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from the Mediterranean ; and by that amiable lady had a family, of 

 whom three sons and three daughters are living. Some years after 

 her lamented death, he married, secondly, the daughter; by a third 

 marriage, of his brother-in-law, R. L. Edgeworth, Esq., who survived 

 him, but has since died. 



ROBERT BROWN, D.C.L. In offering to the Society a brief 

 sketch of the career of the greatest Botanist of the age, our 

 attention is chiefly arrested by his intense devotion to his fa- 

 vourite study, and by the calm, reflecting, and philosophical 

 spirit which he brought to bear upon its pursuit, the combina- 

 tion of which qualities were alone sufficient to raise him, by 

 his own unassisted efforts, to the highest position in the world 

 of Science. Robert Brown was the second and only surviving son 

 of the Rev. James Brown, A.M., Episcopalian Minister of Mont- 

 rose, by Helen, daughter of the Rev. Robert Taylor, and was born 

 in that town on the 21st of December, 1773. Several generations 

 of his maternal ancestors were, like his father, ministers of the 

 Scottish Episcopalian Church, and from them he appears to have 

 inherited a strong attachment to logical and metaphysical studies, 

 the effects of which are so strikingly manifested in the philosophical 

 character of his botanical investigations. At an early age he was 

 sent to the Grammar-school of his native town, where among his 

 contemporaries was a boy of kindred talents, the late Mr. James 

 Mill, with whom he maintained through life an uninterrupted inti- 

 macy. In 1787 he was entered at Marischal College, Aberdeen, 

 where he immediately obtained a Ramsay bursary in Philosophy ; 

 and about two years afterwards, on his father quitting Montrose to 

 reside in Edinburgh, he was removed to the University of that city, 

 in which he continued his studies for several years, but without 

 taking a degree, although destined for the medical profession. At 

 this early period the strong inclination of his mind to the study of 

 Botany gained for him the favourable notice of the amiable Professor 

 of Natural History, Dr. Walker, and he was induced, in the year 1 79 1 

 (being then in the eighteenth year of his age), to lay before the Na- 

 tural History Society, of which he was a member, his earliest Paper, 

 containing an enumeration of such plants as had been discovered in 

 North Britain subsequent to the publication of Lightfoot's * Flora 



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