INTRODUCTION. 4] 
years ago), having received a curious collection of marine 
plants and corallines, some of them from the Isle of An- 
glesey in North Wales, and others from Dublin, and wish- 
ing to preserve the rarest and most beautifully coloured of 
them, he spread them on paper in water, laying out with 
care their ramifications and fine filaments, according to the 
method of M. Buttner, a celebrated botanist of Berlin, to 
whom, he says, he was indebted for many other very useful 
practices in botany, so that we see that this mode of. pre- 
paring seaweeds, so common now, was new to this country 
a century ago, though from what follows he does not seem 
to have pressed them so as to cause them to adhere to the 
paper, which is now the general practice, but kept them free, 
as some still do, when the weeds are meant for fancy-work. 
After the plants were dried, he fastened them on boards 
covered with white paper, in such a manner as that they 
formed a kind of landscape. His friend Dr. Hales, having 
one day seen his pictures thus formed, was so delighted with 
them, that he wished him to prepare some of a similar kind 
for her Royal Highness the Princess Dowager of Wales, in 
order that the young princesses, her daughters, might amuse 
themselves in trying to imitate them; and that the marine 
paintings might be as perfect as possible, he besought him 
