284 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
Brown. ‘True, he was fortunate in his time and in his oppor- 
tunities. Men of great genius, happily, often are, or appear 
to be, through their power of turning opportunities to good 
account. The whole herbaria of Sir Joseph Banks and the 
great collections which he himself made around the coast of 
Australia,*in Flinder’s expedition, and which he was able to 
investigate upon the spot in the four years devoted to this ex- 
ploration, opportunely placed in Brown’s able hands as it were 
the vegetation of a new world, as rich as it was peculiar, — 
just at the time, too, when the immortal work of Jussieu had 
begun to be appreciated, and the European and other ordi- 
nary forms of vegetation had begun to be understood in their 
natural relations. The new, various, and singular types which 
render the botany of New Holland so unlike all other, Mr. 
Brown had to compare among themselves, — to unravel their 
intricacies with scarcely a clue to guide him, except that which 
his own genius enabled him to construct in the process of the 
research, — and to bring them harmoniously into the general 
system of botanical natural alliance as then understood, and 
as he was himself enabled to ascertain and display it. It was 
the wonderful sagacity and insight which he evinced in these 
investigations, which, soon after his return from Australia, 
revealed the master mind in botanical science, and erelong 
gave him the position of almost unchallenged eminence, which 
he retained, as if without effort, for more than half a century. 
The common observer must wonder at this general recogni- 
tion, during an era of great names and unequaled activity, of 
a claim so rarely, and as it were so reluctantly, asserted. For 
brief and comparatively few —alas! how much fewer than 
they should have been!—are Mr. Brown’s publications. 
Much the largest of them is the “ Prodromus of the Flora of 
New Holland,” issued fifty years ago, which begins upon the 
one hundred and forty-fifth page, and which stopped short 
at the end of the first volume. The others are special papers, 
mostly of small bulk, devoted to the consideration of a partic- 
ular plant, or a particular group or small collection of plants. 
But their simple titles seldom foreshow the full import of 
their contents. Brown delighted to rise from a special case to 
