186 The Life and Work of John Ray, and
James Petiver; since, during his long life, our Essex naturalist
had been but little in the metropolis, or the country ad-
joining it.
Between the publication of his 'Catalogus' in 1670 and
that of the 'Synopsis' in 1690, 250 species had been added
to the 1050 recorded species of the English flora; but in the
following six years, 1690-1696, the accessions had been even
more numerous, so that the second edition of this standard
work, which appeared in the latter year, was considerably
augmented, containing 1600 species. It had also an im-
portant letter from Rivinus, with Ray's answer thereto,
replying to the criticisms of Tournefort, appended to it, and,
containing a vastly more complete list of Cryptogamic plants,
it marks in an emphatic manner the far greater progress
which Botany, thanks to Ray's labours, had made in England
during thirty years than in other countries. At the same
time as this second edition of the 'Synopsis' he issued a
short Dissertation on various classifications of Plants, pre-
paratorily to the revision of his 'Methodus,' which he com-
pleted by 1698. In this work he regrets his inability to visit
London herbaria or botanic gardens, owing to his increasing
infirmities ; but he not only appends an important classifica-
tion of grasses, sedges, and rushes to the work of 1682, but
also improves it in various other ways, as, for instance, in
abolishing the separation between trees and shrubs. This
work was, however, refused by the London publishers, and
was ultimately printed in 1703 at Leyden, under the super-
vision of his friend Dr. Hotton, Professor at that University,
though the printers, contrary to Ray's directions, fraudulently
put London upon the title-page.
Being now 73 years of age, and kept ever mindful of his
end by painful diseases, this truly pious man devoted part of
his time and fast-failing health, which prevented his walking
beyond the limit of his own garden, to the preparation of a small
devotional volume, 'A Persuasive to a Holy Life,' which was
published in 1700 ; but, as his life was prolonged, idleness con-
tinued impossible to him, and, sixteen years having elapsed
since the publication of the second volume of the 'Historia,'