I 



GALAPAGOS FLORA 169 



short synopsis of all the new species with terse diagnoses 

 and nothing more, it would have been printed in the Journal 

 and no one would have known of it at the Admiralty ; while 



tit would secure the priority of discovery. It is not having 

 my name at the tail of a specific one that I care about, 

 but I do want our Expedition and country to have the 

 merit. 



Next is the Species Filicum, in which he was helping his 

 father, working ' as the man does who blows the Organist's 

 bellows, at the rougher part,' a work among the lesser studied 

 plants profitable to the student, though one of the most difficult 

 and laborious that could be picked out in all Botany. 



Then came a task suggested by Darwin ; he continues to 

 Bentham : 



I am also working up very slowly a paper on Galapagos 

 Island plants, from Mr. Darwin's and Macrae's collections. 

 I find it a very slow job indeed, as there are very few species 

 of a genus or Nat. Ord. and so dissecting one plant is no 

 help to another. There are more new species than I expected, 

 but then I have begun at the small orders and Cryptogamia ; 

 I have done the Ferns, twenty-eight in number, and am now 

 amongst the grasses, which are terrible. Fancy two new 

 Panicums ; I cannot make them agree with any others, 

 and yet every one will say I only made them new species 

 to save the trouble of finding out their proper names— then 

 there is a vile Eragrostis Poa identical with an Afghanistan 

 one ! but undescribed, and another group of the genus 

 Eutriana whose spikelets vary in a most instructive manner, 

 some abortive, some $, some (J, some §, some with two 

 flowers, some with more, and altogether the most unsatis- 

 factory thing possible to describe. 



Finally the long accumulations of his father's Herbarium 

 were clamouring to be set in order, 'probably by arranging 

 together all the loose bundles, thus making a grand total 

 of all the Herbarium, and then going through the whole, 

 taking each Nat. Ord. by itself, taking from it what is wanted 

 for the Herbarium, and putting the rest aside as duplicates. 

 Would not this be a grand work ? ' 



