20 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
occasion, however, of his being there, he had over-fatigued himself 
by walking, and caught a chill from falling asleep near an open 
window. The result was an attack of inflammation in one of the 
lungs. He returned immediately to London, where his medical 
advisers from the first took an unfavourable view of his case, either 
in its immediate or ulterior consequences. He died on 16th Septem- 
ber, after ten days’ illness, having been assiduously attended by his 
sister and one of his nieces. His remains were brought to Glas- 
gow, and interred in the family burying-ground attached to the 
Cathedral, where two months before he had erected a tombstone to 
the memory of his parents and other members of the family, space 
being left merely for his own name and that of his only surviving 
sister. 
Charles Frederick Philip von Martitjs, the greatest, perhaps, 
and most celebrated botanist of the present day, was born at Erlan- 
gen, in Bavaria, in the year 1794. His family are said to have 
been of Italian origin, but they had been for some time settled in 
Bavaria, where his father had a medical appointment in connection 
with the court. Young Martius received, in the first instance, the 
usual medical education, but when about eighteen years of age 
resolved to devote himself to botany, and shortly afterwards was 
appointed to a subordinate position in the Botanic G-arden at Munich. 
His diligence in that situation, and the merit of some treatises 
which he then published, attracted the notice of Maximilian Joseph 
I., who was an ardent lover of plants, and a frequent visitor to 
the garden. In 1816, when the joint expedition was concerted by 
Austria and Bavaria to explore the natural history of Brazil, Martius 
was named by the king as the Bavarian botanist, though then little 
more than twenty-two years of age. He immediately set out on 
this enterprise, and was absent for a period of four years, having 
returned to Munich on the 8th of December 1820. The explora- 
tions made by the two Bavarian travellers, Spix and Martius, who 
proceeded in a separate direction, and over a wider field than their 
Austrian associates, were on a scale much larger and more compre- 
hensive than any that had previously been attempted. The expe- 
dition, we are told, irrespective of the sea voyage, extended over 
nearly 1400 geographical miles, and for months led through the 
