460 TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE [Sess. LX. 



like one of those landmarks, a church spire or a castle, 

 which remain visible after the meaner buildings of the 

 surrounding town have sunk in the distance. 



Such landmarks are the guides of men ; and I wish that 

 our younger writers would hold them as such. In the 

 classics it is customary before writing a composition of 

 Latin prose, to read a few pages of Cicero, Livy, or Tacitus ; 

 before writing elegiacs, to read Ovid ; before hexameters, 

 Virgil ; and by such exercises classical scholars induce, as 

 far as may be, a feeling for the best style of composition. 

 How many botanists, before they rashly liasten into print, 

 consult those models which a writer like Brown provides 

 for them ? Instead of this they will post themselves up 

 with the latest, often trivial details of their text, presented 

 it may be in the formless inaugural dissertation of a man 

 of little more experience than themselves ; and will absorb 

 almost unconsciously his heavy style, and ill- balanced 

 estimate of the relative value of facts. I would earnestly 

 advise any young writer to study the collected papers of 

 Brown, as models of clearness (the very foundation of 

 style) and of brevity, which is nowhere more truly the 

 soul of wit than in scientific writing. Lastly, his trans- 

 parent honesty of purpose should be a lesson to us all : he 

 did not write to make or maintain a reputation, but he made 

 a reputation because he had knowledge of value to his fellow- 

 men to write down, and this he did with brevity and clearness. 



A peculiar feature of his writings is how he leads his 

 readers on from an apparently trivial point to the discussion 

 of matters of the widest possible bearing, thus from the 

 investigation of Kingia,^ he leads us to his far-reaching 

 study and comparison of the ovules of phanerogams and 

 gymnosperms. His examination of pollen grains and their 

 contents leads to his description of the " Brownian move- 

 ments." His investigations on the fecundation of orchids, 

 leads to the recognition of the nucleus as a frequent, per- 

 haps even constant feature in the vegetable cell. These 

 are all object lessons in research ; they show how the strong 

 mind, pursuing a legitimate channel of observation, is not 

 merely directed passively by it, but of its own motion 

 widens and deepens the channel till it emerges into the 

 vast sea of general interest. 



