BROWN. 19 



to pass some time in London, where his already established botanical 

 reputation secured him a cordial reception from Sir Joseph Banks, 

 of whose library and collections he availed himself to the utmost. 

 In 1799 he returned to his regimental duties in Ireland, from which 

 he was finally recalled, in December of the following year, by a 

 letter from Sir Joseph Banks, proposing for his acceptance the post 

 of naturalist in the expedition for surveying the coasts of New 

 Holland, then fitting out under the command of Captain Flinders. 



In the summer of 1801 he embarked at Portsmouth and set out 

 on this expedition. His absence from England lasted more than 

 four years, during which period the southern, eastern, and northern 

 coasts of New Holland, and the southern part of Van Diemen's 

 Land were thoroughly explored; and he arrived in Liverpool, in 

 the month of October, 1805, enriched with a collection of dried 

 plants amounting to nearly 4000 species, a large proportion of 

 which were not only new to science, but likewise exhibited extra- 

 ordinary combinations of character and form. Immediately on his 

 arrival in England, Brown was appointed librarian of the Linnean 

 Society, of which he had been elected an associate in 1798. The 

 materials which he had been indefatigable in collecting during this 

 voyage, and the vast store of facts and observations in relation to 

 their structure and affinities which he had accumulated, opened out 

 to him new views upon a multitude of botanical subjects, which he 

 was enabled by his position in the Linnean Society to enlarge, and 

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

 masterly publications, which at once stamped upon him the cha- 

 racter of the greatest and most philosophical botanist that England 

 had ever produced. 



In 1810 appeared the first volume of his ' Prodromus Florae novas 

 Hollandiaa et Insulae Van Diemen.' This important work, together 

 with his memoirs on Proteacias and Asclepiadeaa, which immediately 

 followed, and his ' General Remarks, Geographical and Systematical, 

 on the Botany of Terra Australis,' appended to the * Narrative of 

 Captain Flinder's Voyage,' published in 1814, by displaying in the 

 most instructive form the superior advantages of the Natural Sys- 

 tem, gave new life to that system, which had- hitherto found little 

 favour in France, and speedily led to its universal adoption. A 

 series of memoirs followed the above works, chiefly in the Trans- 

 actions of the Linnean Society, or in the appendices to various 

 books of travel and survey, which gave fuller and more complete 

 development to his views upon almost every department of botanical 

 science, and induced the illustrious Humboldt not only to confer 

 upon Brown the title mentioned at the beginning of this memoir, 

 but also to designate him as the " Glory and Ornament of Great 

 Britain."* 



* In the dedication of the ' Synopsis Plantarum Orhis Novi,' Roberto Brownio, 

 Britanniarum Glorise atque Ornamento, totam Botanices Scientiam ingenio 

 mirifico comylectenti. 



