378 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PROSPECTS 



at 6000. * Bentham, moreover, left Pontrilas and settled 

 first at Kew and later in London ; saw to the final arrange- 

 ments of his herbarium, and continued his own botanical 

 work, more especially the monumental Genera Plantarum 

 in collaboration with Hooker. 



This accession both weighted the scales in favour of Kew 

 as against the other and in many ways less suitable centre 

 of botany at the British Museum, and offered a new factor in 

 the problem of the ultimate destination of the Hooker collec- 

 tion. As to the status of the Herbarium he tells Harvey 

 (January 21, 1857) : 



We have no funds for buying plants ; my Father pays 

 himself for all appertaining to the Herbm. as of yore, and 

 calls it his own. We should hardly dare to ask for money to 

 buy Cryptogams, as the Herbm. is upheld ostensibly for the 

 naming of the Garden plants, and we are not yet in a con- 

 dition to throw down the gauntlet to the British Museum. 

 We have just drawn up the Garden Report and pitched it 

 very strong about the uses of the Herbarium as a scientific 

 adjunct to the Gardens. 



With the death of Robert Brown in 1858 the question 

 came to a head. Ten years before, the Parliamentary Com- 

 mission had determined that on Brown's death they would 

 abolish the Botanical Department ; and, Hooker confesses, 

 ' every reason for doing so then is redoubled in force since, 



1 In the Memoir of his father, p. Ixxx, J. D. H. writes : * This was second 

 to my father's alone in England in extent, methodical arrangement, and 

 nomenclature, and was placed in the same building. Its formation was begun 

 in 1816, in France, where and in the Pyrenees Mr. Bentham collected diligently ; 

 but its great expansion by the inclusion of exotic plants dated from his intro- 

 duction to my father in Glasgow in 1823, when the friendship between the 

 two commenced which remained undisturbed for forty-two years. From 

 that date the two botanists may be said to have hunted in couples for the 

 aggrandisement of their libraries end collections, sharing their duplicates, 

 Mr. Bentham giving my father the preference in all cases of purchase, &c. 

 The one great difference between their aims was, that the former confined his 

 herbarium to flowering plants, whilst my father's rapidly grew to be the 

 richest in the world in both flowering and flowerless plants. The offer of 

 this gift was prearranged with my father, who with his wonted disinterestedness 

 put aside the obvious fact, that its acceptance would greatly diminish the 

 value of his own herbarium and library, should the Government ever con- 

 template its purchase.' 



