458 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



with that of a diligent student, until 1854, when, returning to 

 London, he presented his herbarium and botanical library to 

 the Royal Gardens at Kew, where they were added to the 

 still larger collections of Sir William Hooker. After a short 

 interval Mr. Bentham took up his residence at No. 25 Wilton 

 Place, between Belgrave Square and Hyde Park, which was 

 his home for the rest of his life. Thence, autumn holidays 

 excepted, with perfect regularity for five days in the week he 

 resorted to Kew, pursued his botanical investigations from ten 

 to four o'clock, then, returning, he wrote out the notes of his 

 day's work before dinner, hardly ever breaking his fast in the 

 long interval. With such methodical habits, with freedom 

 from professional or administrative functions which consume 

 the precious time of most botanists, with steady devotion to his 

 chosen work, and with nearly all authentic materials and 

 needful appliances at hand or within reach, it is not surprising 

 that he should have undertaken and have so well accomplished 

 such a vast amount of work ; and he has the crowning merit 

 and happy fortune of having completed all that he undertook. 



Nor did he decline duties of administration and counsel 

 which could rightly be asked of him. The presidency of the 

 Linnaean Society, which he accepted and held for eleven years 

 (1863 to 1874), was no sinecure to him ; for he is said to have 

 taken on no small part of the work of secretary, treasurer, and 

 botanical editor. Somewhat to the surprise of his younger 

 associates, who knew him only as the recluse student, he made 

 proof in age of the fine talent for business and the conduct of 

 affairs which had distinguished his prime in the management 

 of the Horticultural Society ; and in his annual presidential 

 addresses, which form a volume of permanent value, his dis- 

 cussions of general as well as of particular scientific questions 

 and interests bring out prominently the breadth and fullness 

 of his knowledge and the soundness of his judgment. 



The years which followed his retirement from the chair of 

 the Linnaean Society, at the age of seventy-three, were no less 

 laborious or less productive than those preceding ; at the age 

 of eighty (as the writer can testify) the diminution of bodily 

 strength had wrought no obvious abatement of mental power 



