GEORGE BENTHAM. 463 
pily quite free from, and his companion heavily weighted by, 
onerous official duties and cares; and so it came to pass that 
about two thirds of the orders and genera were elaborated by 
Mr. Bentham. In April, 1883, the completion of the work 
(i. e., of the genera of Phznogamous plants, to which it was 
limited) closed this long and exemplary botanical career ; 
and the short account which he gave to the Linnezan Society 
on the nineteenth of that month, specifying the conduct of 
the work and the part of ithe respective authors, was his last 
publication. 
In this connection mention should also be made of the es- 
says (which he simply calls “‘ Notes”) upon some of the more 
important orders which he investigated for the ‘Genera 
Plantarum,” — the Composite, the Campanulaceous and the 
Oleaceous orders, the Monocotyledonee as to classification, 
the Huphorbiacee, the Orchis family, the Cyperacew and the 
Graminece. These are not mere abstracts, issued in advance, 
but critical dissertations with occasional discussions of some 
general or particular question of terminology or morphology. 
When collected they form a stout volume, which, along with 
the volume made up of his anniversary addresses when presi- 
dent of the Linnzan Society, and the paper on the progress 
and state of systematic botany, read to the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science in 1874, should be much 
considered by those who would form a just idea of the large- 
ness of Mr. Bentham’s knowledge and the character of his 
work. 
It will have been seen that Mr. Bentham confined himself 
to the Phenogamia, to morphological, taxonomical, and de- 
scriptive work, not paying attention to the Cryptogamia below 
the Ferns, nor to vegetable anatomy, physiology, or palzon- 
tology. He was what will now be called a botanist of the old 
school. Up to middle age and beyond he used rather to re- 
gard himself as an amateur, pursuing botany as an intellec- 
tual exercise. ‘There are diversities of gifts;”’ perhaps no 
professional naturalist ever made more of his, certainly no 
one ever labored more diligently, nor indeed more successfully 
over so wide a field, within these chosen lines. For extent 
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