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structure and affinities, as well as to all the most important points in 

 the anatomy and physiology of plants in general. The new views 

 which were thus opened to him on a multitude of botanical subjects, 

 he was enabled, by his position at the Linnean Society, and by the 

 free and unrestricted access which was liberally accorded to him to 

 the treasures of the Banksian Library and Herbarium, to enlarge and 

 to perfect, and to lay them before the world in a series of masterly 

 publications, which at once stamped upon him the character of the 

 greatest and most philosophical botanist that England had ever pro- 

 duced. In 1810 appeared the first volume of his ' Prodromus 

 Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen,' which was re- 

 ceived by all the more profound botanists of this country and of the 

 continent as the work of a mind thoroughly imbued with the prin- 

 ciples of the Natural System, and giving to that system, which had 

 hitherto found little favour out of France, a wider and a firmer basis. 

 This important work, together with his Memoirs on Proteacece 

 and Asclepiadece, which immediately followed, and his ' General 

 Remarks, Geographical and Systematical, on the Botany of Terra 

 Australis/ appended to the * Narrative of Captain Flinders' s 

 Voyage,' published in 1814, by displaying in the most instructive 

 form the superior advantages of the Natural System, whether in the 

 monographic description of separate families, or in the comparison 

 of the families with each other and with the entire mass of vegeta- 

 tion, gave new life to that system, and speedily led to its universal 

 adoption. A series of Memoirs followed, chiefly in the Transac- 

 tions of the Linnean Society, or in the appendices to various books 

 of travel and survey, which gave fuller and more complete develop- 

 ment to his views on almost every department of botanical science, 

 and induced the illustrious Humboldt not only to confer upon him 

 the title of " Botanicorum facile Princeps," but also to salute him 

 with the more comprehensive and expressive designation conveyed 

 in the dedication of the ' Synopsis Plantarum Orbis Novi/ " Ro- 

 berto Brownio, Britanni, rum Gloriae atque Ornamento, totam Bo- 

 tanices Scientiam ingenio mirifico complectenti." At the close of 

 the year 1810, on the death of his old and intimate friend, the 

 laborious, accurate and learned Dryander, he succeeded to the 

 office of Librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, who (on his death in 1820) 

 bequeathed to him for life the use and enjoyment of his library and 



