GENERA PLAN T ARUM. 355 



BENTHAM AND HOOKER'S GENERA PLANTARUM. 



The completion of this great work l marks an era in sys- 

 tematic botany. As the senior author is nearly eighty-three 

 years of age, we may say that, essentially, it brings to a 

 worthy close the long course of scientific labors of the most 

 accomplished, sagacious, and continuously industrious phy- 

 tologist of our day, almost the only survivor of those who 

 personally knew Antoine Laurent Jussieu, and were asso- 

 ciated with the elder De Candolle ; one whose line of author- 

 ship, begun in the year 1826 (antedated only by that of the 

 venerable Roeper), comes down to the present year, ap- 

 parently, in almost unabated vigor, and is as remarkable for 

 sustained importance as it is unparalleled in length. Upon 

 the junior author, who should not yet feel the burden of years, 

 however weighted with official cares, and upon such specialists 

 as can be mustered, may devolve the responsibility of such 

 addimenta as may be needed to bring the earlier volumes up 

 to the date of the last, and even to supplement the work from 

 time to time, as the " Genera Plantarum " of Linnaeus was 

 supplemented by successive editors. But it is not probable 

 that the task which has now been happily accomplished will 

 be undertaken again, still less executed, before the twentieth 

 century is well entered upon. Useful compilations we may 

 expect, and monographs which may here and there better re- 

 present advancing knowledge of particular groups ; but a 

 production like this, covering the whole field of phaenogamous 

 botany, ordinally and generically, and with the uniformity of 

 treatment and scale thus secured by two close associates in 

 one continuous work, cannot be looked for again for a long 

 while. 



It has few predecessors. The first " Genera Plantarum " 

 in fact (though not exactly in name) was that of Tournefort, 

 published in the year 1700. Then and there, as Linnaeus de- 



1 Genera Plantarum ad Exemplariq imprimis in herbariis Kewensibus 

 servata definita. Auctoribus G. Bentbam et J. D. Hooker. Loudiui, 1862- 

 1883. (The Nation, No. 942, July 19, 18S3.) 



