Nov. 1895.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 461 



And, before we consider some of Brown's writings in 

 detail, we may pause to admire the catholicity of his taste. 

 In these days of specialisation, when a man who knows 

 Fungi is probably ignorant of Algit, a man of Pteridophyta 

 is probably weak in physiology, and a systematist may use 

 the microscope only occasionally, and then with low powers; 

 it is a useful corrective to note how large a field Brown 

 covered. A specially expert collector, he, more than any 

 man of his time, knew how to do justice to his collections 

 when made. He had the true classificatory instinct, and it 

 is fortunate that circumstances gave him an unusually wide 

 field for its exercise. Starting, as so many great botanists 

 have done, as a local collector in the district of his birth, 

 his first contribution to the literature of the science was in 

 the field of critical and topographical botany, in a paper on 

 the plants of Forfarshire, his native county ; in this paper 

 is described, perhaps for the first time, Eriophorum alpinuon, 

 L., a plant now virtually extinct in Scotland. But, on the 

 other hand, many of his most important writings were 

 structural and physiological, and they covered the ground 

 from the Gulf weed {Sargassum) and mosses to the angio- 

 sperms. Even fossils were not beyond his sphere of 

 interest, and I can personally testify, from a detailed 

 examination of the classical fossil known as " Brown's 

 cone," how accurate and far-reaching were his observations 

 in this most attractive, though specialised, region of our 

 science. Specialism is doubtless an inevitable evil, which 

 follows as a consequence of the advancement of our science; 

 it was probably easier in Brown's day to avoid it ; but I 

 hope that the botanists of the present may continue to 

 regard it as an evil, against which they must be on their 

 guard ; and not, as some are even beginning to do, glory in 

 specialism, which is at best but a confession of human 

 weakness. 



After these general remarks we may turn to a more 

 detailed consideration of some of Brown's memoirs. But 

 I do not propose to discuss his larger contributions to 

 systematic and geographical botany at any length. Over 

 and above the very numerous additions which he made to 

 the sum of known species, his writings developed in the 

 most practical way the natural system of classification, 



