Obituary Notice of Robert Brown. 163 
reduced to the briefest expression, are fertile far beyond the 
reader's expectation. Cautious to excess, never su sting a 
theory until he had thoroughly weighed all the available objec- 
tions to it, and never propounding a view which he did not know 
how to prove, perhaps no naturalist ever taught so much in 
writing so little, or made so few statements that had to be re- 
called, or even recast; and of no one can there be a stronger 
regret that he did not publish more. 
‘With this character of mind, and while carefully sounding his 
_ 21S most compact mode of expression, especially indicated him 
for the task. Evidently, his influence upon the progress of Bot- 
4 at least more immediate and 
_ More conspicuous. Yet, rightly to estimate that influence now, 
which coincided with Brown’s career,—and mark how largely the 
_ profound, also for an unusually retiring disposition, which even 
_ M authorship seems to have rendered him as sedulous to avoid 
_ publicity as most writers are to gain it, it must be acknowledge 
that his retentiveness was excessive; and that his guarded pub- 
shed statements sometimes appear as if intended—like the ana- 
grams of the older mathematicians and A retably 
But this was | 
e 
robably 
regard for entire accuracy, and his extreme dislike of all parade 
of knowledge,—to the same peculiarity which every where led 
ih ; at consequence into short 
be 
fe 
