396 Obituary :—Sir J. E. Smith. 



The Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany has also 

 been a most successful publication, having passed through five editions. 

 It is indebted for its popularity to a happy method which the author 

 has of communicating knowledge, to the good taste he every where 

 displays, and to that just mixture of the utile with the duke, which he 

 knew so well how to apportion. 



In 1810 appeared his Tour to Hafod, the seat of his old and ac- 

 complished friend Thomas Johnes, Esq. 



In 1814 he received the honour of knighthood from the hands of 

 his present Majesty, on the occasion of his Majesty consenting to 

 become the patron of the Linnaean Society, and granting them a 

 charter. 



About 1818 the Professor of Botany at Cambridge encouraged the 

 President to offer himself for the Professorship of that University. 

 He obtained the countenance of many of the heads of houses, but 

 unfortunately it terminated in a controversy on his religious opinions, 

 which he could not, and never would, compromise. It produced two 

 small tracts from his pen, which at least show that he was not dis- 

 qualified by the absence of the most charitable spirit. 



In 1812 his Grammar of Botany appeared -, and in the same 

 year, a " Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and other Na- 

 turalists." 



During a large portion of his literary life, he was in the habit of 

 writing articles for Dr. Rees's Cyclopcedia on different subjects in 

 botany and biography connected with it. Many of these biographical 

 memoirs are choice morsels of original information ; and we need 

 only refer to the words Curtis, Linnaeus, Hudson, and Sibthorpe, in 

 justification of our assertion. Most of his articles will be found marked 

 with the letter S, it being his undeviating rule never to publish any 

 thing on anonymous authority in science. Even some Reviews which 

 he had written early in life, he afterwards avowed by republishing them 

 in his " Tracts." 



The second volume of the Supplement to the Encydopcedia Britan- 

 nica is indebted to our author's pen for a Review of the Modern State 

 of Botany, an article which supplies some deficiencies in his Introduc- 

 tion, though chiefly an abridgement of the Prcelectiones of Linnaeus, 

 as published by Giseke. 



During the whole of his literary career he occasionally contributed 

 papers to the Linnaean Transactions. — But the last and best work of 

 the distinguished President is the " English Flora," consisting of four 

 volumes octavo, and describing the phaenogamous plants and Ferns of 

 Great Britain, though its title might imply a more limited range. Finis 

 coronat opus. There is no Flora of any nation so complete in flowering 

 species, and none of any country in which more accuracy and judge- 

 ment are displayed. If any person should in future contemplate a 

 work of this kind, — whatever the originality of his information, what- 

 ever the novelty of his subject,— let him imitate this illustrious author 

 in careful remark, in taking nothing upon trust, in tracing every syn- 

 onym to its source, and lastly in arranging his matter in such a 

 manrfer, by the aid of different types, as shall render it easy of refer- 

 ence, 



