HOrJKIiT niiOAVN A>1) THK ' MONTH LV :MAaAZIM:' 179 



wliicli were i)as.setl in some Review (prohahlv the ' Moiitlily ' or 

 perhaps the 'Edinburgh') upon tlie Latinity of the published portion 

 of the FrodroiiiKs, and tliat he took these so much to heart that he 

 would not complete the publication of the book." At an earlier date, 

 on the occasion of the unveiling of the bust of Brown in his native 

 town, Montrose, on Oct. 18, 1895, Mr. Carruthers made a somewhat 

 fuller statement of the position, as follows : 



*' [Brown] was painfully careful for accuracy in all his work. It 

 was pointed out by a reviewer, who knew more of the language than 

 the substance of the work, that some inaccuracies in the Latinitv 

 wei-e to be found in the volume. This led Brown to withdraw the 

 volume after only a very few copies had been sold. He carefully 

 corrected the called-in copies, neatly scraping out and correcting the 

 very trilling errors. Henceforth copies of the Frodronius could be 

 had only as a gift from the author ; but in Germany two reprints 

 were issued to meet the foreign demand for the work. The manu- 

 script of this great work and of the portion never published are 

 preserved in the Library of the Botanical Department." (See Journ. 

 Bot. 1906, 29.) 



With regard to the above, it will be seen from what follows that 

 the estimate of the (then unknown) reviewer is hardly accurate : the 

 copy of the Frodromus in the Department has been corrected bv 

 Brown as indicated. 



In a paper on the Prodromus published in this Journal for 1907 

 (pp. 246-8) it is pointed out that Martins, in his eloge of Brown, 

 adopted the traditional view, and detinitely attributed the criticism to 

 a writer in the Edinburgh Review. A variant of the tradition attri- 

 butes the supposed criticism to Smith : Dr. Day don Jackson tells me 

 that Dr. Alexander Prior once said in his hearing that " Smith, who 

 could not touch [Brown] in botany, Avas able to criticize him in his 

 Latin." Henfrey, in his translation of the eloge in Ann. Mag. Nat. 

 Hist. 3 s. iii, 321-31, adds a footnote in which, while admitting that 

 the statement adopted by Martins was "frequently made during 

 Mr. Brown's life and vouched for by high authoi'ity," he says he had 

 "reason to believe " it was "founded in error," but does not indicate 

 his reason : it was probably that indicated by Francis Buchanan — 

 that the book " would not sell in London, and [Brown] was so 

 mortified that I believe he will publish no more." For details con- 

 nected with these statements and for infoi-mation as to the printing 

 and circulation of the Prodromus, reference must be made to the 

 article in this Journal from which they are cited. "In order to set 

 the matter at rest, so far as the supposed criticism went," Dr. Jackson 

 " examined not only the Edinhurgli but the other reviews of the 

 period, and found no notice of the Prodromus in an}' of them" 

 (/. c. 2-17). 



The clue, however, is supplied, and the authenticity of the gene- 

 rail}^ accepted tradition vindicated, if to the word " Magazine," in 

 Mr. Carruthers's statement quoted above, the word " Monthly " be 

 prefixed; for it is in the Monthly Magazine that we find the review 

 which is doubtless that indicated by the tradition, and, indeed, so far 

 as Dr. Jackson and I are aware, is the onlv cf)ntcmporarv notice of 



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