GEORGE BE NTH AM. 461 



Mimosece, in the " Transactions of the Linnaean Society," the 

 latter (a quarto volume in size) published as late as the year 

 1875. Both are perfect models of monographical work. 



An important series of monographs in another and more 

 condensed form was contributed to De Candolle's " Prodro- 

 mus," namely, the Tribe Ericece in the seventh volume, the 

 JPolemoniacece in the ninth, the Scrophulariacece in the tenth, 

 the Labiatce forming the greater part of the twelfth, and the 

 Eriogonece in the fourteenth ; these together filling 1133 

 pages according to the surviving editor. If not quite the 

 largest collaborator of the De Candolles, as counted in pages, 

 he was so in the number of plants described, and his work 

 was of the best. It was also ready in time, which is more 

 than can be said of the collaborators in general. 



There are few parts of the world upon the botany of which 

 Mr. Bentham has not touched — Tropical America, in the am- 

 ple collections of Mr. Spruce, and those of Hartweg, distrib- 

 uted, and the former partly and the latter wholly determined 

 by him, as also Hinds' collections made in the voyage of the 

 Sulphur, besides what has already been adverted to; Polyne- 

 sia, from Hinds' and Barclay's collections ; Western Tropical 

 Africa, in the Niger Flora, most of the " Flora Nigritiana " 

 being from his hand ; the " Flora Hongkongensis," in which 

 he began the series of British colonial floras ; and finally that 

 vast work, the " Flora Australiensis," in seven volumes, which 

 the author began when he was over sixty years old and fin- 

 ished when he was seventy-seven. Nor did he neglect the cul- 

 tivation of the narrow and more exhausted field of British 

 botany. His " Handbook of the British Flora," for the use of 

 beginners and amateurs, published in 1858, has gone through 

 four large editions. Its special object was to enable a begin- 

 ner or a mere amateur, with little or no previous scientific 

 knowledge and without assistance, to work out understand- 

 ingly the characters by which the plants of a limited flora may 

 be distinguished from each other, these being expressed as 

 much as possible in ordinary language, or in such technical 

 terms as could be fully explained in the book itself and easily 

 apprehended by the learner. The immediate and continued 



