162 Obituary Notice of Robert Brown. 
0 elaborate,—it will probably be conceded by all, that no one 
since Linnzus has brought such rare sagacity to bear upon the 
structure, and especially upon the ordinal characters and natural 
affinities of plants, as did Robert Brown. ‘True, he was fortu- 
nate in his time and his opportunities. Men of great genius, 
happily, often are, or appear to be, through their power of turn- 
ing opportunities to good account. The whole herbaria of Sir 
JoseBh Banks, and the great collections which he himself made 
around the coast of Australia, in Flinder’s expedition, and which 
mon observer must wonder at this general recogni- 
tion, during an era of great names and unequalled 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, 
forty-fifth page, and which stopped short at the end of the first 
he others are special papers, mostly of small bulk, 
devoted to the consideration of a particular plant, or a particular _ 
group or small collection of plants. But their simple titles 
seldom foreshow the full import of their contents. Brown 
delighted to rise from a special case to high and wide generali- 
zations; and was apt to draw most important and always irre 
sistible conclusions from some small, selected data, or particular 
icture, which to ordinary apprehension would appear 
lequate to the purpose. He had unequalled skill in 
leeisiye instances. So all his discoveries, so simply and 
eed, and all his notes and ob tions, sedulously 
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