Facts were distorted and observations misinterpreted in ways that now seem to us almost to smack of sheer perversity, but we must not forget that the methods which in later years have proved so effective had not then been recognised; Hofmeister, with his marvellous genius, had not as yet arisen to shew the way through the maze of the lower forms.
But what does strike one as astonishing, or might do so if the circumstance were not still so common, is the evidence of the difficulty men experienced in really seeing things as they were, and of distinguishing the fundamentally important from the trivial or even irrelevant.
As always, what was needed was the man who could fix his gaze on facts, who would spare no pains to find out what was true, and thus succeed in discovering a sure base to serve as a vantage ground for further advance. Von Mohl was one of these, and earlier in the century there was the man, the subject of this lecture, who by his single-hearted search after truth, and the extraordinary ardour and ability with which he prosecuted his investigations will always occupy a high position in the history of Botany.
Robert Brown came of a stock which refused to bow the knee to authority, though his forbears did not, any more than himself, hesitate to impress the weight of it on others. His father was a non-juring clergyman of Montrose, and was in consequence obliged to leave the official ecclesiastical fold. But he carried a congregation with him, and not desiring to set up novel forms of church government, managed to get himself consecrated bishop of the new flock. As bishop, priest and deacon, tres in uno juncti, he ministered to his Edinburgh church, and his episcopal staff may still be seen in the rooms of the Linnean Society. His son Robert, who was born in 1773, inherited both his father's independence and also his dominant character. And, indeed, the great influence he wielded in the botanical world was due in no small degree to his strong personality, reinforced as it was by his high scientific attainments.
He began at an early age to evince a love of botany and to give proof of the strong critical faculty which enabled him so successfully to solve the problems he attacked, and so materially to advance our science. He added to his mental attainments a wonderfully methodical habit, and the diary of his earlier years reveals him to us not only as a hard-working student but as one meticulously accurate in detail.
In 1795 he was appointed Surgeon mate to the Fifeshire Regiment of Fencibles, and his letter of appointment signed by the Colonel, James Durham, is preserved in the Natural History Museum. His regiment was quartered in Ireland, and he made good use of his time, collecting all the plants he could get hold of, including mosses and liverworts, of which he amassed a considerable collection. Indeed, it is said that he owed his first acquaintance with Sir Joseph Banks to his discovery in Ireland of the rare moss Glyphomitrium Daviesii. This recognition by Sir Joseph proved the turning-point of his life. The six years or so that he spent in the Fencibles were turned to good account, and in looking to his own record of his life during those years one realises how thoroughly he earned the success that 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.