iv evita it PREFACE. 
Mr. Salisbury was a Fellow of the Royal and Linnean Societies, 
and for several years Secretary to the Horticultural Society. He 
wrote several botanical works, and paid particular attention to the 
plants of the garden; but the great desire of his life was to make a 
revision of the natural orders, and to publish a ** Genera Plantarum.” 
For this purpose he examined all the plants that he could procure, 
either in the fresh state or in Herbaria; and of each he prepared an 
elaborate description, written in a very small neat hand, embellished 
with most aceurate and minute figures of all the most important 
organs; and carefully put aside in a cabinet the remains of the speci- 
mens for further resnarah.p or r reezaminstion if necessary. 
M. A. P. Decandolle d lisbury thus. *C'étaitunhomme 
d'esprit vif et d'une pétulance éxtrapedinddis, qui, - le physique 
et le moral, ressemblait plus à un Languedocien qu'à un Anglais." 
I knew little of him except in the Banksian Library; but his cor- 
respondenee shows that he was a warmhearted, kind, and liberal 
friend 
In 1819 when studying botany in the library of Sir Joseph Banks, 
it was my good fortune to make acquaintance, amongst other sci- 
entifie men, with the following botanists, viz. M. A. P. Decandolle, M. 
Dunal, Messrs. Robert Brown, R. A. Salisbury, A. B. Lambert, 
Dawson Turner, L. W. Dillwyn, A. Menzies, James Dickson and 
Dr. John Richardson. They were all most kind to me, who was 
only a lad, and I had the happiness of retaining their friendship 
until their deaths. 
Mr. R. A. Salisbury showed me several of his Monographs, and 
kindly lent me some of his MSS. to assist me in preparing the * Na- 
tural Arrangement of British Plants; and shortly afterwards he 
wrote to me stating that, if I would devote myself to Botany and 
undertake to edit any MSS. that he might leave unprinted at his 
death, he would leave me his library and his fortune. This offer I 
at once declined, as I did not wish to bind my future course in life. 
From M. Decandolle’s * Autobiography’ p. 268, we learn that Mr. 
Salisbury had previously made the same offer to him, with the addi- 
tional eondition that he should assume the name of Salisbury; and 
I understand that he made a somewhat similar offer to another 
botanist; but none of these plans were carried out. * 
Mr. Salisbury beeame aequainted with Mr. Burchell (the florist 
