Page:London Journal of Botany, Volume 2 (1843).djvu/110

 not favourable circumstances occurred which opened to him a sphere in which he might show all that he could do. It was in 1784 that Dr. John Sibthorp of Oxford arrived in Vienna, with the view of examining the unique manuscripts of Dioscorides in the Imperial Library. Having been introduced by Nicholas Jacquin to Pater Boccius, Dr. Sibthorp first met Bauer at Feldsperg, and the former was so much pleased with the young artist's performances, that he engaged him as a Natural History painter, to accompany him on a voyage which he then was about to undertake in Greece. They accordingly started the same year, proceeding through Italy to Constantinople where they spent the winter, and devoted the time to 1787, to visiting Athens, Corinth, the Greek Islands, and Cyprus; Bauer delineating both plants and landscapes. On their return to England, it was highly gratifying to Bauer to find his brother Francis settled as botanical painter to His Britannic Majesty, King George III., at Kew; and he now devoted the chief part of his time to finishing the drawings made for Dr. Sibthorp's Flora Græca; both brothers being also patronized by the late Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., who always remained their steady and kind friend. Dr. Sibthorp having died, Sir James Edward Smith published, in the year 1806, the first volume of the Flora Græca, mentioning in his preface the merits of our friend in a most honourable manner. But Bauer possessed too discerning and unprejudiced a mind, not to perceive that he could never attain any eminence by merely copying plants even with the most mechanical accuracy; and it was, most probably, during his travels with Dr. Sibthorp, that he had devoted himself to the true study of Botany as a science, since several of the plants, for instance Veronica glauca, Ziziphora capitata, and Salvia crassifolia, are mentioned as discoveries of his and especially in the Isle of Cyprus he appears to have been eminently diligent and successful. Knowing as I do also, on the other hand, that, even in an advanced period of life, Bauer made