lowing letters from Dr HOPE, relative to the collection of dried plants which Mr SMELLIE had transmitted to him, shews either that Mr PILLANS may have been mistaken in the year in which he was employed to gather the wild flowers, or that Mr SMELLIE had continued his labours on this subject for some years afterwards, before he considered his Hortus Siccus as worthy of being presented to the Professor. There is no date to the first of these letters; but as the subject is obviously continued in the second, they must have been both written nearly about the · same time.

No. XI.

Dr JOHN HOPE to Mr WILLIAM SMELLIÉ.

DEAR SIR,

I have sent GEORGE to know at what time I shall send him with a careful porter for the plants. I beg that you may reserve some of them for yourself, as I should be sorry to rob you of them all. I shall call at your sisters Yours, &c.

at ten o'clock.

JOHN HOPE.

No. XII.

Dr JOHN HOPE to Mr WILLIAM SMellie.

DEAR SIR,

that

Edinburgh, 7th Feb. 1764.

I HAVE the pleasure of acquainting you, your collection of dried plants gave entire satisfaction to all the gentlemen who assisted in adjusting the annual premium ; and none scrupled to say that it well deserved to be distinguished by some honorary reward.

YOUR Collection, made under the unfavour→ able circumstances of a constant avocation, flatters me with the hope that no stranger will next year carry off the honorary medal and that it will be the lot of your successful application to this your favourite study. I am, &c.

JOHN HOPE.

;.

ACCORDING to the prediction in the above letter, Mr SMELLIE gained the honorary gold

prize medal, given by the Professor for the best botanical dissertation, in the following year, when he presented his Dissertation on the Sexes of Plants, the substance of which he afterwards published in the first volume of his Philosophy of Natural History. From the next subsequent letter, it would appear that he had published this dissertation in a separate pamphlet.

THIS prize medal which Mr SMELLIE obtained is not now to be found in his repositories, but its description will be seen im the subsequent letter from Dr WILLIAM WRIGHT, formerly an eminent physician in Jamaica; who, in the intervals of his professional labours, has largely illustrated the botanical riches of that island, and has added several valuable remedies from the vege→ table kingdom to the list of the Materia Medica. This letter may be considered important, as it establishes some facts in the life of Mr SMELLIE, to be noticed hereafter.

No. XIII.

From Dr WILLIAM WRIGHT to ALEXANDER KINCAID TATE, Esq.

DEAR SIR,

Luss, 29th June 1810.

MR ALEXANDER SMELLIE wrote me a few days before I left town, but time did not permit me to reply. You will please to say to him, that I often met his father at literary societies, and at the houses of friends. I knew him to be an able natural historian, and a good botanist. He published a pamphlet against the Linnæan system, which gave offence to the friends of the illustrious Swede: and indeed it could not be otherwise, as Mr SMELLIE had not any thing to put in the room of it.

MR SMELLIE had a hand in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review with Dr GILBERT STUART, one of the ablest and severest works that ever appeared in this or any other country. As I lodged in the same house with Dr STUART in London, I learned much about Mr

SMELLIE and his friends. Dr STUART assured me that the Domestic Medicine was originally written by Mr SMELLIE, and that Dr BUCHAN had only to adopt it as his own.

Tell Mr SmelLIE that I got a gold medal from Dr HOPE. The device on it is a cedar and a low plant: Round the margin is the following inscription,-" A Cedro ad Hys$opum usque :" At the bottom,-I. Hope, Bot. Prof. dat." I recovered the dye, and gave it to his son, Dr THOMAS HOP, where Mr SMELLIE may see it. I am, &c.

WILL. WRight.

WITHOUT meaning to take any part in the controversy respecting the sexual hypothesis in the economy of vegetables, which is now universally adopted upon good grounds of analogical reasoning, it may be permitted to say, that every one has a clear right to stat his objections to any philosophical theory or hypothesis, even although he may not be prepared to supply its place by another; and that philosophers, whose duty and profession is to search after truth, err egregiously in taking offence at any opposition which may VOL. I. G