Abstract
Brown joined the army because he could draw on a dependable source of income and become financially independent to pursue his interests in natural history. He was accepted into the newly established regiment of the Fifeshire Fencibles in Ireland. His recruiting trips to England allowed him to deliver samples of the plants he collected in Ireland. Brown’s study regimen increased in intensity. He studied the plants he gathered even more acutely. The only instrument he used in his examination of the fine structure of the plants was a simple microscope, developed by the celebrated British naturalist, John Ellis. He took advantage of a sick leave to travel to Edinburgh to do further work on Scottish plants. During this period, Brown was elected as an Associate to the Linnean Society of London, quite an honor for someone relatively young (25). In addition to visiting the Society in its rooms in Panton Square three different times during the year, he worked in the herbarium of the British Museum, and the herbarium of Edward Forster (1765–1849) at Walthamstow to collect more plants and add to the lists of plants he had assembled. Banks’s librarian, Jonas Dryander (1748–1810), secretary to the Linnean Society, was one of Brown’s sponsors for membership, and James Dickson served as the other. Equally important was his visits to the herbarium and library of Banks at Banks’s home in Soho Square in London, then the center of British botany. Dryander, impressed with Brown’s body of work completed so far, facilitated Brown’s gaining ready access to Banks’s collection. In October 1798 during a recruiting mission for the Fencibles in London, Brown met Abbé José Francisco Correia da Serra, a Portuguese politician and scientist and an especially skilled botanist. When Brown met Correia da Serra, the latter was impressed by the young man’s determination and dedication, and da Serra realized that Brown should meet Banks. Banks was already faced with a dilemma. His first choice was to have Mungo Park go as naturalist on the journey to New Holland (Australia) to explore the interior of the continent, and collect as much flora and fauna as possible. But Park refused to go. Banks still needed a naturalist to go on the planned journey. Park’s refusal to take part in the expedition opened the door for Brown. This proved very fortunate in the long run because Brown, although perhaps not as flamboyant a figure as Mungo Park, was probably a far more diligent observer of nature. Brown accepted Banks’s offer as naturalist and was appointed to be the geologist and zoologist in addition to serving as botanist on HMS Investigator under Captain Matthew Flinders.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Fencibles were the only full-time regulars who were limited to home service (i.e., “de-fencible”), unless all members voted to go overseas. Thirty-four Fencible Cavalry regiments were raised in 1794–1795.
- 2.
Brown wrote to Withering later—on January 29, 1797—that little or nothing has occurred. David J. Mabberley, Jupiter Botanicus, Robert Brown of the British Museum (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1985), p. 31.
- 3.
Later on, Brown was able to utilize these language skills he had acquired earlier. K.A. Austin in The Voyage of the Investigator 1801–1803, Commander Matthew Flinders, R.N. (Adelaide: Rigby Limited, 1964) indicated that Brown’s linguistic abilities helped Commander Flinders; “Flinders could not speak French and for this reason he took Brown, an accomplished linguist with him” when the party from the Investigator met with Captain Baudin of the French fleet, p. 108.
- 4.
After William Sr.’s death in 1799, Brown helped complete the 1801 edition of Botanical Arrangement.
- 5.
Phyllis I. Edwards reported that he visited the Linnean Society on February 6th, 1798, and July 5th and 17th of the same year, “Robert Brown (1773–1858) and the natural history of Matthew Flinders’ voyage in H.M.S. Investigator, 1801–1805,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 7 (1976): 385–407, 387.
- 6.
Collection at the Royal Gardens at Kew, Letter from Brown to Withering, June 15th, 1798.
- 7.
Correia da Serra letter of Oct. 17, 1798, to Banks, Kew Gardens, Banks Correspondence. 2. 206; also a copy in Edward Smith’s The Life of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, with some notices of his friends and contemporaries (London and New York: John Lane, 1911), p. 231, and Sir Joseph Banks, The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks ed. Neil Chambers (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012, vol. 5, Letter [4]), p. 4.
- 8.
Caley was the son of a Manchester horse dealer. David Mabberley speculated that Withering’s involvement with Caley may have prevented him from writing to Banks earlier on Brown’s behalf, Jupiter Botanicus, p. 40.
- 9.
This remark is from a letter from Banks to Caley, March 7, 1795, Dawson Turner Collection (D.T.C.) 9: 199–200. Brown later praised Caley’s collecting work. He referred to him as “Botanicus peritus et accuratus,” high praise indeed from someone with Brown’s meticulous standards. Also see Alice M. Coats, The Plant Hunters: Being A History of the Horticultural Pioneers, Their Quest and their Discoveries, From the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969).
