| ROBERT MORISON 1620–1683 |
AND | JOHN RAY 1627–1705 |
Early systems of classification—Theophrastus—the Herbalists—Cesalpino's De Plantis—Caspar Bauhin's Pinax Theatri Botanici—Morison—narrative—Botany at Oxford—the garden established—Jacob Bobart the elder—Morison's Historia Plantarum—completion by the younger Bobart—personal characteristics—Morison's works—the Praeludia—the Hallucinationes—the Dialogus—principles of method in his Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio Nova—posthumous publication of System—indebtedness to Cesalpino—Linnaeus' estimate of Morison—Ray—narrative—first attempt at a System—quarrel with Morison—the Methodus Nova—Dicotyledones and Monocotyledones—Linnaeus' criticisms—later Systems—the French school—Morison and Ray compared.
The literature of Botany can be traced back to a quite respectable antiquity, to the period of Aristotle (B.C. 384—322) who seems to have been the first to write of plants from the truly botanical point of view. Unfortunately, his special treatise on plants—θεωρία περὶ φυτῶν—is lost; and although there are many botanical passages scattered throughout his other writings (which have been collected by Wimmer, Phytologiae Aristotelicae Fragmenta, 1836), yet none of them gives any indication of what his ideas of classification may have been. An echo of them is perhaps to be found in the works of his favourite pupil, Theophrastus Eresius (B.C. 371—286), who among all his fellows was the most successful in pursuing the botanical studies that they had begun under the guidance of the master. Theophrastus left behind him two important, though incomplete, treatises on plants, the oldest that have survived: the more familiar Latin titles of which are De Historia Plantarum and De Causis
