It is significant as an early treatment of the biogeography and floristics of the flora of Australia; for its contributions to plant systematics, including the erection of eleven currently accepted families; and for its presentation of a number of important observations on flower morphology.
Brown had been botanist during Matthew Flinders' 1801–02 circumnavigation of Australia, and on returning in England in 1805 he was charged with publishing a flora of the continent.
The following year Flinders began preparing his account of the voyage, and Brown was invited to contribute a botanical appendix.
[1] General remarks was published as Appendix III of Matthew Flinders' A Voyage to Terra Australis, and also simultaneously issued as an offprint with separate pagination.
Brown then presents a broad summary of the floristics of the continent, noting that the proportion of dicotyledons is much smaller than would be expected in such a climate and latitude.