- 10.
Letter from Banks to Caley, January 7, 1798, D.T.C. 10 (2): 157–158.
- 11.
Letter from Caley to Banks, July 12, 1798, D.T.C. 11: 6–8.
- 12.
Caley’s letter of August 23rd 1798 to Banks indicated that he was dissatisfied with his “treatment” and gave Banks an ultimatum that if his letter “is not answered within 10 days,” he will assume that Banks is not acting in a proper manner. D.T.C. 11: 37–43.
- 13.
Banks’ letter to Caley, November, 16, 1798, copy in British Museum (Natural History), D.T.C. 11. 116–117.
- 14.
Although Cook very much wanted Banks to be part of the much-anticipated journey because of the success of the prior voyage on Endeavour, he was ready to relinquish his cabin to accommodate the large party Banks planned to take along, but the British Government’s patience had run out. The Admiralty was annoyed with Banks’s plans to take on so many supernumeraries—including tuba players—believing it as excessive. They firmly refused to accept Banks’s conditions despite his connections in society.
- 15.
Correia Da Serra letter of October 17, 1798, to Banks, Kew Gardens, Banks Correspondence. 2. 206; copy in Correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Banks Bart, Botany Library of the British Museum (Natural History) 11. 111; in Edward Smith’s The Life of Sir Joseph Banks, p. 231, as well as in The Indian & Pacific Correspondence, vol. 5, letter # 4, pp. 4–5.
- 16.
See Matthew Flinders, “Concerning the Differences in the Magnetic Needle, on Board the Investigator, Arising from an Alteration in the Direction of the Ship’s Head,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 95: 186–197 (1805).
- 17.
Fear was so intense that the year before the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as well as their wives were under suspicion of being French agents probably because of Wordsworth’s sympathies with the French Revolution.
- 18.
“Recruiting records” in James R. Sutherland’s, Oxford book of literary anecdotes (Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 159–163.
- 19.
When Smith died, the Society was able to purchase Smith’s personal collection along with what the Society did not own, forming the crux of its collection. A notice in Gentleman’s Magazine (1828) 143: 296–300 indicated that when Smith arrived in London, “he became acquainted with Sir Joseph Banks, that eminent patron of natural science … upon whose recommendation purchased in 1784 the celebrated Linnean collection …. Having purchased the Linnean collection, and settled in London as a man of acknowledged science … [he] in conjunction with Dr. Goodenough, Lord Bishop of Carlisle … and Thomas Marsham, esq … set about establishing the Linnean Society of which Dr. Smith was the original President, and to which distinguished office was annually and unanimously chosen, from that period to the present time,” 297.
- 20.
See Joan Webb’s George Caley, Nineteenth Century Naturalist: A Biography (Chip** Norton: S. Beatty & Sons, 1995), for an excellent and comprehensive account of this affair, particularly chapter one, “The Making of a Botanist.”
- 21.
Banks’s letter to Brown, December 12, 1800, British Museum Add. MS. 32439.24. Also in The Indian & Pacific Correspondence, vol. 5, letter # 161, p. 223.
- 22.
Brown Correspondence, British Museum (Natural History, Botany Department) 3.101. A copy is in The Indian & Pacific Correspondence, vol. 5, letter # 163, p. 225.
- 23.
Banks’s letter of June 15,1801, to Brown, British Museum Add. M.S. 32439.41. Also in The Indian & Pacific Correspondence, vol. 5, letter # 288, pp. 363–364.
- 24.
Diary of Robert Brown, British Museum (Natural History, Botany Library). The Diary has been transcribed completely with considerable annotations in Nature’s Investigator; the Diary of Robert Brown in Australia, 1801–1805, compiled by T.G. Vallence, D.T. Moore, and E.W. Groves (Canberra, Australia: Australian Biological Research Study, 2001), p. 25. Notes to the Diary will indicate the page numbers in Nature’s Investigator.
- 25.
Brown Diary, p. 25.
- 26.
Brown Diary, pp. 28–29.
- 27.
Brown Diary, pp. 26–27 and 35.
- 28.
Brown Diary, p. 35.
- 29.
Brown Diary, pp. 37 and 40.
- 30.
Brown Diary, p. 40.
- 31.
Brown Diary, p. 41.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schwartz, J. (2021). A Good Practical Botanist. In: Robert Brown and Mungo Park. Memoirs of The New York Botanical Garden, vol 122. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74859-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74859-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-74858-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-74859-3
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)