A List of the Cryptogams and Gymnospermous Plant Specimens in the British Museum (Natural History) gathered by Robert Brown in Australia 1801-5 E. W. GROVES and D. T. MOORE (Communicated by T. G. VALLANCE) GROVES, E. W., & MOORE, D. T. A list of the cryptogams and gymnospermous plant specimens in the British Museum (Natural History) gathered by Robert Brown in Australia 1801-5. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. Ill (2), 1989: 65-102. A list is here published for the first time of the cryptogams and gymnosperms gathered by Robert Brown in Australia and now preserved in the herbarium of the British Museum (Natural History), London. Brief remarks on Brown's Australian visit and collecting during 1801-5 are given. Correlation with the register of the collection prepared by J. J. Bennett is indicated. E. W. Groves, 143 Westleigh Avenue, Coulsdon, Surrey CR3 3AF, United Kingdom (formerly Department of Botany, British Museum (Natural History), and D. T. Moore, Department of Mineralogy, British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom; manuscript received 12 April 1988, accepted for publication 15 February 1989. '. . . That full account of the Botanical discoveries made during Flinders's expedition, which the pub-lic had a right to expect, has never appeared . . . ' J. Lindley, 1844 Introduction The work of Robert Brown during and after Flinders' expedition to Australia in 1801-5 is recognized as a significant contribution to Australian natural history in general and Australian botany in particular, but scientific records of the expedition are frag-mentary. Flinders' (1814) account of the voyage of the Investigator concentrates on geo-graphical, navigational and sailing aspects and is useful for the chronology of the expedition up to his departure in 1803 and subsequent imprisonment at Mauritius. But for botanical details we must rely on Brown. His Prodromus of 1810 was intended to be the main account of the botany, but only one volume of the two proposed was produced, and only a few copies were sold. In due course, this important work was withdrawn. Brown also contributed a modest botanical appendix to the Flinders volumes (1814: 2, 533-613). After the death of the expedition's commander, Matthew Flinders [1774-1814], British interest in the voyage appears to have declined, and it was not until 1904 that Britten published an account of the plants collected by Brown in Madeira on the out-ward voyage. More recently Rourke (1974) has produced an account of Brown's activi-ties at the Cape of Good Hope, but there appears to be no list of South African specimens collected by Brown in existence. Brown's Timor plants are also little known, being only briefly mentioned by Forbes (1885). In Australia Brown prepared lists of plants seen or collected, or both, at some of the anchorages. Where these lists are still extant they remain in manuscript, and as Lindley (1844) pointed out, no published list of Brown's Australian plant specimens was available forty years after Brown returned. It PROC. LINN. SOC. N.S.W., 111 (2), 1989
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