458 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
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 regularity for five days in the week he 
resorted to Kew, pursued his botanical investigations from ten 
to four o’clock, then, returning, he wrote out the notes of his 
day’s work before dinner, hardly ever breaking his fast in the 
long interval. With such methodical habits, with freedom 
from 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 accomplished 
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 
affairs which had distinguished his prime in the management 
of the Horticultural Society; and in his annual presidential 
addresses, which form a volume of permanent value, his dis- 
cussions of general as well as of particular scientific questions 
and interests bring out prominently the breadth and fullness 
of his knowledge and the soundness of his judgment. 
The years which followed his retirement from the chair of 
the Linnzan Society, at the age of seventy-three, were no less 
laborious or less productive than those preceding; at the age 
of eighty (as the writer can testify) the diminution of bodily 
strength had wrought no obvious abatement of mental power 
