John Bretland Farmer

“ The keen desire to get to the bottom of a problem, which was so outstanding a feature of Brown's whole mental attitude, unquestionably explains why he was led to make so many important discoveries in such widely different directions. His first hand knowledge of the structure of a vast number of plants gave a soundness and depth to his morphological investigations that must arouse the admiration of everyone who is acquainted with them. ”

“ 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 also seaworthy, he possessed many physical advantages, but in addition to them he had trained himself as an accurate and accomplished botanist. ”

“ Although, as I have said, Brown was less successful when grappling with cryptogams, he is always worth reading on any subject, and in his own special province, that of the flowering plants, I know of no one amongst the older writers from whom one may learn so much. This is due not only to the genius and erudition which he brought to bear on every problem he attacked, but also to the example he affords of scientific method in handling his subject. ”

“ Someone has affirmed that no man is greater than the age in which he lives. A cryptic utterance, savouring perhaps of a certain dash of impressionism, and not altogether false as it is assuredly not wholly true. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, however, we endeavour dispassionately to appraise the performance of the world's great (though perhaps we should exclude the few greatest) men we shall probably discover that the implied limitation is justified, at least in part, by history and experience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many facts, however, and among others the existence of hybrid plants, prove that this is not the only stimulus capable of producing the effect; and in Orchideae I have found that the action in the pollen of one species may be excited by the stigma of another belonging to a very different tribe." It is hard to believe that these lines were written so long as 80 years ago. Brown goes on to describe the change that follows impregnation, and the gradual appearance of the embryo. ”

“ He was very cautious, and thus, although he traced the pollen tubes from the pollen grain into the ovary and into the micropyle (foramen) of the ovule, he still leaves it an open question whether, in all cases, anything of a material nature passes from the pollen to the interior of the ovule, which may thus be held responsible for the formation of an embryo.
He cites the observations of Amici and of Du Petit Thouars, and then states he does not feel he is as far advanced as these observers. ”

“ To the last he retained his interest in his life work, and on June 3, a week before he died, he signed a certificate in favour of an Associate of the Linnean Society.
Robert Brown, as we have seen, penetrated more deeply than most of his contemporaries into the secrets of nature, and he enriched the science to which he devoted his long life by discoveries of fundamental importance. ”

“ He then goes on at once to argue that the apex of the nucleus is the point of the ovulum where impregnation takes place, and adds that "all doubt would be removed if cases could be produced where the ovarium was either altogether wanting or so imperfectly formed that the ovulum itself became directly exposed to the action of the pollen or its fovilla." ”

“ Ten years afterwards he reverted to the same subject, describing the new genus Lyellia from Nepaul, and comparing it, as was his wont, with allied genera, e.g. Polytrichum, Buxbaumia and many others, with the view of elucidating the significance of its structure. The spores, however, are still spoken of as seeds. The male plant is generally regarded as the barren plant. It is not easy to reconcile the existence of male flowers with the view of Beauvois which Brown seemed still to consider as not disproved, viz. that the seeds and pollen were both contained in the capsule. ”

“ Thus his treatise on the Proteaceae starts off with advice to study the flower in the young, instead of only in its adult condition, and this is driven home by an excellent disquisition on the structure of the androecium and gynaeceum of Asclepiads, a subject which occupied his mind for some years and formed the basis for separate papers at subsequent periods. Only when he has discussed the morphology of the Asclepiad flower does he plunge, abruptly, into the questions relating directly to the Proteaceae. ”

“ But every now and then when writing on one subject he seems to be carried away with the rush of his ideas on general questions. Thus in a memoir on the genus Kingia he entitles the paper, possibly to save his face after he had written it, "Character and Description of Kingia; a new genus of plants found on the south-west coast of New Holland. With observations on the Structure of its unimpregnated Ovulum, and on the female flower of Cycadeae and Coniferae." ”

“ It would be as ungracious as it would be futile to attempt to rob the great botanist of the meed of praise which by all that is right belongs to him, because he could not escape from the influence of limiting factors. His supreme merit rests in his wonderful elucidation of the morphology and inter-relationships of the higher plants, and if we judge him by his achievements in this field we shall hardly disagree with v. ”