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not for systematic classification ? The two great pioneers in 
this work are John Ray and Robert Morison. Their relative 
merit has been the subject of some discussion. Both began to 
work out a system about the same time. Ray gave an outline 
of his classification in 1668, in the tables in Bishop Wilkins’s 
Real or Universal Character. Morison’s first ideas are embodied 
in his work Hortus Blesensis, 1669, and further developed in 
his Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distribute, 1672, and his 
History of Plants , 1 1680. Ray’s complete system, shown in his 
Methodus Plantarum, did not appear until two years later, his 
Synopsis in 1690, and the revised Methodus in 1703. Morison 
professes to have worked out the system entirely from Nature, 
but Ray, with perhaps more honesty, owns his indebtedness to 
Csesalpinus and other foreign writers, and even to Morison. 
It was Ray who first separated the Monocotyledons from 
Dicotyledons, and thus laid the basis of the “ Natural System ” 
now universally followed. Ray (1628-1705) was the son of a 
blacksmith near Braintree, in Essex ; he was educated at the 
Grammar School there, and in 1644 went to Cambridge, where 
he soon showed his love of natural history, and especially of 
Botany, and published his catalogue of plants round Cambridge 
in 1660. He travelled much about England, and also spent 
three years abroad with his friend, also a naturalist, Francis 
Willoughby. In 1667 he was made a Fellow of the Royal 
Society, and contributed many writings to their Trans¬ 
actions. He settled near his native place in 1679, and there 
passed the remainder of his life in study, and the production of 
his great works on Natural History and Botany. Morison 
(1620-1683) was a native of Aberdeen. Being a staunch 
Royalist, when the war broke out he joined the army, and on 
the failure of the King’s cause went to France. There he 
studied, and became so distinguished a botanist that he was 
appointed Curator of the fine gardens of the Duke of Orleans at 
Blois in 1650. Charle$ II. invited Morison to return to 
England, and gave him £200 a year and the title of Royal 
Professor of Botany and Superintendent of the Royal Gardens. 2 
1 Plantarum Historice Universalis Oxoniensis, Pars Secunda. The 
first part was never published. 1680. 
2 Pulteney’s Sketches, 1790. 
