tain Flinders departed on his return to Britain, Brown, Bauer, and others remained in Australia, and examined the botany of the Blue Mountains and other parts of New South Wales, as well as Tasmania and the islands in Bass' Straits. Captain Flinders had intended to return and carry on the survey, but in consequence of being wrecked, and subsequently made prisoner by the French governor of the Mauritius, he was unable to accomplish his design. In consequence of his non-arrival. Brown and his companions returned to Britain in 1805. Brown brought with him a collection of 4000 species of plants. Soon after this he succeeded Dr. Dryander as librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, and was subsequently appointed librarian of the Linnæan Society. He was now enabled to enter on the examination of his collections, and he elaborated those views which finally placed him in the highest rank as a botanist. He gave the results of his researches in 1810, in his "Prodromus Floræ Novæ Hollandiæ," a truly philosophical work, which showed the author's thorough knowledge of the principles of natural classification, and was the first British work on botany which treated of plant-arrangement in a truly philosophical spirit. This work only extended to one volume, although it appears that a second was contemplated by Brown. Part of his researches was also given in the appendix to the narrative of Captain Flinders' voyage, published in 1814, under the title, "General Remarks, Geographical and Systematical, on the Botany of Terra Australis." He continued to read a number of most profound and original botanical papers before the Linnæan Society, which have appeared in their Transactions. One of his earliest papers was published in the Transactions of the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh, on the plants called by him asclepiadaceæ, and which formed the basis of the elaborate papers on that interesting order of plants which he afterwards contributed to the Linnæan Society. In 1823 Brown became possessed of the library and herbarium of Sir Joseph Banks, who bequeathed them to him for his life. The collection of plants was offered by Brown to the British museum, and he was appointed, in 1827, keeper of the botanical department, an office which he continued to fill till his death. In 1811 he became a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1832 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford; and in 1833 he was elected one of the foreign associates of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1839 the Copley medal was awarded to him by the Royal Society for his researches on vegetable impregnation. In 1849 he was elected president of the Linnæan Society, and this office he resigned in 1853. He received from Sir Robert Peel a pension of £200 a year for his scientific merits. He died in London in June, 1858.
Brown was a botanist of the highest stamp. He possessed singular acumen, and was denominated by Humboldt "botanicorum facile princeps." He made great and important contributions to our knowledge of botany, structural and physiological, and contributed most valuable papers to the Transactions of the Linnæan and other societies. He described the plants of many collections, such as Horsfield's Java plants, Salt's Abyssinian species, the African collections of Oudney, Clapperton, and Captain Tuckey, and the arctic collections of Ross, Parry, Richardson, and others. Among his other works may be noticed his remarks on the natural order proteaceæ, on asclepiadaceæ, on woodsia, on composite, on orchideæ, on rafflesia, on kingia, on cephalotus; on the organs and modes of fecundation in orchideæ and asclepiadaceæ, a paper of the highest merit, as giving important new views on the subject of vegetable reproduction; on cyrtandraceæ, on the embryos and seeds of coniferæ, &c. All his writings display a wonderful power of botanical analysis, and an enlarged view of vegetable affinities. His name is known wherever botany is cultivated as a science, and his researches have promoted the advancement of botany during the long period of nearly half a century. As a private friend he was loved and respected. He was admired by a large circle of attached friends for the soundness of his judgment, the simplicity of his habits, and the kindness of his disposition.—J. H. B.
BROWN, Samuel, M.D., born at Haddington on 23d February, 1817; died in Edinburgh in 1856. This young and singularly able man was the fourth son of Dr. Samuel Brown of Haddington—the founder of itinerating libraries, and grandson of Dr. John Brown, author of the universally known Self-interpreting Bible and the Dictionary of the Bible. Few persons living in Edinburgh of recent years gave such promise of highest eminence as the subject of this brief notice, or bound around them so many affectionate friends. If the promise was not fully realized, it is because his life was so short, and its later years were consumed in hopeless contest with a most painful malady. Samuel Brown's peculiar position in reference to abstract science was defined by his extension of Boscovich's theory, and his assertion that chemical elements, usually known as simple, could be transmuted into each other. Of his thoughts and labours in this direction, the only authentic account is in the "Critical Lectures" delivered by him in Edinburgh in 1843. These have appeared since his death at the head of two volumes of his collected essays. Dr. Brown's speculations, however, were not confined within the sphere of abstract science. A sympathetic student of the development of thought in every main direction—interested especially in literature and art—multitudes of occasional essays flowed from his pen, adorning our best reviews and other periodicals. A selection from these was published in Edinburgh in 1858, in two handsome volumes. Very few more interesting ones have recently issued from the press.—J. P. N.
BROWN, Thomas, or more properly (for the vulgar diminutive suits his genius) Tom Brown, poet, was the son of a Shropshire farmer, living near Shiffnal. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, and soon became notorious for his wit and his irregularities. Being obliged to leave the university, he went to Kingston in Surrey, and commenced teaching, but speedily growing tired of this monotonous occupation, he betook himself to London, where his audacious lampoons, his wit, and his conversational powers, gained him abundance of notoriety. He died in 1704. His writings have been collected into 4 volumes, 12mo.
BROWN, Thomas, the celebrated Scotch metaphysician, was the son of the Rev. Samuel Brown, minister of Kirkmabreck in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, at which place he was born, Jan. 9, 1778. The father died soon after the birth of his son, and the family removed to Edinburgh, where he received the rudiments of his education from his mother. In his seventh year he was sent to London, under the protection of his maternal uncle, Captain Smith, and attended, successively, schools at Camberwell, Chiswick, and Kensington. Shortly after the death of his uncle in 1792, he returned to Edinburgh, and resided with his mother and sisters. For several years Brown attended the usual classes, literary and scientific, in Edinburgh. As he read Darwin's Zoonomia, a plausible but superficial work, which was at that time exciting a great degree of interest in the literary world, he began to write notes and observations on the views advocated, and this ripened into his "Observations on Darwin's Zoonomia," which was written before he was nineteen years of age, and published in 1798, when he was twenty. In this work, which is an extraordinary instance of precocity of intellectual power, almost all the favourite ideas which he developed in his future philosophical works are to be found. While attending college, he took an active part in the proceedings of the Academy of Physics, which numbered among its members Erskine, Brougham, Reddie, Birkbeck, Leyden, Horner, Jeffrey, Smith, and others, who rose to distinction; and which discussed all sorts of subjects, literary and philosophical. Out of this society rose the Edinburgh Review, to which Brown contributed several articles—in particular, an article on Kant, in the second number. In 1796 he began the study of law, which, however, he abandoned for medicine, which he studied from 1798 till 1803. A short time after receiving his degree, he published two volumes of poems. His next publication was his "Essay on Cause and Effect," occasioned by the controversy which arose about the appointment of Leslie to the chair of mathematics. According to Brown, the relation of cause and effect is an irresistible intuitive belief, a doctrine by which he attached himself to the Scottish school, and saved himself from the scepticism of Hume. In 1806 he was associated in partnership with the famous Dr. Gregory in the medical profession. Dugald Stewart being in a declining state of health. Brown lectured for him during a part of the sessions 1808-9 and 1809-10; and in the summer of 1810 Mr. Stewart having signified a desire to this effect. Brown was chosen his colleague, and from that time discharged the whole duties of the office. When the college opened, he had only the few lectures which he delivered the previous sessions; but such was the fervour of his genius, and the readiness of his pen, that he was able to deliver, continuously, one of the most brilliant, and perhaps the most effective courses of lectures ever heard in the university of Edinburgh. He generally commenced the composition of the lecture after tea, and had it ready for delivery
