VI 
PREFACE. 
parasites, pot-herbs and forest trees, and corn-plants ; Dioscorides, aro- 
matics and gum-bearing plants, eatable vegetables and corn-herbs ; and 
the successors, imitators, and copiers of those writers, retained the same 
kind of arrangement for many ages. 
At last, in 15^0, a Fleming, of the name of Lobel, improved the 
vulgar modes of distinction, by taking into account characters of a more 
definite nature than those which had been employed by his predecessors ; 
and thus laid the foundation of the modern mode of studying vegeta- 
tion. To this author succeeded many others, who, while they disagreed 
upon the value to be ascribed to the small number of modifications of 
structure with which they were acquainted, adhered to the ancient 
plan of making their classification coincide with natural affinities. 
Among them the most distinguished were Caesalpinus, an Itahan, who 
published in 1583, the celebrated Tournefort, and especially our coun- 
tryman, John Ray, who WTote in the end of the seventeentli century. 
The latter added so much to the knowledge of his predecessors, and 
had so clear and philosophical a conception of the true principles of 
classification, as to have left behind him in his Historia plantar uni the 
real foundation of all those modern views which, having been again 
brought forward, at a more favourable time, by Jussieu, are generally 
ascribed exclusively to that most learned botanist and his successors. 
Ray, however, laboured under the great disadvantage of being too far 
in advance of his contemporaries, who were unable to appreciate 
the importance of his views or the justness of his opinions ; and, who 
therefore, instead of occupying themselves with the improvement of his 
system, set themselves to work to discover some artificial method of ar- 
rangement, which should be to Botany what the alphabet is to language, 
a key by which the details of the science might be readily ascertained. 
With this in view, Ri\'inus invented, in 1690, a system depending upon 
the formation of the corolla ; Kamel, in 1693, upon the fruit alone; Mag- 
nol, in 1720, on the calyx and corolla; and finally, Linnseus, in 
on variations in the sexual organs. The method of the last author has 
enjoyed a degree of celebrity which has rarely fallen to the lot of human 
contrivances, chiefly on account of its clearness and simplicity ; and in 
its day it undoubtedly effected its full proportion of good. Its author 
however, probably intended it as a mere substitute for the Natural 
System, for w hich he found the world in his day unprepared, to be re- 
linquished as soon as the principles of the latter could be settled ; as, 
indeed, is obvious from his writings, in which he calls the Natural 
