The _Investigator_ sailed from Portsmouth in 1801, and on landing at King George's Sound the first collections, amounting to about 500 plants, were made within three weeks. Three days at Lucky Bay yielded 100 species not met with in the previous locality. At Port Jackson the _Investigator_ was condemned as unseaworthy, and Captain Flinders determined to return to England to obtain another ship in which to prosecute the expedition. The ship, however, was wrecked in Torres Straits, Brown's duplicate specimens, as well as the live plants on board, being lost, whilst Captain Flinders was held prisoner by the French at Port Louis. Meantime Brown and Bauer continued their travels in Australia, visiting Van Dieman's land as well. Brown subsequently returned to England, oddly enough in the old _Investigator_, in 1805 with a magnificent collection of plants some 4000 in number. He did not merely _collect_, but he studied his collections on the spot--a method that may be strongly commended to young men who go out as botanists at the present time. His plan was to keep a working herbarium of all the plants gathered by him, as he went along, and he wrote up the descriptions in great part during his actual expeditions. In this way many problems formulated themselves which he was able either to investigate on the spot, or else to lay up additional material for further investigation at leisure. Thus the methodical ways of dealing with the plants collected in earlier years at home stood him in good stead at a time when the opportunities of a lifetime were crowding upon him. On his return to England he was appointed librarian to the Linnean Society (1805), an office which he held till 1822, and he at once set about to utilise the vast resources which were now at his command. He contributed to the narrative of The Flinders Expedition an account of the vegetation of New Holland. The essay is a remarkable one, not only for the masterly descriptions of the principal genera and orders which it contains, and the critical remarks which are scattered through the pages, but also for the geographical and statistical methods of treatment which he introduced. Many of the orders are new, and Brown shews his striking perception of affinity not only in his general discussion of the subject as a whole, but also in the definitions of the new orders and genera which he founded. This soundness of judgment is shewn on a still larger scale in his more definitely systematic works such as the _Prodromus_, but one may regard it generally as an astonishing tribute to his sagacity that very few of the groups founded by him have needed serious revision, even when further discoveries made it possible for later botanists to fill up the lacunae inevitable during those earlier days.