LECTURE V 



ROBERT BROWN 



The outstanding figure in the history of botany during 

 the twenty years succeeding Knight was that of Robert 

 Brown, the son of a Scottish clergyman of Montrose. 

 After a period devoted to the study of medicine and, in 

 his leisure moments, to an exploration of the Scottish 

 flora, he joined the army, but ultimately left it to accom- 

 pany a surveying expedition to AustraUa. During the 

 four years Brown spent in the antipodes he gathered 

 together an enormous amount of material representative 

 of the then almost unknown flora of Australia, and during 

 his voyage and for five years after his return home he 

 worked without cessation at the description and arrange- 

 ment of his collections. He was fortunate in having 

 gained the warm friendship and invaluable interest of 

 Sir Joseph Banks, the famous explorer, and had also the 

 inestimable advantage of having free access to all the 

 collections, including that of Linnaeus, in the custody of 

 the Linnean Society, whose Ubrarian he became soon 

 after his return to England. 



Among the first fruits of his labours there appeared 

 in 1810 a Prodromus or preliminary account of the flora 

 of New Holland and Tasmania. The Linnean system, 

 then in the heyday of its favour among botanists, had 

 obviously no attraction for him, for the arrangement 

 adopted in the Prodromus is pronouncedly De Candollean, 

 although he remodelled several of De Candolle's famihes 

 and added new ones to accommodate the numerous new 

 types he had discovered in his travels. He also wrote a 



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