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of Morison, and was in general use in England until the latter half of the eighteenth century, when it was gradually superseded by the Linnean method which was first applied to English botany in Dr J. Hill's _Flora Britannica_ (1760).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 temporary arrest almost everywhere, except in France, of the quest of the natural system. Though this was the effect of the introduction of his method, it was not at all the intention of Linnaeus: for in his _Classes Plantarum_ (1738, p. 485) he said, "_Primum et ultimum in parte Systematica Botanices quaesitum est Methodus Naturalis_." On the same page of that work he laid down, in a series of aphorisms, the principles upon which alone the construction of such a method can be successfully attempted; and he gave special emphasis to this one, that the classificatory characters should not be taken from a single structure but from all: "_nec una vel altera pars fructificationis, sed solum simplex symmetria omnium partium_." It was just because they had failed to formulate this principle that the earlier systematists,--whether Fructists, as Cesalpino, Morison, Ray, Knaut and Hermann; or Corollists, as Rivinus