General Introduction 39 



System of Classification. When he began his career the 

 Linnean system was universally taught here, and he brought 

 at once to its replacement by a better one all the weight 

 of his teaching and his personal influence. Consequently, 

 his best known writings are those tending to develop the 

 Natural System. He published a Synopsis of the British 

 Flora in 1829, and an Introduction to a Natural System of 

 Classification in 1830. This was the basis of the great work, 

 The Vegetable Kingdom, which appeared in 1846, after many 

 years of laborious investigation. 



Besides these and other books Lindley contributed a long 

 series of monographs and isolated descriptions of plants to 

 many journals. His researches were especially directed 

 towards the Orchidaceae, many new genera and species of 

 which he described. He wrote several works upon the 

 group, the latest of which, Folia Orchidacea, was unfinished 

 at his death. 



Bentham passed away in 1884. In his young days he 

 was a close friend of de Candolle, to whose influence in 

 a large measure his own career may be traced. During a 

 long life devoted to botany he contributed very largely to 

 literature and to exploration. He worked up the Labiatae 

 and the Indian Scrophulariaceae, and was responsible for 

 the accounts of these groups in de Candolle's Prodromus. 

 He investigated the Leguminosae in 1840. His floras 

 included that of the Pyrenees, based largely on his own 

 explorations, and that of Hong Kong, published in 1861. 

 Two years later he started the publication of the Flora 

 Australiensis, which was completed in seven annual volumes. 

 His greatest work, the Genera Plantarum, was done in col- 

 laboration with Sir Joseph Hooker. It is impossible here to 

 do more than mention the chief contributions he made to 

 botany, for there is hardly a temperate or tropical region 

 of the world with the flora of which he was not familiar. 

 He had made substantial contributions to most of them, 



