28 THE ROBERT BROWN MEMORIAL. 



some years ago I saw and read the documents on which it is based, 

 and I fear they no longer exist. 



But it is of the Rev. James Brown's distinguished son Robert 

 that I have to speak to you. After three years at Marischal College, 

 Aberdeen, he proceeded to Edinburgh in 1790, and spent four years 

 studying medicine. Under Professors Walker and Hope he made 

 great progress in Botany. He collected plants in the neighbourhood 

 of Edinburgh, in the Botanic Garden there, and in other places in 

 Scotland. He began at this time the careful examination and 

 description of the plants he found. Two folio manuscript books 

 are preserved in the Botanical Department of the British Museum 

 containing the diagnoses of numerous plants, which he made when 

 a student : these my friend and colleague, Mr. James Britten, 

 picked up on a second-hand book-stall, and presented to the Museum. 

 Soon after his graduation he was appointed assistant- surgeon and 

 subaltern in the regiment of Fife Fencibles, and was for nearly 

 five years stationed with them in the North of Ireland. There is 

 also in the Botanical Department an interesting diary of part of these 

 years : this tells of his wonderful appetite for scientific literature ; 

 the more important memoirs he epitomised. He collected exten- 

 sively, and continued to describe his plants with great minuteness. 

 Towards the close of his stay in Ireland he paid a visit to London, 

 and made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks, from whom he 

 received much kindness. He had free access to the herbarium and 

 library of Sir Joseph, and spent most of his time in London under 

 Sir Joseph's roof. An expedition was organised to survey the 

 coasts of Australia, under Capt. Flinders. Sir Joseph Banks 

 secured that a botanist should accompany the expedition, and on 

 his nomination Robert Brown was appointed. To assist him he 

 had a famous botanical painter (Ferdinand Bauer), a gardener 

 (Peter Good), and a man-servant. They sailed for Australia in the 

 middle of 1801, and returned to England toAvards the end of 1805. 

 He brought with him about 4000 species of plants, three-quarters 

 of which were new to science. Brown carefully studied and to some 

 extent described the plants as he collected them, and the small 

 octavo note-books in which these notes were made were carried 

 about with him secured in rough pockets made of sail-cloth, which 

 are still preserved in the Museum. When his plants were dried, 

 he separated a set of small specimens for more careful study, and 

 as opportunity occurred he carefully described them. This work 

 was completed on his voyage to England, so that when he landed in 

 October, 1805, he not only brought an unprecedented number of 

 new plants, but he had arranged them all in systematic order, and 

 fully described them. 



A few months after his arrival. Brown was appointed Librarian 

 to the Linnean Society. For some years he devoted himself to the 

 elaboration of his work on Australian plants. In 1810 he published 

 the first volume of his Prodromus Flora; NovcE-Hollandiic. He fol- 

 lowed the Jussieuan method in the classification of the plants, and 

 by his sense of the relative value of the different parts of plants for 

 discriminating the genera and species, the exactness of his descrip- 



