Early systems of classification--Theophrastus--the Herbalists--Cesalpino's _De Plantis_--Caspar Bauhin's _Pinax Theatri Botanici_--MORISON--narrative--Botany at Oxford--the garden established--Jacob Bobart the elder--Morison's _Historia Plantarum_--completion by the younger Bobart--personal characteristics--Morison's works--the _Praeludia_--the _Hallucinationes_--the _Dialogus_--principles of method in his _Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio Nova_--posthumous publication of System--indebtedness to Cesalpino--Linnaeus' estimate of Morison--RAY--narrative--first attempt at a System--quarrel with Morison--the _Methodus Nova_--Dicotyledones and Monocotyledones--Linnaeus' criticisms--later Systems--the French school--Morison and Ray compared. The literature of Botany can be traced back to a quite respectable antiquity, to the period of Aristotle (B.C. 384-322) who seems to have been the first to write of plants from the truly botanical point of view. Unfortunately, his special treatise on plants--θεωρία περὶ φυτῶν [Greek: theôria peri phytôn]--is lost; and although there are many botanical passages scattered throughout his other writings (which have been collected by Wimmer, _Phytologiae Aristotelicae Fragmenta_, 1836), yet none of them gives any indication of what his ideas of classification may have been. An echo of them is perhaps to be found in the works of his favourite pupil, Theophrastus Eresius (B.C. 371-286), who among all his fellows was the most successful in pursuing the botanical studies that they had begun under the guidance of the master. Theophrastus left behind him two important, though incomplete, treatises on plants, the oldest that have survived: the more familiar Latin titles of which are _De Historia Plantarum_ and _De Causis Plantarum_. The latter is essentially physiological, touching upon agriculture to a certain extent: the former is mainly morphological, structural, descriptive, and it is here that the first attempt at a classification of plants is to be found. In writing the _Historia_, Theophrastus was endeavouring, as a Greek philosopher rather than as a botanist, to "give account of" plants; and in order to do so he found it necessary to arrange them in some kind of order. Seizing upon obvious external features, he distinguished (_Lib._ I. _cap_. 5) and defined Tree, Shrub, Undershrub and Herb, giving examples; adding, however, that the definitions are to be accepted and understood as typical and general, "for some may seem perhaps to deviate" from them. Simple as was this mode of arrangement, Theophrastus further simplified it in the course of his work, by treating trees and shrubs as one group, and undershrubs and herbs as the other. [Illustration: _Plate I_ Robert Morison (Robertus Morison) _Quæ Morisone viro potuit contingere major Gloria, Pæonium quam superasse genus? Ipse tibi palmam Phœbus concedit Apollo, Laureaque est capiti quælibit herba tuo._