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president’s address. 
The following extract (first published in the “ Botanische 
Zeitung ” for 1825) is from a letter by Professor Schultes, of 
Landshut in Bohemia, to the celebrated naturalist, Count 
Sternberg, describing a visit to Sir J. E. Smith in 1824 : — 
“ On the 27th of August, about noon, we proceeded in the mail 
coach from Ipswich to Norwich, where, by a fortunate circum- 
stance, we accomplished the object of our journey thither. Sir 
James E. Smith, to whom we made this pilgrimage, had just 
returned home from the country^, and was on the point of again 
visiting his friends when we called on him at his beautiful 
house. Our joy was great at finding this most respectable man 
so far recovered from the severe illness which had threatened 
his life, as to be again enabled to devote his leisure hours to the 
amabilis scientia. He was then employed in revising some 
printed sheets of the third edition of his Introduction to the 
Study of Botany. Sir J. E. Smith displayed to us the treasures 
of his collection (in reality the only one of its kind), with a 
courtesy and kindness which are peculiar to great and well- 
educated men ; and which in this truly noble person are 
heightened by such charms of gentleness and affability as can- 
not fail to attract to him most forcibly even such individuals 
as have but once enjoyed the privilege of his society. 
The books of Linnaeus, with their margins full of notes in the 
handwriting of the immortal Swede ; many valuable MSS. of 
his, not yet published ; the Linnaean herbarium, in the same 
order and even occupying the very cases which had contained it 
at Upsal (little as the old-fashioned form of these cabinets cor- 
responds with the elegant arrangement of Smith’s museum) ; 
the collection of insects, shells, and minerals, which had belonged 
to this second creator of Nature ; all these are arranged and 
preserved by Sir James with a scrupulous care which almost 
borders on a kind of religious veneration. The relics of 
Mohammed are not enshrined with more devotion in the Kaaba 
at Mecca, than are the collections of Linnaeus in the house of 
Sir J. E. Smith at Norwich. 
“ Besides the Linnaean herbarium, Sir J. E. Smith has 
a large collection of plants of his own formation, which is 
