The Miscellaneous Botanical Works of Robert Brown (2-Volume Set)

About this book

A reprint of a classical work in the Cambridge Library Collection.

The botanist and librarian Robert Brown (1773-1858) is regarded as one of the most significant figures in the advancement of plant science in the nineteenth century. After studying at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, he made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks via William Withering, and in 1801 was appointed as naturalist on Matthew Flinders' expedition to Australia. Brown made extensive collections of animals and minerals, but his 3 400 plant specimens from Australia, Tasmania and Timor were the foundation of his work for the rest of his life, as an active member of the Linnean Society, as Banks's librarian, and as an under-librarian in the British Museum. This two-volume collection of his 'miscellaneous botanical works', edited by John J. Bennett, Brown's assistant at the British Museum, was published under the auspices of the Ray Society in 1866-7. It has not been possible to reissue the accompanying quarto volume of plates.

Contents

Volume 1: Preface
Part I. Geographico-Botanical Memoirs
1. The botany of Terra Australis
2. Plants collected in Abyssinia
3. The herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith in the Congo
4. Plants collected in Captain Ross's voyage
5. Plants found in Spitzbergen
6. Plants collected in Melville Island
7. Plants collected in central Africa
8. Botany of the Swan River
9. Botanical appendix to Captain Sturt's expedition

Part II. Structural and Physiological Memoirs
1. The parts of fructification in mosses
2. Remarkable deviations from the usual structure of seeds and fruits
3. A new genus of plants, named Rafflesia
4. Rafflesia arnoldi and Hydnora africana
5. Kingia
6. Particles contained in the pollen of plants
7. Fecundation in Orchaidaceae and Asclepiadeae (1)
8. Fecundation in Orchidaceae and Asclepiadeae (2)
9. The compound ovarium of plants
10. The embryos in the seeds of conifera
11. The gulf-weed
12. Triplosporite, an undescribed fossil fruit
Index

Volume 2
Preface

Part III. Systematic Memoirs
1. Plants called Protaceae
2. The Asclepiadeae
3. Woodsia, a new genus of ferns
4. The natural family of plants called Compositae
5. Three new species of plants found in China
6. Lyellia, a new genus of mosses
7. The structure and affinities of Cephalotus
8. Limnanthes, a new genus of plants

Part IV. Contributions to Systematic Works
1. Genera et species plantarum Cruciferarum
2. Genera et species plantarum Leguminosarum
3. Genera et species plantarum Myrtacearum
4. Genera et species plantarum Compositarum
5. Genera et species plantarum Orchidearum
6. Genera et species plantarum e variis familiis
7. Dr Richardson's botanical appendix to Franklin's 'Voyage to the Polar Sea'
8. Names of and notes on Indian plants
9. Notes and observations on Indian plants
10. Extracts from Plantae Javanicae Rariores
11. Contributions to The Botanical Magazine
12. Contributions to The Botanical Register
13. Names of plants
14. Short contributions to various works

Index of subjects to Volume 2
Index of names and plants to both volumes

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