GEORGE BENTHAM. 453 



from one place of interest to another, bivouacking at night 

 by the road, or in the garden of a friend, or in the precincts 

 of the prefectures, to which latter he had credentials from 

 the authorities in the capital. In this way he visited Orleans, 

 Tours, Angouleme, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, and 

 finally Montauban, where a lengthened stay was made in a 

 country house hired for the purpose. From Montauban (the 

 cortege having broken down in someway) they proceeded still 

 by private conveyances to Carcassonne, Narbonnes, Nimes, 

 Tarascon, Marseilles, Toulon, Hyeres." 



It was in the early part of this tour that young Bentham "s 

 attention was first turned to botany. Happening to take up 

 De Candolle's edition of Lamarck's " Flore Franeaise," which 

 his mother, who was fond of the subject, had just purchased, 

 he was struck with the methodical analytical tables, and he 

 proceeded immediately to apply them to the first plant he 

 could lay hold of. "His success led him to pursue the diver- 

 sion of naming every plant he met with." During his long 

 stay at Montauban he entered as a student in the Protestant 

 theological school of that town, pursuing "with ardor the 

 courses of mathematics, Hebrew, and comparative philology, 

 the latter a favorite study in after life," and at home giving 

 himself to music, in which he was remarkably gifted, to Span- 

 ish, to botany, and, with great relish, to society. Soon after, 

 the family was established upon a property of 2000 acres, 

 purchased by his father in the vicinity of Montpellier. Here 

 he resumed the intimacy of his boyhood with John Stuart 

 Mill, who was five years his junior, and whose life-long taste 

 for botany was probably fixed during this residence of seven 

 or eight months in the Bentham family in the year 1820. 

 About this time Bentham occupied himself with ornithology 

 and then with entomology, finding time, however, for another 

 line of study ; for at the age of twenty he had begun a trans- 

 lation into French of bis Uncle Jeremy's ** Chrestomathia," 

 which* was published in Paris some years afterwards ; and he 

 soon after translated also the essay on •• Nomenclature and 

 Classification." This was followed by his own " ESssai but la 

 Nomenclature et Classification," published in Paris. This, 



