BROWN AND HUMBOLDT. 285 



high and wide generalizations ; and was apt to draw most im- 

 portant and always irresistible conclusions from small, se- 

 lected data, or particular points of structure, which to ordinary 

 apprehension would appear wholly inadequate to the purpose. 

 He had unequaled skill in finding decisive instances. So all 

 his discoveries, so simply and quietly announced, and all his 

 notes and observations sedulously reduced to the briefest ex- 

 pression, are fertile far beyond the reader's expectation. Cau- 

 tious to excess, never suggesting a theory until he had thor- 

 oughly weighed all the available objections to it, and never 

 propounding a view which he did not know how to prove, per- 

 haps no naturalist ever taught so much in writing so little, 

 or made so few statements that had to be recalled, or even 

 recast ; and of no one can there be a stronger regret that he 

 did not publish more. 



With this character of mind, and while carefully sounding 

 his way along the deep places of a science the philosophy and 

 ground of which were forming, day by day, under his own 

 and a few contemporary hands, Brown could not have been a 

 voluminous writer. He could never have undertaken a " Sys- 

 tema Regni Vegetabilis," content to do his best at the mo- 

 ment, and take upon trust what he had not the means or the 

 time to verify, — like his contemporary, De Candolle, who 

 may worthily be compared with Brown for genius, and con- 

 trasted with him for the enthusiastic devotion which con- 

 stantly impelled him to publication, and to lifelong, unselected 

 herculean labor, over all the field, for the general good. 



Nor could Brown ever be brought to undertake a " Genera 

 Plantarum," like that of Jussieu ; although his favorable and 

 leisurely position, his vast knowledge, his keen discrimination, 

 and his most compact mode of expression, especially indicated 

 him for the task. Evidently, his influence upon the progress 

 of botany might have been greater, or at least more imme- 

 diate and more conspicuous. Yet, rightly to estimate that in- 

 fluence now, we have only to compare the " Genera Planta- 

 rum " of Endlicher with that of Jussieu, — separated as they 

 are by the half-century which coincided with Brown's career, 

 — and mark how largely the points of difference between the 



