BROWN, ROBERT, a distinguished botanist, born at Montrose, son of an Episcopal clergyman; accompanied an expedition to survey the coast of Australia in 1801, returned after four years’ exploration, with 4000 plants mostly new to science, which he classified and described in his “Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae”; became librarian to, and finally president of, the Linnean Society; styled by Humboldt botanicorum facile princeps; he was a man of most minute and accurate observation, and of a wide range of knowledge, much of which died along with him, out of the fear of committing himself to mistakes (1773-1858).

BROWN, SAMUEL, M.D., chemist, born in Haddington, grandson of John Brown of Haddington, whose life was devoted, with the zeal of a mediaeval alchemist, to a reconstruction of the science of atomics, which he did not live to see realised:  a man of genius, a brilliant conversationist and an associate of the most intellectual men of his time, among the number De Quincey, Carlyle, and Emerson; wrote “Lay Sermons on the Theory of Christianity,” “Lectures on the Atomic Theory,” and two volumes of “Essays, Scientific and Literary” (1817-1856).

BROWN, THOMAS, Scottish psychologist, born in Kirkcudbrightshire, bred to medicine; professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, colleague and successor to Dugald Stewart; his lectures, all improvised on the spur of the moment, were published posthumously; “Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind” established a sixth sense, which he called the “muscular.”  He was a man of precocious talent, and a devoted student, to the injury of his health and the shortening of his life; he was obliged from ill-health to resign his professorship after 10 years (1778-1820).

BROWN WILLY, the highest peak (1368 ft.) in Cornwall.

BROWNE, CHARLES FARRAR, a humorist and satirist, known by the pseudonym of “Artemus Ward,” born in Maine, U.S.; his first literary effort was as “showman” to an imaginary travelling menagerie; travelled over America lecturing, carrying with him a whimsical panorama as affording texts for his numerous jokes, which he brought with him to London, and exhibited with the same accompaniment with unbounded success; he spent some time among the Mormons, and defined their religion as singular, but their wives plural (1834-1867).

BROWNE, HABLOT KNIGHT, artist, born in London; illustrated Dickens’s works, “Pickwick” to begin with, under the pseudonym of “Phiz,” as well as the works of Lever, Ainsworth, Fielding, and Smollett, and the Abbotsford edition of Scott; he was skilful as an etcher and an architectural draughtsman (1815-1882).

BROWNE, ROBERT, founder of the Brownists, born in Rutland; the first seceder from the Church of England, and the first to found a Church of his own on Congregational principles, which he did at Norwich, though his project of secession proved a failure, and he returned to the English Church; died in jail at Northampton, where he was imprisoned for assaulting a constable; he may be accounted the father of the Congregational body in England (1540-1630).