530 GEORGE BENTHAM. 



Nomenclature et ClassiBcation," published in Paris. This, his original 

 scientific production, was one of some mark, for it is praised by 

 Stauley-Jevons in his recent History of the Sciences. 



On attaining his majority, his elder and only brother having died, 

 he was placed in management of his father's Provencal estate, an 

 employment which he took up with alacrity and prosecuted with 

 success, turning to practical account his methodical habits, his in- 

 domitable industry, and his familiarity with Provencal country life 

 and language. The latter he spoke like a native. A language 

 always seemed to come to him without effort. Meanwhile his leisure 

 hours were given to philosophical studies, his holidays to botanical 

 excursions into the Cevennes and the Pyrenees. In the year 1823, 

 a visit to England upon business relating to his father's French estate, 

 where it seemed probable that he was to spend his life, was followed 

 by circumstances which gave him back to his native country. He 

 brought to his uncle Jeremy a French translation of the hitter's 

 Chrestomathia ; he made the acquaintance of Sir James Edward 

 Smith, Robert Brown, Lambert, Don, and the other English botanists 

 of the day ; he visited Sir William, then Professor Hooker, at Glas- 

 gow, and Walker Arnott, in luliuburgh, and took the latter with him 

 the next summer to France, where the two botanists herborized to- 

 gether in Languedoc and the Pyrenees. Returning to London, he 

 accepted a pressing invitation to remain and devote a portion of his 

 time to the preparation of his uncle's manuscripts for the press, at 

 the same time pursuing legal studies at Lincoln's Inn. He was in 

 due time called to the bar, and in 1832 he held his first and last brief. 

 In that year Jeremy Bentham died, bequeathing most of his property 

 to his nephew. This was much less than was expected, owing to bad 

 management on his uncle's part, and to the extravagant sums spent 

 by his executors in the publication of the philosopher's posthumous 

 works. But it sufficed, in connection with the paternal inheritance, 

 which fell to him the year previous, for the modest independence 

 which allowed of undistracted devotion to his favorite studies. These 

 were for a time divided between botany, jurisprudence, and logic, not 

 to speak of editorial work upon his father's papers relating to the 

 management of the navy and the administratiou of the national dock- 

 yards. 



His first publication was botanical, and was published in Paris, in 

 the year 1826; namely, the "Catalogue des Plantes Indigenes des 

 Pyrenees et du Bas Languedoc." To this is prefixed an interesting 

 narrative of a botanical tour in the Pyrenees, and some remarks 



