1799 and 1807. In its best state it is a very splendid work, about 24 inches by 18 inches; but its bibliography is very difficult, hardly two copies being alike (W. B. Hemsley and W. F. Perkins in Gardeners' Chronicle, 1894, ii. 89, 276). It consisted of three parts, with a profusion of elaborately written sub-titles. The first contains portraits of the author by Bartolozzi, after Russel; of Linnæus by Henry Meyer, after Hoffmann, ornamented by Bartolozzi; of Queen Charlotte by Sir William Beechey, ornamented by Bartolozzi; of Sir Thomas Millington by Woolnoth, after Sir Godfrey Kneller; and of Linnæus in his Lapp dress by Henry Kingsbury, after Hoffmann; with ‘a prize dissertation on the sexes of plants,’ which is a translation of Linné's ‘Sexum Plantarum Argumentis et Experimentis Novis …,’ with copious notes strongly defending Millington's claims to the discovery of the sexuality of plants, and a plate representing the pollen of various flowers, reproduced from one published by Geoffroy in 1711. The second part was apparently ‘The Genera of Exotic and Indigenous Plants that are to be met with in Great Britain’ (168 pp., without date or publisher's name); but this part is often missing. The third part was issued in 1799 as ‘Picturesque Botanical Plates of the New Illustration …’ priced with the text at twenty guineas, but also issued simultaneously, apparently without the text, as ‘Picturesque Botanical Plates of the Choicest Flowers of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.’ In 1804 it was reissued as ‘The Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature, being Picturesque Plates …;’ and in 1812, re-engraved on a smaller scale, 20 inches by 151/4, as ‘The Temple of Flora, or Garden of the Botanist, Poet, Painter, and Philosopher.’ This part has no fewer than eight titles and sub-titles, and thirty-one plates (cf. Notes and Queries, viii. v. 467, vi. 15).
In 1804 Thornton had an exhibition of the originals of his plates at 49 New Bond Street, of which he issued a descriptive catalogue (British Museum press-mark, T. 112[6]), from the advertisements in which it appears that he had then published No. 20 of ‘The Philosophy of Botany, or Botanical Extracts, including a New Illustration … and the Temple of Flora;’ No. 1 of ‘A Grammar of Botany,’ to be completed in fifteen monthly numbers or less, with seven or eight plates each, price three shillings, but given gratis to purchasers of the ‘Philosophy;’ No. 4 of ‘The Empire of Flora, or Scientific Description of all known Plants, Natives and Exotics, [with] more than one thousand Dissections from Drawings by John Miller,’ also in monthly parts, at three shillings, each with eight copper-plates, the British plants forming about fifty numbers, making two octavo volumes, with four hundred plates, to be followed by foreign plants in three volumes, with six hundred plates; and No. 3 of ‘Portraits of Eminent Authors,’ at three shillings each. The part of the ‘Empire of Flora’ that was actually published was ‘The British Flora’ (5 vols. 1812), and the three portraits then issued were Erasmus Darwin, engraved by Holl after Rawlinson; Professor Thomas Martyn, engraved by Vendramini after Russell; and Sir James Edward Smith, engraved by Ridley after Russel. Some twenty-four more were afterwards published, of which a complete list is given by Messrs. Hemsley and Perkins (loc. cit.). They were issued separately at five guineas, were included in ‘Elementary Botanical Plates … to illustrate Botanical Extracts’ (London, 1810, folio), and in some copies of the ‘New Illustration;’ in fact, as Mr. Hemsley says, Thornton seems to have sent each subscriber what he thought would please him.
Thornton became an M.D. of St. Andrews in 1805, and a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1812. In 1811 he obtained an act of parliament (51 Geo. III, cap. 103), authorising him to organise a lottery of his botanical works, and this was advertised as ‘The Royal Botanical Lottery, under the patronage of the prince regent, of twenty thousand tickets at two guineas each, and ten thousand prizes, of a total value exceeding 77,000l.’ The first prize was the collection of original pictures at that date on exhibition at the Europæan Museum, King Street, St. James's which was valued at over five thousand pounds. The second class of prizes consisted of copies of ‘The Temple of Flora,’ ‘in five folio volumes;’ the third class, of sets of the plates coloured; the fourth class, of the quarto edition; the fifth class, of the ‘British Flora’ (5 vols. 8vo, with four hundred plates); and the sixth class, of the ‘Elements of Botany’ (2 vols. 8vo, with two hundred plates).
The lottery does not appear to have proved remunerative; and, in spite of his numerous subsequent publications, when Thornton died at Howland Street, Fitzroy Square, on 21 Jan. 1837, he left his family very poor. He had a son, who lectured on astronomy and geography, and a daughter. There are four engraved portraits of Thornton: one, in folio, by Bartolozzi, after Russel, with a view of Guy's Hospital, from the ‘New Illustration,’ 1799; another, in octavo, by Ridley from the same original,
