INTRODUCTION. n 



1858. He brought home 4,000 species as the result 

 of the expedition, and his ' Prodromus Florae Novae 

 Hollandiae,' completed in 1830, was thus no less im- 

 portant as a merely descriptive work than it was as 

 introducing into England the Natural System of 

 classification. 



The acquisition of Linnaeus's collections in 1784 by 

 Dr. (afterwards Sir) J. E. Smith (1759-1828), and the 

 foundation, four years later, of the Linnean Society, 

 gave considerable impetus to botanical science in this 

 country ; whilst the Horticultural Society, founded in 

 1 8 10, under the presidency of the eminent physiologist, 

 Thomas Andrew Knight (1759-1838), carried out Sir 

 Joseph Banks' policy of sending out collectors. By 

 them the ill-fated David Douglas (1798-1834) was 

 sent to supplement the work of Kalm, of Fraser, of 

 Nuttall, and of the Bartrams in North America ; whilst 

 George Don was sent to Brazil, the West Indies, and 

 Sierra Leone. 



It would be difficult to exaggerate the great 

 services rendered to botany by the successive officers 

 of the East India Company, especially the surgeons, 

 many of them trained in Edinburgh, who advanced 

 the empire of Flora almost as rapidly as dive -and 

 his successors did that of temporal sovereignty. So 

 the work of Roxburgh, Colebrooke, and Roscoe was 

 carried on by Wallich, Griffith, Wight, Royle, and 

 Horsfield, and the vast collections were accumulated 

 that, in 1880, were transferred to Kew. 



Though, after the deaths of King George III. 

 and Sir Joseph Banks in 1820, the Botanic Gardens 

 at Kew retrograded from want of either Royal or 



