1583, he distributed the 1520 plants then known
into fifteen classes, the distinguishing characters being taken from the
fruit.

John Ray (1627-1705) did much to advance the science of botany, and was
also a good zoologist. He promulgated a system which may be considered
as the dawn of the "natural system" of the present day (Ray, _Methodus
Plantarum_, 1682). He separated flowering from flowerless plants, and
divided the former into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. His orders (or
"classes") were founded to some extent on a correct idea of the
affinities of plants, and he far outstripped his contemporaries in his
enlightened views of arrangement.

About the year 1670 Dr Robert Morison[1] (1620-1683), the first
professor of botany at Oxford, published a systematic arrangement of
plants, largely on the lines previously suggested by Caesalpinus. He
divided them into eighteen classes, distinguishing plants according as
they were woody or herbaceous, and taking into account the nature of the
flowers and fruit. In 1690 Rivinus[2] promulgated a classification
founded chiefly on the forms of the flowers. J.P. de Tournefort[3]
(1656-1708), who about the same time took up the subject of vegetable
taxonomy, was long at the head of the French school of botany, and
published a systematic arrangement in 1694-1700. He described about 8000
species of plants, and distributed them into twenty-two classes, chiefly
according to the form of the corolla, distinguishing herbs and
under-shrubs on the one hand from trees and shrubs on the other. The
system of Tournefort was for a long time adopted on the continent, but
was ultimately displaced by that of Carl von Linne, or Linnaeus (q.v.;
1707-1778).

The system of Linnaeus was founded on characters derived from the
stamens and pistils, the so-called sexual organs of the flower, and
hence it is often called the sexual system. It is an artificial method,
because it takes into account only a few marked characters in plants,
and does not propose to unite them by natural affinities. It is an index
to a department of the book of nature, and as such is useful to the
student. It does not aspire to any higher character, and although it
cannot be looked upon as a scientific and natural arrangement, still it
has a certain facility of application which at once commended it. It
does not of itself give the student a view of the true relations of
plants, and by leading to the discovery of the name of a pla