98. 
Botanists and their Work. 
S.A. NAT., VOL. XV. 
June 12th, 1934. 
dried, stored and wrote his notes on the vast collection of plants 
which he made all round the coasts of Australia. Both sailors 
and scientists were tough, much-enduring men in those days. 
He returned to England in 1805 and in 1810 he published his 
“Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae,’’ which means an “In¬ 
troduction to the Flora of New Holland/’ a very modest title 
for a work which was acclaimed with enthusiasm both in Eng¬ 
land and on the Continent. It named and described concisely 
a great number of Australian plants, the whole being arranged 
under natural orders or families, beginning with those which 
have flowers or fruits of the simplest structure; in fact, Brown’s 
classification is much the same as that of the most modern floras. 
His 4 years of wandering round Australia appear to have satiated 
his appetite for travel and he spent the rest of his life quietly 
in London, engaging in all forms of botanical investigation and 
revered as the greatest botanist of his day. 
The next botanist to achieve future renown landed in South 
Australia very modestly in 1847 in the person of Dr. Ferdinand 
Mueller, who had taken his degree as Doctor of Philosophy -at 
the University of Kiel in the earlier part of the same year. His 
father and mother had died of phthisis in Germany and one of 
his two sisters was threatened with the same complaint, which 
was his reason for bringing them to a milder and warmer climate. 
This step was taken on the recommendation of Dr. Ludwig 
Preiss, who collected plants in W estern Australia from 1838 to 
1842, and who had returned to Germany. On the voyage to 
Australia Mueller was a fellow-passenger of Mr. Moritz Heuzen- 
roeder, and on arrival he obtained a position as chemist in Mr. 
Heuzenroeder’s shop in Rundle Street. Some of you, who, like 
myself, are not as young as we once were, may remember that 
establishment in the 80’s and 90’s, with its inscriptions of 
“Deutsche Apotheke” and “Kiel spricht man Deutsch.” Young 
Mueller found time to travel to what was then the Far North 
(the Flinders Range and north of Quorn) and to the South-East 
always collecting, studying and describing our plants. Towards 
the end of 1848 he established himself on 20 acres of land in the 
Bugle Ranges, part of a block of land purchased by Sir Samuel 
Davenport, Mr. Krichauff (later a member of Parliament) and 
himself. He built a hut and installed his sister Clara as house¬ 
keeper. but farming did not suit him and he returned to Adelaide 
and resumed his favorite study of botany. When the gold rush 
came in 1852, he went to the Victorian diggings with the intention 
of starting a chemist's business on the field. Fortunately, this 
was not necessary, for Governor Latrobe, whose attention had 
