182 
The Life and Work of John Ray, and 
seem to have hindered his work; for his unceasing industry 
and marvellous productiveness are not the least proofs of the 
genius of this great man. 
Not till 1682 have we any other work from his pen; but 
to that year belongs the first edition of the ‘ Methodus 
Plantarum nova,’ one of the corner-stones of his philosophical 
fame. It was an expansion of the tables he had drawn up 
for Dr. Wilkins in 1668 ; and in it he describes the true 
nature of buds, speaking of them as annual plants, springing 
from the old stock; and recognises the important division of 
flowering plants into Dicotyledones and Monocotyledones, and 
many of the natural orders, such as Umbellifer®, Stellat®, 
Boraginace®, Labiat®, Pomace®, Crucifer®, Leguminosae, 
Palmaceae, and Conifer®, of which we now make use. Above 
all, basing his system largely upon the fruit, hut also in part 
now upon the flower and now upon the leaf, he made the 
first thorough step towards the establishment of a natural 
system of classification ; and his arrangement (which was 
too far in advance of his time to be much appreciated, and 
was soon temporarily overlooked by the enthusiastic followers 
of the artificial system of Linn® us), in the words of Dr. Lindley, 
“when altered and amended, as it subsequently was by himself 
at a later period, unquestionably formed the basis of that method 
which under the name of the system of Jussieu is universally 
received at the present day.” From a too conservative spirit of 
caution he at this time retained the old division into trees, herbs, 
and shrubs, and made the unfortunate mistake of denying the 
existence of buds on herbaceous plants; but while in the 
second edition, in 1708, he reduced these divisions into the 
two of woody and herbaceous plants, he only retained these 
out of deference to established usage. He acknowledges his 
indebtedness to C®salpinus, who preceded him by a century, 
and whom he styles the “ parent of system ”; hut, if 
C®salpinus was the Wiclif of this Reformation, Bay was 
its Luther. 
In 1685 he was able, mainly by the help of his friend Mr. 
Dent, to issue a small appendix to his Cambridge Catalogue; 
but the death in 1683 of his fellow-student of system, Robert 
