Notes relating to Botany. 1 99 



(he mammiferae. If we pick out one or two species in each 

 geiuis, and examine them under the point of view which 1 

 have adopted, I am convinced that we njiglu succeed in esta- 

 blishing the laws to which this faculty is subject in the whole 

 class, and in aporeciatini!; the successive degradations which 

 it undergoes, its connexion wilii the senses, and the sup- 

 pleuicniary means which nature furnishes : in a word, we 

 might lay ihe foundation of this interesting branch of na- 

 tural history, which has been hitherto obscured by imagi- 

 nary systems or obscure facts. For my i>art, I am happy 

 iu having had an opj)ortunity of studying the animal which 

 approaches most closely to man. 1 regard this as a point 

 of comparison to which I shall in future refer all the other 

 species of the mammiiera;, if eircumstanees admit of my 

 continuing the inquiries, which I long a^io commenced, into 

 the intellectual characters which distinguish these species 

 frum each other. 



XXXVIII. Notes relating to Botany, collected from the 

 Manuscripts of the late Fhter Collinson, Esq., F.R.S. 

 and communicated by Avlmer Bouuke Lambert, Esq.y 

 F.R.S. andA.S., r.P.L.S.* 



JLJEtNG lately on a visit to John Cator, Esq., of Becken- 

 ham-place, and looking one day over his library, amongst 

 a collection of books left him by his uncle, who married the 

 daughter of the celebrated Peter Collinson, I discovered se- 

 veral which bad formerly belonged to that ennnent natu- 

 ralist. One of them was his o vn copy of Miller's Gar- 

 dener's and Botanist's Dictionary, the last edition pub- 

 lished by the author, with the following note at the bottom 

 of the title-page : " The gift of my old iriend the author to 

 P. Collinson, F.R.S." 'I'his book contains a great deal of 

 his manuscript notes relating to the plants cultivated in 

 those days, both in his f)wn gardens and in those of the most 

 celebrated of his contemporaries ; with a complete catalogue 

 of the plants he had cultivated in his garden at Mill-Hill, 

 and a libt of all those which he had himself introduced into 

 ibis country from Russia, Siberia, America, and other parts 

 of the world; also some original letters from Dillenius, 

 Miller, Bartram, and others ; and a short account of his 

 own life, which appears not to have been known to his bio- 

 graphers. Mr. Cator having obligingly permitted me to 



* From Transactions of tlie Linnean Society, vol, x. part ii. p- 270. 



.N 4 lake 



