their relation to the Progress of Science, 183
Morison, Professor of Botany at Oxford, redirected his atten-
tion to an ambitious scheme previously abandoned in his
favour, viz., the preparation of a general History of Plants,
such as the Bauhins had attempted in the preceding genera-
tion. With wonderful rapidity he issued the first folio
volume of this work in 1686, and the second in 1688, each
containing nearly a thousand pages, the entire work being
done without even the help of an amanuensis; and this in
spite of the fact that from about this time for the remainder
of his life he was troubled with most painful ulcers in his legs.
To the first volume he prefixed a list of nearly 100 authorities,
a glossary of terms, and a most comprehensive summary of
all that had been done up to that date in vegetable histology
and physiology, the researches of Grew, Malpighi, and others.
Of this dissertation Cuvier and Dupetit Thouaro write, "We
believe that the best monument that could be erected to the
memory of Ray would be the republication of this part of his
work in a separate form." His habitual caution is evinced by
his only admitting Grew's discovery of the sexuality of plants
as "probable," and the magnitude of the descriptive work
achieved may be gauged from the fact that the two volumes
enumerate about 6900 plants, as against 3500 in John
Bauhin's 'History' of the year 1650. In the preface to the
first volume of his 'Historia' Kay first mentions the assistance
he had received from his neighbour, Samuel Dale, a young
apothecary and physician living at Braintree, who during the
great naturalist's later years occupied towards him much the
same position that Francis Willughby had done fifteen or
twenty years before.
In 1686, moreover, the Royal Society issued Willughby's
'Historia Piscium,' more than half of which was the work of
Ray. Cuvier speaks of these, and of Ray's succeeding
zoological works, as being "yet more important" than his
botanical works, being "the basis of all modem Zoology."
Whilst contemplating a recasting of his 'Catalogue of
English Plants,' now again out of print, into a systematic
form, Ray in 1688 issued a small Fasciculus as an appendix
to it; and in 1690 appeared that 'Synopsis Methodica