firft makes the Narcijfus Japonicus of Cornutus belong 
to the Clajjls of Plants, Flore Liliaceo, to that Sedion of thefe, 
which are Flore Liliaceo ex petalis Sex compofito, cujus Calix abit 
in fru6lum, and laftly to the Genus of the Lilio Narciffi. 
Dr. Boerhaave ranks it under the F^lanta monocotyledones foliis 
Seminalibiis Carentes, BraLleata to the fourth Order of thefe, 
which titeflore hexapetalo Ovarium complex o, and to the 
tijjl as the Genus : For all the reft, both thefe Authors referr us 
to Cornutus, 
Kempferus has ranked it under that Clafs of fapan Flants, which 
are remarkable for the Beauty of their Flowers, but he contents him- 
felf with giving us the Names it goes by in that Country ; and ob- 
ferving that it is the Narcijfus Japonicus of Cornutus, to whom he 
referrs for its Defeription, without fo much as intimating the leaft 
Sufpicion that thefe two Plants were not the fame. 
What Mcllicurs Liger, and Bradley, the only two remaining Au« 
thors who have fo much as mentioned the Guernfay Lilly, have faid 
about it, relates chiefly to the Method of cultivating it to the beft 
Advantage, 
