GEORGE BENTHAM. 461 
Mimosec, in the “ Transactions of the Linnzan Society,” the 
latter (a quarto volume in size) published as late as the year 
1875. Both are perfect models of monographical work. 
An important series of monographs in another and more 
condensed form was contributed to De Candolle’s “ Prodro- 
mus,” namely, the Tribe Hricew in the seventh volume, the 
Polemoniacee in the ninth, the Scrophulariacee in the tenth, 
the Labiate forming the greater part of the twelfth, and the 
Eriogonece in the fourteenth; these together filling 1133 
pages according to the surviving editor. If not quite the 
largest collaborator of the De Candolles, 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 collaborators in general. 
There are few parts of the world upon the botany of which 
Mr. Bentham has not touched — Tropical America, in the am- 
ple collections of Mr. Spruce, and those of Hartweg, distrib- 
uted, and the former partly and the latter wholly determined 
by him, as also Hinds’ collections made in the voyage of the 
Sulphur, besides what has already been adverted to; Polyne- 
sia, from Hinds’ and Barclay’s collections ; Western Tropical 
Africa, in the Niger Flora, most of the “ Flora Nigritiana” 
being from his hand; the “ Flora Hongkongensis,” 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 fin- 
ished when he was seventy-seven. Nor did he neglect the cul- 
tivation 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 begin- 
ner 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 
be distinguished from each other, these being expressed as 
much as possible in ordinary language, or in such technical 
terms as could be fully explained in the book itself and easily 
apprehended by the learner. The immediate and continued 
