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 36 cotyledons (as Malpighi first called them), those of others only one, a fact which came to be of great systematic importance.

The classification of the Methodus Nova was maintained by Ray in his Historia Plantarum (t. i, 1686), as well as in both the first (1690) and second (1696) editions of his Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum, somewhat improved and more compact in form. His ultimate views were expressed in the Methodus Plantarum emendata et aucta, published in 1703 not long before his death. In many respects this final form of his system is a great improvement upon that of 1682; more especially in the adoption of the number of the seed-leaves as a systematic character. Ray, it is true, limited the application of this character to herbaceous plants, as he had not brought himself to give up the old categories of Herbs, Shrubs and Trees: nevertheless, he founded in this work the groups of Dicotyledones and Monocotyledones which persist, though materially altered as to their content, to the present day.

Ray's Methodus Emendata et Aucta, 1703.
 * . Flore Destitutae.