GEORGE BENTHAM. 533 



western wing of the " Queen Anne mansions." Tlie summer of 

 183G was passed in Germany, at points of botanical interest, and 

 wlierever the principal herbaria are preserved, — the whole winter 

 in Vienna. Some account of this tour, and interesting memoranda 

 of the botanists, gardens, and herbaria visited, communicated in 

 familiar letters to Sir William Hooker, were printed at the time 

 (without the author's name) in the second volume of the Companion 

 to the Botanical Magazine. Similar visits for botanical investigation, 

 mingled with recreation, were made almost every summer to various 

 parts of the Continent ; in one of them he revisited the scenes of his 

 early boyhood in Russia, travelled with Mrs. Bentham to the fair 

 at Nischnii-Novgorod, and thence to Odessa, by the rude litter-like 

 conveyances of the country. 



In 1842 he removed with his herbarium to Pontrilas House, in 

 Herefordshire, an Elizabethan mansion belonging to his brother-in-law, 

 and combined there the life of a country squire with that of a diligent 

 student, until 1854, when, returning to London, he presented his 

 herbarium and botanical library to the Royal Gardens at Kew, where 

 they were added to the still larger collections of Sir William Hooker. 

 After a short interval, Mr. Bentham took up his residence at No. 25 

 Wilton Place, between Belgrave Square and Hyde Park, which was 

 his home for the rest of his life. Thence, autumn holidays excepted, 

 with perfect regvilarity for five days in the week he resorted to Kew, 

 pursued his botanical investigations from ten to four o'clock, and 

 then, returning, wrote out the notes of his day's work before dinner, 

 hardly ever breaking his fast in the long interval. With such method- 

 ical habits, with freedom from those professional or administrative 

 functions which consume the precious time of most botanists, with 

 steady devotion to his chosen work, and with nearly all authentic 

 materials and needful appliances at hand or within reach, it is not 

 surprising that he should have undertaken and have so well accom- 

 plished such a vast amount of work : and he has the crowning merit 

 and happy fortune of having completed all that he undertook. 



Nor did he decline duties of administration and counsel which could 

 rightly be asked of him. The Presidency of the Linnean Society, 

 which he accepted and held for eleven years (1863 to 1874), was no 

 sinecure to him ; for he is said to have taken on no small part of the 

 work of Secretary, Treasurer, and Botanical Editor. Somewhat to 

 the surprise of his younger associates, who knew him only as the 

 recluse student, he made proof in age of the fine talent for business 

 and the conduct of affaii's which had distinguished his prime in the 



