536 GEORGE BENTHAM. 



Ericece in the seventh volume, the Polemoniacece in the ninth, the 

 ScrophuIariacecB in the tentli, the Lahiatce forming the greater part 

 of the twelfth, and the EriogouecE. in the fourteenth ; these together 

 filling 1133 pages, according to the surviving editor. If not quite the 

 largest collaborator of the DeCandolles, as counted in pages, he was so 

 in the number of plants described, and his work was of the best. It 

 was also ready in time, which is more than can be said of the collabora- 

 tors in general. 



There are few parts of the world upon the botany of which Mr. 

 Bentham has not touched; — Tropical America, in the ample collec- 

 tions of ]Mr. Spruce, and those of Ilartweg, distributed, and the former 

 partly and the latter wholly determined by him, as also Hinds's col- 

 lections made in the voyage of the Suli)liur, besides what has already 

 been adverted to; Polynesia, from Hinds's and Barclay's collections; 

 \Yestern Tropical Africa, in the Niger Flora, most of the Flora 

 Nigriliana benig from his hand ; the Flora Honr/kongensis, in which 

 he began the series of British Colonial floras ; and finally that vast 

 work, the Flora Australiensis, in seven volumes, which the author 

 began when he was over sixty years old and finished when he was / 

 seventy-seven. Nor did he neglect the cultivation of the narrow and 

 more exhausted field of British Botany. His " Handbook of the 

 British Flora," for the use of beginners and amateurs, published in ; 

 1858, has gone through four large editions. Its special object was / 

 to enable a beginner or a mere amateur, with little or no previous / 

 scientific knowledge and without assistance, to work out understand-/ 

 ingly the characters by which the plants of a limited flora may hej 

 distinguished from each other, these being expressed as mucii af 

 possible in ordinary language, or in such technical terms as could b 

 fully explained in the book itself and easily apprehended by ll; 

 learner. The immediate and continued popularity of this banc 

 volume, bringing the light of full knowledge and sound method ' 

 guide the beginner's way, illustrates the advantage of having elemc 

 tary works prepared by a master of the subject, whenever the maA" 

 will take the necessary pains. To the same end, the author prepi*d 

 for this volume an excellent and terse introduction to structural ^d 

 descriptive botany, which has been prefixed to all the Colonial FUs. 

 In the first edition of this British Flora, it was atteinpteil to use to 

 give English names to the genera and species throughout. Tlii^'^is 

 possible only in such a familiar and well-trodden field as Britain, 'Cre 

 almost every plant is familiar ; but even here it failed, and ii^ter 

 editions the popular names were relegated to a subordinate i)03i'i' 



