Morison, full as much as the latter was indebted to Cesalpino, though Tournefort himself was a conscientious investigator. All that is good in Morison is taken from Cesalpino, from whose guidance he wanders in pursuit of natural affinities rather than of characters" (see Smith's Correspondence of Linnaeus, vol. ii. p. 281). If only Morison had frankly assumed the role of the restorer of a method that had been forgotten, instead of posing as its originator, his undoubted merits would have met with their just recognition, and his memory would have been free from any possible reproach.
Before Morison's method of classification could have come into general use, there was a rival system in the field, which was destined to achieve success, and in its course to absorb all that was good in Morison's: this was the system of John Ray.
Ray was born at Black Notley, near Braintree, Essex, on Nov. 29, 1628; so that he was not much junior to Morison. He studied and graduated with such distinction at the University of Cambridge, that he was in due course elected a Fellow of, and appointed a Lecturer in, his College (Trinity). Here he remained until 1662, when he resigned his Fellowship on his refusal to sign the declaration against 'the solemn league and covenant' prescribed by the Act of Uniformity of 1661. After leaving Cambridge he spent some years travelling both in Britain and on the Continent; and eventually settled at his birth-place, Black Notley, where he died on Jan. 17, 1704-5.
During his residence in Cambridge, Ray devoted much of his time to the study of natural history, a study which afterwards became his chief occupation. The first fruit of his labours in this direction was the Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium, published in 1660, followed in due course by many works, for he was a prolific author, botanical and zoological as well as theological and literary, of which only those can be considered at present which contributed materially to the development of systematic botany.
The first such work of Ray's was his contribution of the Tables of Plants to Dr John Wilkins's Real Character and a Philosophical Language, published in 1669, which has already been mentioned in the course of this lecture (p. 21). The following
