It has been necessary to go beyond the strict limits of the history of British Botany in order to make it clear to what extent and at what period our two distinguished fellow-countrymen contributed to the development of the natural system of classification. Enough has been said to establish the importance and the opportuneness of their contributions: if Pisa was glorified by the birth of Systematic Botany, and Paris by its adolescence, Oxford and Cambridge were honoured by its renascence. The question concerning the respective merits of Morison and Ray finds perhaps its most satisfactory answer in the words of Linnaeus (_Classes Plantarum_, 1747, p. 65):--"_Quamprimum Morisonus artis fundamentum restaurasset, eidem mox suam superstruxit methodum Rajus, quam dein toties reparavit, usque dum in ultima senectute emendatam et auctam emitteret_": Morison relaid the foundation upon which Ray built. As Linnaeus points out, Ray enjoyed the advantage of a very long period of productive activity: in the thirty-four years that separated his _Tables of Plants_ from his _Methodus Emendata et Aucta_, he had time to revise and remodel his system. Morison, on the contrary, was prevented by unfavourable circumstances from beginning the publication of his Method until late in life, and he was not permitted to see more than a fragment of it issue from the press. It is probable that Ray was more truly a naturalist than was Morison: for in addition to his works on Method, he published not only his _Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium_ (1660), but also a _Catalogus_ of British plants (1670, 2nd ed. 1677), almost the earliest work of the kind, only preceded by William How's _Phytologia Britannica_ (1650), which developed into the first British Flora arranged systematically, the _Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum_ (1690, 2nd ed. 1696). Morison published nothing on field-botany; his volume of the _Historia_ contains, it is true, occasional mention of plants found in or near Oxford, but the finder of them seems always to have been the younger Bobart. Ray included in the _Synopsis_ a list of plants that had been communicated to him by Bobart, with whom he seems to have been intimate, and expressed his indebtedness to Bobart's botanical skill. But whether the palm be bestowed upon the one or the other, the fact remains that both were men of exceptional capacity, and that both did good work for British Botany, raising it to a level which commanded the respect and admiration of the botanical world; from which, as the succeeding lectures of this course will show, it was not allowed to sink. What Linnaeus said of Morison may be applied equally to Ray,--"_Roma certe non uno die, nec ab uno condebatur viro. Ille tamen faces extinctas incendit, a quibus ignem mutuati sunt subsequentes, quibus datum ad lucidum magis focum objecta rimare_" (_Classes Plantarum_, p. 33). NEHEMIAH GREW 1641-1712 BY AGNES ARBER