240 Britain's Heritage of Science 



he considered the right place. His sexual system of classifi- 

 cation was, as he himself felt, a merely temporary one, but 

 it caught on and for fifty years did much to hinder the pro- 

 gress of real scientific enquiry into the natural relationships 

 of plants inter se. 



His name leads us on to Sir J. E. Smith (1759-1829), a 

 friend of Sir Joseph Banks. In fact it was at his breakfast 

 table that the news came that the mother of Linnaeus had 

 recently died, and that his collections were offered for sale. 

 Smith, who was a man of considerable means, purchased 

 the collections for a thousand guineas, and although the 

 Swedish Government are said to have sent a man-of-war to 

 retrieve them whilst they were yet at sea, they eluded the 

 pursuit if there was a pursuit and were landed in England 

 and arranged as speedily as possible by Smith, with the aid 

 of Sir Joseph Banks and his librarian Dryander. This 

 episode decided Smith to abandon the study of medicine 

 and take up that of botany, and to him the foundation of 

 the Linnsean Society is due. He was the author of many 

 books, and in 1790 he collaborated with Sower by in the 

 production of Sowerby's " English Botany," which extended 

 over thirty-six volumes, and in which he was responsible for 

 practically all the letter-press. Another notable work of 

 his, published in 1807, was an " Introduction to Physio- 

 logical and Systematic Botany," and the last seven years of 

 his life he devoted to the " English Flora." 



We now turn to a class of men of science in which England 

 has always been pre-eminent the scientific explorer and 

 collector. 



One of the earliest of these, Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), 

 started life as a doctor, having studied medicine at Paris and 

 Montpellier. He was well acquainted with the leading men 

 of science of his period, and for a time lived with Thomas 

 Sydenham. His great opportunity came in 1687, when he 

 accompanied, as physician, the Duke of Albemarle, Governor 

 of Jamaica, to the West Indies. Owing to the death of the 

 Duke, his stay in the islands was curtailed, but he came 

 back in 1689 with 800 species of plants and settled down to 

 medical practice. He became Secretary to the Royal Society 

 in 1693, and, while he was busily at work on his collections, 



