298 Dr. Smith's Biographical Memoirs' 



systematic and physiological turn of mind, was well qualified to' 

 assist Mr. Bryant in the study he had undertaken. Mr. Rose,, 

 however, educated in Scotland, was chiefly acquainted with Ray 

 and Tournefort. The famous Dr. Garden was his fellow-student, 

 who, when settled in America, and engaged in studying the plants 

 of that country by the principles of Tournefort, was, as he him- 

 self told me, very near giving up the study altogether, for want of 

 a more comprehensive system. Fortunately the Avorks of Linnaeus 

 came into his hands, and the use he made of them is well known. 

 Perhaps about the same period our two Norwich botanists first met 

 with the Philosophia Botanka. Both of them have often related 

 to me, with singular pleasure, the impression they received from 

 this book. At first they scarcely knew what opinion to form of 

 it. Mr. Rose was not, I believe, without apprehension of some 

 lurking heresies and unfounded novelties, hostile to the fame of 

 his admired Ray ; but Mr. Bryant, unattached to any previous 

 system, and much attracted by the mathematical precision of the 

 new book, after reading it again and again, became a decided 

 Linneean, in which his friend soon most heartily coincided with' 

 him. They procured as soon as possible all the other principal 

 writings of Linnaeus, as well as the Flora Anglica of Mr. Hudson. 

 Mr. Pitchford, then a student of physic in London, was ac- 

 quainted with this gentleman, and by his mediation a corre- 

 spondence began between Mr. Hudson and Mr. Rose, which 

 lasted as long as the latter lived. Mr. Pitchford in 1769 settled 

 in Norwich, and added much to the strength of its botany. Mr. 

 Rose in 1775 published his Elements of Botany, a translation and 

 epitome of many of the most useful introductory and theoretical 

 writings of Linnaeus. In an appendix to this volume some new 

 British plants, found about Norwich by Mr. Pitchford, Mr. Hum- 

 l'rey, and others, are figured and described. Mr. Rose, like Mr. 



Hudson, 



