crowned his work in after life. There is much humour perhaps of an unconscious kind, though I am not very sure that it was so very unconscious in his carefully kept diary. Here is an extract, dated Feb. 7, 1800.
Before breakfast began the German auxiliary verbs.
Committed to memory a genus in Cullen's Synopsis. Described Polytrichum aloides—to be compared with Mr Menzies' P. rubellum.
Began the description of Osmunda pellucida.
Hospital usual time.
Took exactly the same walk as on the 4th. Blasia pusilla Lin., Weissia recurvirostra Hedw.? Dicranum varium Hedw., Polytrichum nanum, Polytrichum urnigerum, Phascum subulatum, Dicranum glaucum, absque fruct.
At dinner about 3 pints of port., remained in the mess room till about 9 or 10 o'clock—slept in my chair till nearly 3 in the morning.
Feb. 8, before breakfast finished the auxiliary verb Seyn, to be, in Wendeborn's German Grammar....
He did not, however, spend all his evenings in this fashion, but whether it was a glass of water, a pint of porter, or what not, it is all gravely set down, together with the work he succeeded in accomplishing. Instances of his thoroughness are not wanting. He says in one place he had read Nicholson's Chemistry, ch. vi., on the balance, "to be again perused, my defective knowledge of the mechanical powers rendering part of it unintelligible."
He was fond of reading in bed, but his light literature on these occasions included such works as Adam Smith, Blackstone's Commentaries, and a German Grammar.
His botanical acquirements were already attracting notice, and in 1798, being detached for recruiting service, he took the opportunity of a visit to London to utilise the splendid collections in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks, and he was also in the same year elected an Associate of the Linnean Society. Soon after his return to Ireland he received a letter from Sir Joseph offering him the nomination as Naturalist to the Investigator, which was to be commanded by Captain Flinders. He at once decided to go, writing, as he tells us, by return of post.
Few men who have, at so early an age, enjoyed the opportunity of a voyage of discovery were so well equipped for the work as was Robert Brown. Blessed with a good constitution, which was
