238 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS. [May 23, 1859. 



Eobei-t Brown, who was a constant attendant at tlie Ealeigh 

 Club of Travellers, united with Sir John Barrow, Mr. Hobhouse 

 (now Lord Broughton), Mr. Bartholomew Frere, myself, and 

 other members of that club, in drawing out rules and a plan 

 for the establishment of a projected Eoyal Geographical Society. 

 For this purpose we held several meetings as a provisional com- 

 mittee, at all of which Mr. Brown was present. We also printed 

 documents explanatory of our project, which were duly circulated, 

 including the laws which still regulate the Society, and which, on 

 my own proposal, were essentially those of the Geological Society.* 

 As no words of mine can do sufficient justice to the merits of a 

 man whose eulogy has been, or will be, chaunted by all the eminent 

 botanists of the age, I willingly extract some sentences of a letter 

 which I received a few months ago from Baron Humboldt, who, 

 after alluding in feeling terms to the death of his former companion 

 Bonpland, and to the oldest of the three (himself) being left alone, 

 thus speaks of our deceased member : — " The enormous loss of 

 " Eobert Brown is perhaps more deeply felt in Germany and 

 " other countries than in England. It was the protection af- 

 " forded to me as early as 1799 by Sir Joseph Banks which first 

 *' made me acquainted with that Eobert Brown who afterwards 

 *' gave so vast an impulse to the three great objects which must for 

 " ever remain attached to his name — the minute development of 

 ** the relations of organization in natural families, the geography 

 *' of plants, and the estimate of their numerical proportions. The 

 *' physiology of plants, and an elaborate dissection of them, con- 

 *' stituted invariably with him the foundation of all systematic 

 *' botany. In short, Bonpland, Kiinth, and my self had the happiness 

 *' in 1822 thus to dedicate to him our ' Synopsis of the Equinoctial 

 »' Plants of the New World : '— 



"Roberto Brownio 



Britanniarum Glorise atque Ornamento 



Totam Botanices Scientiam 



Ingenio mirifico complectenti." 



These remarkable words, coming from such a source, and consti- 

 tuting an epitaph which should be inscribed on the tomb of the 



* It is here my duty to state that of which I was unaware when the Society was founded, 

 that another individual had early in 1830 not only sketched out the establishment of a Geogra- 

 phical Society like our own, but had enrolled in it many names. That person was my esteemed 

 and distinguished predecessor, Admiral W, H. Smyth, whose services to us were afterwards 

 tested by the skill and zeal with which he administered our affairs ; and who, by giving a new 

 impetus to us when we were in a declining state (1849), was really the renovator of our body. 



