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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 Umbelliferae, Stellate,
Boraginaceae, Labiate, Pomaceae, Cruciferae, Leguminosae,
Palmaceae, and Coniferae, of which we now make use. Above
all, basing his system largely upon the fruit, but 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 tho artificial system of Linnaeus), 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 1703, 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 Caesalpinus, who preceded him by a century,
and whom he styles the "parent of system"; but, if
Caesalpinus was the Wiclif of this Reformation, Ray 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