THE PRODROMUS 113 



at once set about to utilise the vast resources which were now at 

 his command. 



He contributed to the narrative of The Flinders Expedition 

 an account of the vegetation of New Holland. The essay is 

 a remarkable one, not only for the masterly descriptions of the 

 principal genera and orders which it contains, and the critical 

 remarks which are scattered through the pages, but also for the 

 geographical and statistical methods of treatment which he 

 introduced. Many of the orders are new, and Brown shews 

 his striking perception of affinity not only in his general dis- 

 cussion of the subject as a whole, but also in the definitions of 

 the new orders and genera which he founded. This soundness of 

 judgment is shewn on a still larger scale in his more definitely 

 systematic works such as the Prodromus, but one may regard it 

 generally as an astonishing tribute to his sagacity that very few 

 of the groups founded by him have needed serious revision, 

 even when further discoveries made it possible for later botanists 

 to fill up the lacunae inevitable during those earlier days. 



In the year 1810 there appeared the first volume of his great 

 work, the Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae. It is a misfortune 

 that only one volume was ever published, although the work was 

 advanced in MS. It has been said that a criticism of the author's 

 Latinity at the hands of a reviewer was the cause of the stoppage 

 of the publication, but there seems to be no real foundation for 

 the story. Possibly the expense, coupled with the small return, 

 may at any rate partly account for it. Be this as it may, Brown 

 recalled from his bookseller all the unsold copies, and in the 

 copy preserved at the Natural History Museum there is a list 

 of the volumes actually sold written by Brown himself, and from 

 a financial point of view the enterprise clearly proved itself to 

 be an expensive experiment. The volume as published is 

 a remarkable work, containing some 450 pages, including 

 464 genera, nearly one-third of which are here described for 

 the first time and the number of species amounts to about 

 2000, some three-quarters of which were new to science. Add 

 to this the fact that the flora as a whole is very unlike that of 

 the northern hemisphere, also that the work was accomplished 

 with such amazing rapidity (largely owing to his particular 



o. B. 8 



