i io ROBERT BROWN 



the extraordinary ardour and ability with which he prosecuted 

 his investigations will always occupy a high position in the 

 history of Botany. 



Robert Brown came of a stock which refused to bow the knee 

 to authority, though his forbears did not, any more than himself, 

 hesitate to impress the weight of it on others. His father was a 

 non-juring clergyman of Montrose,and was in consequence obliged 

 to leave the official ecclesiastical fold. But he carried a congre- 

 gation with him, and not desiring to set up novel forms of church 

 government, managed to get himself consecrated bishop of the 

 new flock. As bishop, priest and deacon, tres in imo juncti, he 

 ministered to his Edinburgh church, and his episcopal staff may 

 still be seen in the rooms of the Linnean Society. His son 

 Robert, who was born in 1773, inherited both his father's inde- 

 pendence and also his dominant character. And, indeed, the 

 great influence he wielded in the botanical world was due in no 

 small degree to his strong personality, reinforced as it was by his 

 high scientific attainments. 



He began at an early age to evince a love of botany and to 

 give proof of the strong critical faculty which enabled him so 

 successfully to solve the problems he attacked, and so materially 

 to advance our science. He added to his mental attainments a 

 wonderfully methodical habit, and the diary of his earlier years 

 reveals him to us not only as a hard-working student but as one 

 meticulously accurate in detail. 



In 1795 ne was appointed Surgeon mate to the Fifeshire 

 Regiment of Fencibles, and his letter of appointment signed by 

 the Colonel, James Durham, is preserved in the Natural History 

 Museum. His regiment was quartered in Ireland, and he made 

 good use of his time, collecting all the plants he could get hold 

 of, including mosses and liverworts, of which he amassed a con- 

 siderable collection. Indeed, it is said that he owed his first 

 acquaintance with Sir Joseph Banks to his discovery in Ireland 

 of the rare moss Glyphomitrium Daviesii. This recognition by 

 Sir Joseph proved the turning-point of his life. The six years 

 or so that he spent in the Fencibles were turned to good ac- 

 count, and in looking to his own record of his life during those 

 years one realises how thoroughly he earned the success that 



