8 THE HISTORY OF AITON's ' HORTUS KEWENSIS ' 



To this I replied : — 



" The difficulty of deciding what names were published by Mr. Brown 

 in the Hortus Kewensis is to a very great extent removed by the re- 

 publication, in the Miscellaneous Worhs of Robert Broivn, of all his 

 contributions to that work. The Miscellaneous Worhs were collected and 

 edited by Mr. Brown's colleague, Mr. J. J. Bennett, who was of course 

 well acquainted with the part Mr. Brown had taken in the Hortus 

 Kewensis. Sprengel (1818) uses the name Mathiola, altering the spelling 

 to Matthiola, and quoting it as ' R. Brown emend.' ; A. P. De Candolle 

 (Syst. Nat. ii. 162, 1821), retaining the original spelling, attributes the 

 genus to Brown, as every one has since done. The fact, therefore, of 

 Mr. Brown's connection with the name is obvious enough ; and it was 

 fully recognized by his contemporaries" (p. 108). 



It may be well to show that Brown himself referred to the 

 Cruciferce as his own work, and to adduce further evidence that 

 it was so regarded by his contemporaries. In his Appendix to 

 Denham and Clapperton's Narrative of Travels in Northern and 

 Central Africa (1827) Brown devotes considerable space (pp. 210- 

 220) to remarks on the structure of the order, in the course of 

 which he revises an opinion which "I carried further than I am 

 at present disposed to do in the second edition of Mr. Alton's 

 'Hortus Kewensis'" (p. 211); says of Koniga, which he is then 

 founding, " In the second edition of Hortus Kewensis I included 

 this plant in Alyssum'' (p. 214) ; and (p. 215), " I first introduced 

 [the] adhesion of the funiculi to the septum, as a generic character, 

 in distinguishing Petrocallis from Draba" {i. e. in Hort. Kew. 

 ed. 2, iv. 93). Brown throughout this portion of his paper refers 

 to A. P. De Candolle's monograph of the order in Syst. Nat. ii. 

 (1821) ; " Brown in Hort. Kew. ed. 2, v. 4, p. 71 " stands at the 

 head of this, among the works cited, and is quoted throughout in 

 this manner under genera and species, as well as in the intro- 

 ductory remarks (p. 145).* An even earlier reference is that by 

 Smith in Eees's CyclojJcedia, xxxv. (1817) under " Tetradynamia " : 

 " The best attempt to reform them has lately been made by 

 Mr. R. Brown, in the second edition of Mr. Alton's Hortus Keiu- 

 ensis." The whole order was reprinted textually in Nees von 

 Esenbeck's German edition of Brown's collected worksf (vol. v. 

 pp. 1-7 ; 1834). 



It must also be remembered that W. T. Alton expressly states 

 that all Brown's contributions were not indicated : his acknow- 

 ledgement in the Postscript runs : — " To Robert Brown Esq. 

 most learned in the practical knowledge of Botany, and in the 

 very refined and scientific parts of it in particular, with a mind 

 comprehensive and acute, and with friendship equally liberal to 

 the Author, must be attributed the improved state of the latter 

 volumes of this Work. Much new matter has been added by this 

 gentleman, and so7ne loithout reference to his name; but the 

 greater part of his able improvements are distinguished by the 



• See p. 9 for another reference by De Candolle. 



t Robert Brown's Vermischte Botanische Schriften : Niirmberg, 1825-34. 



