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and too sudden to afford the opportunity, if indeed the effort could, 

 under these painful circumstances, have been made, of collecting 

 the materials for a narrative which might render adequate justice to 

 his superior merits as an artist, and to his exemplary character as a 

 man. This tribute to his memory must be reserved for a period 

 when his biographer will be able to review the subject more exten- 

 sively, and with more calm deliberation. 



Francis Bauer was born at Feldsberg, in Austria, on the 4th 

 of October, 1758. While yet a boy he lost his father, who held an 

 appointment as painter to Prince Lichtenstein ; so that the care of 

 his education devolved upon his mother. He manifested very early 

 a talent for botanical drawing ; and the first published production of 

 his pencil, at the age of thirteen, was a figure of the Anemone pratensis 

 appended to a work of Stoerck. He came to England in the year 

 1788, and was about to proceed to Paris ; when, on the eve of his 

 intended departure, he was offered by Sir Joseph Banks the appoint- 

 ment of draughtsman at the Royal Gardens at Kew, a proposal 

 which induced him to relinquish his intentions of leaving England. 

 He took up his residence near those Gardens, and he continued to 

 dwell, during the remainder of his life, in their neighbourhood. 

 The salary of the new office which Mr. Bauer held was defrayed by 

 Sir Joseph Banks during his own life, and its continuance after his 

 decease was provided for by his will. 



Mr. Bauer, in fulfilment of his engagement, made numerous 

 drawings and sketches of the plants in the Garden ; and these are 

 now preserved in the British Museum. A selection from his draw- 

 ings was published in 1796, under the title of " Delineations of Ex- 

 otic Plants cultivated in the Royal Gardens at Kew," containing in 

 all thirty plates of different kinds of Heaths. His drawings have 

 also illustrated several papers published in the Linnaean Transac- 

 tions, and particularly those of Mr. Brown. The 13th volume of 

 that work contains a paper by Mr. Bauer on the Ergot of Rye, 

 drawn up from materials collected between the years 1805 and 

 1809; and the plate which illustrates it is derived from drawings 

 forming part of an extensive series in the British Museum, illus- 

 trating the structure of the grain, the germination, growth and 

 developement of wheat, and the diseases of that and other Cerealia. 

 This admirable series of drawings constitutes perhaps the most 

 splendid and important monument of Mr. Bauer's extraordinary 

 talents as an artist, and of his skill in microscopic investigation. 

 The subject was suggested to him by Sir Joseph Banks, who was 

 engaged in an inquiry into the disease of corn known by the name 

 of blight \ the part of Mr. Bauer's drawings which relates to that 

 disease was published in illustration of Sir Joseph's memoir on the 

 subject, and has been several times reprinted with it. Mr. Bauer 

 himself gave, in the volume of the Philosophical Transactions for 

 1823, an account of his observations on the Vibrio tritici of 

 Gleichen, with the figures relating to them ; and another small por- 

 tion of his illustrations of the diseases of corn has since been pub- 



