GEORGE BENTHAM. 463 



pily quite free from, and bis companion heavily weighted by, 

 onerous official duties and cares ; and so it came to pass that 

 about two thirds of the orders and genera were elaborated by 

 Mr. Bentham. In April, 1883, the completion of the work 

 (£. e., of the genera of Phamogamous plants, to which it was 

 limited) closed this long and exemplary botanical career; 

 and the short account which he gave to the Linnaean Society 

 on the nineteenth of that month, specifying the conduct of 

 the work and the part of the respective authors, was his last 

 publication. 



In this connection mention should also be made of tin es- 

 says (which he simply calls " Notes ") upon some of the more 

 important orders which he investigated for the "Genera 

 Plantarum," — the Comjiositce, the Campanulaceous and the 

 Oleaceous orders, the Monocotyledonece as to classification, 

 the Eupliorbiacem, the Orchis family, the Cyperacem and the 

 Graminece. These are not mere abstracts, issued in advance, 

 but critical dissertations with occasional discussions of some 

 general or particular question of terminology or morphology. 

 When collected they form a stout volume, which, along with 

 the volume made up of his anniversary addresses when presi- 

 dent of the Linnaean Society, and the paper on the progress 

 and state of systematic botany, read to the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in 1874, should be much 

 considered by those who would form a just idea of the large- 

 ness of Mr. Bentham's knowledge and the character of his 

 work. 



It will have been seen that Mr. Bentham confined himself 

 to the Phsenogamia, to morphological, taxonomical, and de- 

 scriptive work, not paying attention to the Cryptogainia below 

 the Ferns, nor to vegetable anatomy, physiology, or palaeon- 

 tology, lie was what will now be called a botanist ot the old 

 school. Up to middle age and beyond he used rather t«» re- 

 gard himself as an amateur, pursuing botany as an intellec- 

 tual exercise. " There are diversities of gifts ; ** perhaps do 

 professional naturalist ever made more of his. certainly no 

 one ever labored more diligently, nor indeed more successfully 

 over so wide a field, within these chosen lines. For extent 



