[n] 



dated '1811' and which according to Sherborn, Index Animalium 

 1801—50: xlvii (1922) was published in October 1811: the Council mi- 

 nutes of the Linnean Society for 5 November 1811 state that 'vol. lst 

 of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society of Natural History was pre- 

 sented by the Society'. The same volume was listed in Monthly Literary 

 Advertiser 1811 (74): 43 (10 June 1811) and there can thus be no doubt 

 that it was issued in 1811, more than a year later than Brown's separate 

 of April 1810. 



According to his note, Brown then sent nine copies of the Prodromus 

 to Paris for Jussieu, Desfontaines, Labillardiere, Correa, Richard, 

 Beauvois, Bonpland, Du Petit Thouars and Leschenault. He also 

 presented copies to Sir Joseph Banks, Dryander, J. E. Smith, Dawson 

 Turner, Lambert, Dickson, Aiton, Ferdinand Bauer, Franz Bauer, 

 Koenig, McLeay, Law of Edinburgh, the Linnean Society, the Wer- 

 neriam Society of Edinburgh and Trinity College, Dublin. It thus imme- 

 diately reached botanists able to appreciate its merit. The edition was 

 small (250 copies), but vastly in excess of the public demand. Brown's 

 intention was to follow it with a second volume and to issue then a ge- 

 neral survey of the families and genera and an account of Acotyledones 

 to be placed at the beginning of the work. Evidently he calculated 

 this would occupy 144 pages. Hence the first page of text is numbered 

 not 1 but 145. Unfortunately volume 2 and pages 1 — 144 of volume 1 

 were never published. The period at the end of the Napoleonic War 

 was an unfavourable one for natural history books. Francis Buchanan 

 writing to Wallich in 1817 remarked that in Britain 'nor is there at 

 present any encouragement for works on natural history so that the 

 first volume of Bro\vn's Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae, a most 

 scientific work, finding no sale whatever, he has stopt short' (cf. Prain, 

 SketcJi of the Life of Francis Hamilton (once Buchanan) xxviii (1905), 

 prefixed to Ann. R. Bot. Gard. Calcutta 10 pt. 2). 



Mortified by this disappointing response Brown withdrew the work 

 from sale. 'In 1856', according to Hooker, 'Mr. Brown informed me that 

 the 'Prodromus' was printed by himself, costing him about £ 100, and 

 that after 26 copies were sold at 18s. each, he recalled all the remaining 

 copies. I made a note of this at the time (1856) and inserted it in a 

 copy which he gave me in 1839'. Henceforth copies of the original issue 

 were only available as gifts from the author. Meanwhile, however, 

 C. G. Nees von Esenbeck published a reprint at Niirnberg in 1827 as 

 Band 3 Abth. 7 of his German edition of Brown's writings, Robert 



