Sir Joseph Banks, Robert Brown 243 



English were at least their levels in the study of the 

 herbarium. Where they outshone all other nations was in 

 their world-wide explorations, their vast collections of extra- 

 European plants, which laid the foundation of the science 

 of geographic botany and afforded the material which was 

 destined to form the basis of the speculations as to the 

 " Origin of Species " which were so prominent a feature in 

 the latter part of the nineteenth century. 



Robert Brown (1773-1858), one of the most brilliant 

 men of science Europe has produced, was the son of the 

 Episcopalian minister in Montrose. He was educated partly 

 at Aberdeen and partly at Edinburgh, where, for the first 

 time, he showed the interest which never afterwards failed 

 him in the science of botany. In 1795 he obtained a double 

 commission as Ensign and Assistant Surgeon in the Fife- 

 shire Regiment of Eencible Infantry, and proceeded to 

 Ireland. In 1798, being sent to England on a recruiting 

 service, he became the friend of Sir Joseph Banks, who 

 was destined to help him in no common measure. It was 

 owing, indeed, to Banks that he resigned his commission and 

 started on his memorable voyage to Australia and Tasmania. 

 He left Portsmouth in 1801 under the command of Captain 

 Flinders, and was away about four years. The South Coast 

 of Australia, the tropical part of the East Coast and part 

 of the North were explored before Flinders was compelled 

 to return to England by the bad state of his ship. The 

 botanists, however, remained in Australia for another year 

 and a half, and extended their investigations to Tasmania 

 and other islands. Altogether about 4,000 species of plants 

 were collected, and on his return to England in 1805 these 

 great collections, added to those which Sir Joseph had 

 brought back from Captain Cook's circumnavigation of the 

 globe, and those due to other explorers, were now thoroughly 

 worked out by Brown. As Asa Gray remarks : 



" It was the wonderful sagacity and insight which 

 he evinced in these investigations which, soon after his 

 return from Australia, revealed the master mind in 

 botanical science, and ere long gave him the position of 

 almost unchallenged eminence, which he retained without 

 effort for more than a century." 



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