Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/94

 four classes founded on quite petty and unimportant differences. Finally, if Ray recognised the general importance to the system of the leaf-formation in the embryo, he was still far from strictly separating all Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons.

Ray's chief merit is that he to some extent recognised natural affinities in their broader features; the systematic separation of the smaller groups was but little advanced by him. He too, like Morison, found two adherents in Germany in the persons of Christopher Knaut (1638-1694), who published a flora of Halle in 1687 arranged after Ray's method, and Christian Schellhammer (1649-1716), professor at Helmstadt and afterwards at Jena.

(1652-1725) was for Germany what Morison and Ray were for England, and Tournefort for France. From the year 1691 he was Professor of botany, physiology, materia medica, and chemistry in Leipsic; he applied himself with such ardour to astronomy that he injured his eyesight by observing spots in the sun. With such a variety of occupations it is not surprising that his special knowledge of plants was inconsiderable when compared with that of the three just named; but he was better able than they to appreciate the principles of morphology laid down by Jung, and to use them for deciding questions of systematic botany. He did most service by his severe strictures on the more prominent errors which botanists up to his time had persisted in, his own positive contributions, at least as far as the recognition of affinities is concerned, being inconsiderable. His 'Introductio universalis in rem herbariam,' which appeared in 1690, and contains 39 pages of the largest size, is the most interesting for us; in