coveries of Caesalpinus have escaped all observation, whilst everything has stupidly been ascribed to Ray" (Smith's Correspondence of Linnaeus, ii. p. 280—1). This rather severe criticism does not, however, seem to have prejudiced Haller against Ray, for in the former's well-known Bibliotheca Botanica (vol. i. p. 500, 1771), in speaking of the rapid progress of Botany in the latter part of the seventeenth century, he adds—"Multa pars horum incrementorum debetur Johanni Ray. Vir pius et modestus, V. D. M. maximus ab hominum memoria botanicus, ea felicitate usus est, ut totos quinquaginta annos dilecto studio ei licuerit impendere.;"
Ray's system also became more popular than that of Morison, and was in general use in England until the latter half of the eighteenth century, when it was gradually superseded by the Linnean method which was first applied to English botany in Dr J. Hill's Flora Britannica (1760).
Ray was never engaged in teaching any branch of natural history. Had there been, in his day, a Chair of Botany in the University of Cambridge, he would, no doubt, have occupied it: however, the professorship was not established until 1724, twenty years after his death. He might very well have been chosen to succeed Morison at Oxford: but, for some unstated reason, the professorship there was kept in abeyance for nearly forty years after the death of Morison.
As has been explained, Morison and Ray revived the forgotten labours of Cesalpino. The immediate result of the publication of their systems was to stimulate their colleagues on the continent of Europe to a noble emulation: there was scarcely a botanist of note who did not elaborate a system of his own. After suffering from too little work in the direction of classification, botany now began to suffer from too much: one after the other, system followed system in rapid succession. Those, for instance, of Christopher Knaut (1687), Paul Hermann (1690), Boerhaave (1710), Rivinus (1690—1711), Ruppius (1718), Christian Knaut (1716); and, in France, of Tournefort (1694, 1700), and of Magnol (1720). Then came the Methodus Sexualis of Linnaeus (Systema Naturae, 1735). The effect of the general adoption of Linnaeus' most useful but artificial method was the
