Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/368

Rh and too sudden to afford the opportunity, if indeed the effort could, under these painful circumstances, have been made, of collecting the materials for a narrative which might render adequate justice to his superior merits as an artist, and to his exemplary character as a man. This tribute to his memory must be reserved for a period when his biographer will be able to review the subject more exten- sively, and with more calm deliberation.

Francis Bauer was born at Feldsberg, in Austria, on the 4th of October, 1758. While yet a boy he lost his father, who held an appointment as painter to Prince Lichtenstein ; so that the care of his education devolved upon his mother. He manifested very early a talent for botanical drawing ; and the first published production of his pencil, at the age of thirteen, was a figure of the Anemone pratensis appended to a work of Stoerck. He came to England in the year 1788, and was about to proceed to Paris ; when, on the eve of his intended departure, he was offered by Sir Joseph Banks the appoint- ment of draughtsman at the Royal Gardens at Kew, a proposal which induced him to relinquish his intentions of leaving England. He took up his residence near those Gardens, and he continued to dwell, during the remainder of his life, in their neighbourhood. The salary of the new office which Mr. Bauer held was defrayed by Sir Joseph Banks during his own life, and its continuance after his decease was provided for by his will.

Mr. Bauer, in fulfilment of his engagement, made numerous drawings and sketches of the plants in the Garden ; and these are now preserved in the British Museum. A selection from his draw- ings was published in 1796, under the title of " Delineations of Ex- otic Plants cultivated in the Royal Gardens at Kew," containing in all thirty plates of different kinds of Heaths. His drawings have also illustrated several papers published in the Linnaean Transac- tions, and particularly those of Mr. Brown. The 13th volume of that work contains a paper by Mr. Bauer on the Ergot of Rye, drawn up from materials collected between the years 1805 and 1809; and the plate which illustrates it is derived from drawings forming part of an extensive series in the British Museum, illus- trating the structure of the grain, the germination, growth and developement of wheat, and the diseases of that and other Cerealia. This admirable series of drawings constitutes perhaps the most splendid and important monument of Mr. Bauer's extraordinary talents as an artist, and of his skill in microscopic investigation. The subject was suggested to him by Sir Joseph Banks, who was engaged in an inquiry into the disease of corn known by the name of blight \ the part of Mr. Bauer's drawings which relates to that disease was published in illustration of Sir Joseph's memoir on the subject, and has been several times reprinted with it. Mr. Bauer himself gave, in the volume of the Philosophical Transactions for 1823, an account of his observations on the Vibrio tritici of Gleichen, with the figures relating to them ; and another small por- tion of his illustrations of the diseases of corn has since been pub-