382 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON OLD-TIME NORFOLK BOTANISTS. 
The Rev. Charles Sutton, D.D. (1756-1846), for many 
years perpetual Curate of St. George, Tombland, and Vicar 
of Thornham and Holme, was an ardent botanist, and an 
Associate of the Linnean Society to whose Transactions he 
contributed a monograph of the genus Orobanche, establish- 
ing a new species, 0 . elatior ; he contributed a number of the 
drawings to Sowerby’s English Botany, and A. Richard 
established the genus Suttonia in his honour. An obituary 
notice of Dr. Sutton will be found in vol. i. of the Linnean 
Soc. Trans., p. 341. 
But we have now arrived at a period when the system 
propounded by Linnaeus and founded on the sexual organs of 
plants, which although highly artificial had been greatly 
superior to anything which preceded it, and which we have 
seen was so ably promulgated in this country by Stillingfleet 
and Sir J. E. Smith, gradually gave way to a more natural 
system based on a closer study of vegetable physiology, and 
a form of arrangement adopted by John Ray, the Essex 
Naturalist (1627-1705), in his Methodus plantar um, which 
appeared in 1682, may be considered as the dawn of modern 
botanical science. Jussieu (1748-1836) followed Ray to 
a certain extent in his Genera plantar um (1778-1789), which 
indicated an important advance in the principles of classifi- 
cation ; one of his earliest supporters in France being A. P. De 
Candolle (1778-1841), who improved upon the work of Jussieu, 
and his system, with some modifications, is generally adopted 
in the present day. In this country we owe, _ in a great measure, 
the introduction of the “ Natural System ” to Robert Browne ; 
born at Montrose in 1773 ; after various experiences at home 
and abroad he settled in London and became Librarian to 
the Linnean Society, also to Sir Joseph Banks. To his im- 
portant contributions to botanical science is mainly due the 
universal adoption in this country of the system which now 
prevails. 
One of the earliest supporters of the new system was Sir 
William Jackson Hooker, who was born in Norwich on 
6th July, 1785, and owed his devotion to British botany 
largely to the influence of Sir J. E. Smith, and to his father- 
