conditions of a lecture, and I make no pretence to completeness, but will endeavour rather to indicate what appear to be the more important of his many other contributions to science.
His catalogues of the plants collected by those associated with various expeditions, his Kew lists (which were published under Aiton's name) are well known to students of systematic Botany, but his fine monograph on Rafflesia, containing, as it does, many observations of general interest will well repay perusal even after these many years. His studies on Cephalotus, on Caulophyllum (with its remarkable seed formation), as well as his considerable memoir on the Proteaceae, shew him as a naturalist imbued with keen insight and possessed of extraordinarily sound judgment.
But Brown did not confine his attention to phanerogams, but, as might have been anticipated from the studies of his earlier years, pursued his investigations into the little explored field of the cryptogams.
We have seen that as a young man he had been greatly attracted to the study of mosses. Later on he contributed two important papers on these plants to the Linnean Society, one in 1809, in which he described two new genera, one of them Dawsonia, the other Leptostomum, both from Australasia. The introductory remarks in which he discusses the character of the moss capsule, are interesting as shewing how hopelessly impossible it was at that time to arrive at a scientific understanding of its structure, so long as everything was tested by the touchstone of the flowering plants. Ten years afterwards he reverted to the same subject, describing the new genus Lyellia from Nepaul, and comparing it, as was his wont, with allied genera, e.g. Polytrichum, Buxbaumia and many others, with the view of elucidating the significance of its structure. The spores, however, are still spoken of as seeds. The male plant is generally regarded as the barren plant. It is not easy to reconcile the existence of male flowers with the view of Beauvois which Brown seemed still to consider as not disproved, viz. that the seeds and pollen were both contained in the capsule.
Mosses were not the only cryptogams to which he turned his attention. He described a new species of Azolla (A. pinnata)
