284 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



Brown. True, he was fortunate in his time and in his oppor- 

 tunities. Men of great genius, happily, often are, or appear 

 to be, through their power of turning opportunities to good 

 account. The whole herbaria of Sir Joseph Banks and the 

 great collections which he himself made around the coast of 

 Australia, in Flinder's expedition, and which he was able to 

 investigate upon the spot in the four year^ devoted to this ex- 

 ploration, opportunely placed in Brown's able hands as it were 

 the vegetation of a new world, as rich as it was peculiar, — 

 just at the time, too, when the immortal work of Jussieu had 

 begun to be appreciated, and the European and other ordi- 

 nary forms of vegetation had begun to be understood in their 

 natural relations. The new, various, and singular types which 

 render the botany of New Holland so unlike all other, Mr. 

 Brown had to compare among themselves, — to unravel their 

 intricacies with scarcely a clue to guide him, except that which 

 his own genius enabled him to construct in the process of the 

 research, — and to bring them harmoniously into the general 

 system of botanical natural alliance as then understood, and 

 as he was himself enabled to ascertain and display it. It was 

 the wonderful sagacity and insight which he evinced in these 

 investigations, which, soon after his return from Australia, 

 revealed the master mind in botanical science, and erelong 

 gave him the position of almost unchallenged eminence, which 

 he retained, as if without effort, for more than half a century. 

 The common observer must wonder at this general recogni- 

 tion, during an era of great names and unequaled activity, of 

 a claim so rarely, and as it were so reluctantly, asserted. For 

 brief and comparatively few — alas ! how much fewer than 

 they should have been ! — are Mr. Brown's publications. 

 Much the largest of them is the " Prodromus of the Flora of 

 New Holland," issued fifty years ago, which begins upon the 

 one hundred and forty-fifth page, and which stopped short 

 at the end of the first volume. The others are special papers, 

 mostly of small bulk, devoted to the consideration of a partic- 

 ular plant, or a particular group or small collection of plants. 

 But their simple titles seldom foreshow the full imj^ort of 

 their contents. Brown delighted to rise from a special case to 



