1884.] OBITUARY NOTICES. 73 



devote himself entirely to botanical investigation. His herbarium 

 and library became extremely rich, and correspondingly costly to 

 keep up, and at last he found he must retrench his expenditure. So 

 he resolved to give his collections entirely to Kew, only retaining 

 the right of free use by himself. So, gaining corresponding advan- 

 tages for his own studies, and enhanced opportunities of consulting 

 and co-operating with Sir W. J. Hooker, and, later, with Sir 

 Joseph Hooker, Mr. Bentham settled down to daily work at Kew, 

 and to take a distinguished part in the series of colonial floras 

 initiated by Sir W. J. Hooker. The flora of Hong-Kong and that 

 of the Niger, together with extended labours in connection with the 

 Brazilian flora, were the prelude to Mr. Bentham's engagement for 

 about twenty years in elaborating the enormous flora of Australia, 

 on the completion of which Mr. Bentham received, in 1878, the 

 Companionship of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. No 

 sooner, however, was the Aiistralian flora, with its 7000 species, 

 well started than a vaster work was urged upon him, in conjunction 

 with Sir Joseph Hooker — namely, the examination and I'evision of 

 the generic characters, and their limits, in the whole domain of 

 flowering plants. This necessitated the examination, not only of the 

 entire literature of the subject, wdiich is appalling in its extent, but, 

 according to the plan of these workers, the study of the original 

 specimens and fresh plans at Kew and other places. Nothing was 

 to be taken for granted. A new and thoroughl}^ reliable deter- 

 mination of everything in coimectiou with the groups into which 

 species are arranged, and their geographical distribution, was under- 

 taken, and its results are given in a condensed Latin form in the 

 Genera Plantarum in three volumes, completed in 1888. The 

 labour involved in single orders — such as the orchids, the grasses, 

 the composite — was enormous, and it was only the man who by 

 unwearied efforts and by never wasting an hour, could study and 

 digest the literature, and examine the specimens connected with 

 twelve hundred species per annum — an average of four per working 

 day — that could undertake, with any hope of success, the greater 

 labour of revising and establishing generic characters at the rate of 

 four hundred per year. Year after year the mighty work pro- 

 gressed, Mr. Bentham taking the larger share, owing to the crowd 

 of other duties devolving on Sir Joseph Hooker ; but at last, at the 

 age of eighty-three, Mr. Bentham, with almost undiminished vigour, 

 saw completed a work about as extensive in its way as Littre's on 

 the French language, and such as to fix the main lines of the 

 systematic botany of flowering plants for generations. Of Mr. 

 Bentham's long presidency of the Linna^an Society, and his masterly 

 addresses and papers on philosophic Ijotany ; of his well-knowm and 



