The Tables of Plants does not illustrate any very definite principles. It was a tentative production, written to order: in fact, it appears (as explained in the preface to his Methodus emendata, 1703) that Ray, in writing it, was not free to follow what he really believed to be the order of Nature. It is interesting, however, as being the first systematic work published in England. The classification is based, to some extent, upon the character of the fruit, a principle borrowed, probably not from Morison but directly from Cesalpino. Before long it was superseded by a much more comprehensive and ambitious attempt, the Methodus Plantarum Nova, issued in 1682, two years after Morison's Historia (Pars Secunda).
Ray's Methodus Plantarum Nova, 1682.
De Herbis.
De Arboribus.
| Genus | i. | Pomiferae: Pyrus, Mespilus, Citrus. |
| " | ii. | Pruniferae: Prunus, Cornus, Olea, Palma. |
| " | iii. | Bacciferae: e.g. Myrtus, Laurus, Buxus, Arbutus, Ilex, Juniperus, Taxus. |
| " | iv. | Nuciferae: e.g. Juglans, Corylus, Quercus, Castanea, Fagus. |
| " | v. | Coniferae: Pinus, Cedrus, Abies, Cupressus, Larix, Betula, Alnus. |
| " | vi. | Lanigerae: Platanus, Tamarix, Salix, Populus. |
| " | vii. | Siliquosae: leguminous trees, Syringa. |
| " | viii. | Vasculis seminum membranaceis et Anomalae: Ulmus, Fraxinus, Carpinus, Tilia, Acer. |
De Fruticibus.
| Genus | i. | Bacciferi sempervirentes: e.g. Vaccinium, Ruscus, Hedera, Viscum, Juniperus. |
| " | ii. | " foliis deciduis, non spinosi: e.g. Vitis, Lonicera, Cornus, Sambucus. |
| " | iii. | " foliis deciduis, spinosi: Crataegus sp., Ribes sp., Rosa, Berberis, &c. |
| " | iv. | Seminibus nudis, aut vasculis siccis inclusis: e.g. Vitex, Rhus, Spiraea, Erica. |
| " | v. | Floribus papilionaceis: e.g. Acacia, Genista, Cytisus, Colutea. |
| " | vi. | Suffrutiscentes: a miscellaneous collection of species. |
A comparison between the classification of the Methodus Nova and that of the Tables of Plants shows that whilst he left the Trees and the Shrubs almost unaltered, Ray remodelled his arrangement of the Herbs. Whereas, in the Tables, he had proceeded along three distinct lines of classification indicated by the characters of leaf, flower, and seed-vessel respectively, all regarded as equally important; in the Methodus, the leaf-character is subordinated to those of flower and fruit, and these are not kept distinct but are combined; a fundamental change of principle which is no doubt to be attributed to Morison's criticisms on the Tables. As Ray put it in his Preface: Methodus haec differentias sumit a similitudine et convenientia partium praecipuarum, radicis puta, floris et ejus calicis, seminis ejusque conceptaculi. The result is that many of the sub-divisions consist of groups of plants which are really natural, the precursors of several of the recognized Natural Orders of Phanerogams; such as Polygonaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Compositae, Umbelliferae, Rubiaceae, Boraginaceae, Labiatae, Cucurbitaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Cruciferae, Leguminosae, Gramineae. The principles adopted were capable of yielding even better results, had they been more rigorously applied and had the investigation of the plants been more minute. For instance, in genera xxi and xxii, with a little more attention to floral characters, the Ranunculaceous might have been separated from the Rosaceous genera, and all of them from the Malvaceae: similarly in genera xxvi-xxviii, the Scrophulariaceous, and possibly also the Campanulaceous genera, might have been segregated. One of the principal achievements is the recognition of the group Stellatae (Rubiaceae) as independent of, but related to, the Umbelliferae. For this, as well as other features, Ray was indebted to Cesalpino (conf. [p. 11]), as he acknowledges in his Preface. Nor does Ray fail to acknowledge his obligations to Joachim Jung, and to Morison whose Preludia and Historia he cites.
But if Ray's Methodus Nova owed something to Morison's Historia (Pars secunda), at a later stage the Historia (Pars Tertia) was even more indebted to the Methodus Nova. It is striking to observe how many of the groups constituted in the Pars Tertia and in the Sciagraphia (see [p. 23]) agree with those of Ray. It is this close association, amounting almost to mutual dependence, of the systems of these two botanists, that makes comparative criticism of them an impossibility. Their relative position may, in fact, be summed up in the statement that both of them adopted the principles of Cesalpino, and that Ray eventually proved to be more successful than Morison in their application.