An Introduction to Robert Browns 

 Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae' 



By William T. Stearn 

 British Museum (Natural History), London 



The importance of Brown's 'Prodromus'; pp. v-vii • Early botanical explo- 

 ration of Australia; pp. vii-xiii • Flinder's voyage and Brown's collecting 

 places in Australia; pp. xiii-xxiv ■ Brown's collecting methods and herbarium; 

 pp. xxv-xxviii • Preparation of Brown's 'Prodromus'; pp. xxviii-xxix • Publi- 

 cation of Brown's Trodromus' and cognate works; pp. xxix-xxxiii • Trans- 

 lation of the preface to Brown's Trodromus'; pp. xxxiii-xxxv • Abbreviations 

 used by BROWN;pp. xxxvi-xLii • References; pp. xLiii-xLiv • Index of fami- 

 lies and genera; pp. xlv-lu. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF BROWN'S TRODROMUS' 



The forerunner of George Bentham's monumental Flora Australien- 

 sis (7 vols., 1863 — 78), Robert Brown's Prodromus Florae Novae Hol- 

 landiae et Insulae Van-Diemen (1810) has a two-fold importance in the 

 history of systematic botany. Its primary purpose was to record succinct- 

 ly the plants of Australia collected by Robert Brown himself in 1802 

 to 1805 when naturalist on Flinders's voyage, together with plants 

 collected earlier by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Cook's 

 first voyage (1768 — 71), those introduced into cultivation meanwhile, 

 mostly from around Port Jackson (Sydney), and a few from other sources. 

 The many new genera and species named by Brown in this book make 

 reference to it continually necessary for workers on the Australian flora. 

 However to Brown's contemporaries, few of whom had any interest in 

 Australian plants as such, the importance of Brown's Prodromus lay in 

 its adoption of a natural system of classification based on that of An- 

 toine Laurent de Jussieu's Genera Plantarum secundum Ordines natu- 

 rales disposita (1789) as opposed to the popular artificial 'sexual system' 

 of classification taken from Linnaeus; Brown's Prodromus and Aug. 

 P. de Candolle's Flore jrancaise (1805) were the first major floristic 

 works so arranged. Moreover Brown's founding of new families and 

 genera and his inclusion of pertinent observations on those already 

 known gave it an importance and interest reaching from Australia to 

 northern Europe and northem Asia: it helped Kunth in his work on 



