34 The South Australian Naturalist. 



many years practised medicine in South Australia., and was an 

 ardent botanist; Carl Wilhelmi, who in the fifties of last cen- 

 tury lived at Port Lincoln and collected plants in that locality ; 

 Rev. J. Tenison Woods, the cultured savant of Penola ; and Dr. 

 Richd. Schomburgk, the Director of the Adelaide Botanic 

 Gardens. 



The book begins with a terse introduction to Botanj' which 

 is worth the attention of any student of the science in am- land. 

 Then follow the descriptions of 8,16S species in 1,400 genera. 

 The whole cost was defrayed by contributions from the follow- 

 ing Governments: — Victoria, £700; N.S.W., £400; S. Australia, 

 £350: and Queensland, £350: a total of £1,080. Of this amoimt 

 the publisher took £720, and the remainder of the £1,080 went to 

 Bentham. The most rigid economist Avill hardly object to such 

 pecuniar}' reward, which amounts to about £72 per annum, as a 

 payment to one who lived laborious days and scorned delights 

 for fifteen years so that a continent should have its flora 

 described. The pursuit of s^'stematic botany is not the Avay to 

 wealth. The Royal Society of N.S.AV. awarded him its Clarke 

 Medal and the British Government a C.M.G. for his immense 

 labours. 



A'aluable as these seven volumes are to Australians, they do 

 not constitute Bentham 's greatest work; that pre-eminence be- 

 longs to his ''Genera Plantarum,'" written in collaboration Avith 

 his friend, Sir Joseph Hooker. The latter has, however, left it 

 on record that the greater part of the book was due to the 

 indefatigable labours of Bentham. In it he has taken the flora 

 of the whole world for his province and classified it into its 

 various families. Bentham spent twenty-one years at this book, 

 and finished it in 1883, much to his relief, for he had found his 

 physical powers ebbing and feared that death would come 

 before his work was complete. 



Next year he died. He had lived for nearly eighty-four 

 vears. His death excited little interest to the general public, 

 but the comparatively few who understood the magnitude of his 

 labours knew that one of the greatest botanists of any age had 

 ceased from earthly labour. 



