Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/44

 28 some years ago I saw and read the documents on which it is based, and I fear they no longer exist.

But it is of the Rev. James Brown's distinguished son Robert that I have to speak to you. After three years at Marischal College, Aberdeen, he proceeded to Edinburgh in 1790, and spent four years studying medicine. Under Professors Walker and Hope he made great progress in Botany. He collected plants in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, in the Botanic Garden there, and in other places in Scotland. He began at this time the careful examination and description of the plants he found. Two folio manuscript books are preserved in the Botanical Department of the British Museum containing the diagnoses of numerous plants, which he made when a student: these my friend and colleague, Mr. James Britten, picked up on a second-hand book-stall, and presented to the Museum. Soon after his graduation he was appointed assistant-surgeon and subaltern in the regiment of Fife Fencibles, and was for nearly five years stationed with them in the North of Ireland. There is also in the Botanical Department an interesting diary of part of these years: this tells of his wonderful appetite for scientific literature; the more important memoirs he epitomised. He collected extensively, and continued to describe his plants with great minuteness. Towards the close of his stay in Ireland he paid a visit to London, and made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks, from whom he received much kindness. He had free access to the herbarium and library of Sir Joseph, and spent most of his time in London under Sir Joseph's roof. An expedition was organised to survey the coasts of Australia, under Capt. Flinders. Sir Joseph Banks secured that a botanist should accompany the expedition, and on his nomination Robert Brown was appointed. To assist him he had a famous botanical painter (Ferdinand Bauer), a gardener (Peter Good), and a man-servant. They sailed for Australia in the middle of 1801, and returned to England towards the end of 1805. He brought with him about 4000 species of plants, three-quarters of which were new to science. Brown carefully studied and to some extent described the plants as he collected them, and the small octavo note-books in which these notes were made were carried about with him secured in rough pockets made of sail-cloth, which are still preserved in the Museum. When his plants were dried, he separated a set of small specimens for more careful study, and as opportunity occurred he carefully described them. This work was completed on his voyage to England, so that when he landed in October, 1805, he not only brought an unprecedented number of new plants, but he had arranged them all in systematic order, and fully described them.

A few months after his arrival, Brown was appointed Librarian to the Linnean Society. For some years he devoted himself to the elaboration of his work on Australian plants. In 1810 he published the first volume of his Prodromus Floræ Novæ-Hollandiæ. He followed the Jussieuan method in the classification of the plants, and by his sense of the relative value of the different parts of plants for discriminating the genera and species, the exactness of his