542 



NA TURE 



[Oct. 2, ii 



William Hamilton's claims to the same, and which was 

 ended by a verdict of Herbert Spencer's in the Contem- 

 porary Review (May 1873) m favour of Bentham. 



In jurisprudence two subjects deeply engaged his atten- 

 tion — one was codification, in which he entirely disagreed 

 with his uncle, and his paper on which attracted the at- 

 tention of Brougham, Hume, and O'Connell ; the other 

 was the laws affecting larceny, his suggestions on which 

 he submitted to Sir Robert Peel, apropos of his Bill for 

 the consolidation of the criminal law. Of this Peel 

 thought so highly that he wrote a complimentary letter 

 to its author, informing him that his remarks should be 

 fully considered and submitted to Sir John Richardson, 

 to whom the Bill was referred. Brougham also (to whom 

 his uncle showed the paper) wrote a letter of eighteen 

 pages of remarks on it. These and a pamphlet on the 

 " Law of Real Property " are Bentham's chief contribu- 

 tions in his adopted profession. Of practice he had very 

 little ; he got his first brief in 1832, and, as junior counsel, 

 bewigged and begowned, followed his leader when called 

 for; but, being overcome with nervousness, he cut short 

 his argument, and had the mortification of hearing the 

 counsel for the opposite side say that "a more preposterous 

 speech it had not been his fortune to hear during a long 

 course of practice " 



In botany Bentham was more at home than in the 

 courts. In 182S his herbarium arrived from France, 

 and in the same year he was elected a Fellow of 

 the Linnean Society, and joined with delight its re- 

 unions, attending its meetings punctually, its anni- 

 versary dinners, and those of its club. The return of 

 Wallich from India with the enormous collections of 

 the East India Company which first made known the 

 flora of the Himalayas, Burmah, and many other parts 

 of that vast empire, gave him occupation in the study 

 and publication of various intricate genera and natural 

 orders of plants. Of these writings, his " Labiatarum, 

 Genera and Species " was the most important ; this large 

 family having been in a state of utter chaos before Ben- 

 tham brought his rem irkable powers of generalisation and 

 description to bear up in it. 



In 1829 Benthim finally gave up the law for botany, 

 and amongst other labours accepted the honorary 

 secretaryship of the Horticultural Society, which was 

 in a perilous condition of debt and dissension. From 

 these he extricated it with perfect success, and, aided by 

 his friend Lindley, the assistant secretary, raised it to a 

 flourishing condition financially and scientifically, and 

 which it has never since approached. 



In 1833 he married the daughter of the late Right Hon. 

 Sir Harford Brydges of Boultibrooke, formerly Ambas- 

 sador at the Court of Persia, and in 1S34 removed to his 

 late uncle's house in Queen Square Place, the site of 

 which is now occupied by the "Bentham wing " of the 

 " Queen Anne's Mansions." There he resided till 1842, 

 when, with the view of providing better accommodation 

 for his now extensive herbarium and library, and devot- 

 ing himself more exclusively to science, he removed to 

 Pontrilas House in Herefordshire, where he revised the 

 Labiatce, and elaborated the great families of Scrophu- 

 larinem, Polygonem, and others for his friend Alphonse 

 de Candolle's continuation of the " Prodromus Systematis 

 Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis." 



In 1854, finding that the expenses of his collections 

 and books were exceeding his means, he determined on 

 presenting the whole to the Royal Gardens at Kew (they 

 were valued at 6000/.), and returning to London ; at the 

 same time he entertained the idea of abandoning botany, 

 with characteristic modesty regarding himself as an 

 amateur who had hitherto pursued the science rather 

 as an intellectual exercise in systematising, than as a 

 scientific botanist, who, in his opinion, should unite 

 a competent knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and 

 of Cryptogamic plants, to skill as a classifier and 



describer of Phanerogams. He yielded, however, to the 

 entreaties of his friends, the late Sir W. Hooker and Dr. 

 Lindley, coupled with the offer from the former of access 

 to his own private library and herbarium, and a room in 

 Kew where his own was placed, backed by the request that 

 he would inaugurate the series of colonial floras that 

 was planned at Kew, by elaborating that of Hong Kong. 

 Consequently, in 1855 he again took up his residence in 

 London, first at Victoria Street, and latterly at 25, Wilton 

 Place, and for the remainder of his life, till disabled 

 by age, he almost daily throughout the year, except 

 during autumn excursions to the Continent or visits to 

 friends in Herefordshire, repaired to Kew and occu- 

 pied himself exclusively with descriptive botany from 

 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. 



The Hong Kong flora finished, Bentham took up that 

 of Australia, and, aided by the observations, collections. 

 and numerous discoveries of his active and able corre- 

 spondent, Baron Mueller, of Victoria, he, single-handed, 

 completed it in 1867 in seven octavo volumes, containing 

 about 7000 species, the most extensive exotic flora ever 

 brought to a conclusion. Meanwhile, the plan of a general 

 work on Phanerogamic plants had been on various occa- 

 sions discussed by Or. Hooker and himself; at first it 

 was proposed to confine it to carpology, but it finally 

 assumed shape in a critical study and description of the 

 genera of plants, founded on all available characters, for 

 which his herbarium and the Hookerian offered unrivalled 

 resources. This work, entitled " Genera Plantarum ad 

 Exemplaria, imprimis in Herbariis Kewensibus servata, 

 definita," was commenced in 1862 and concluded in 

 18S3, the greater portion of it being the product of 

 Bentham's indefatigable industry. 



The only material break in Bentham's work at Kew 

 was his acceptance of the presidency of the Linnean 

 Society, which he held from 1S63 to 1S74, and to the 

 duties and interests of which he devoted his time, his 

 energies, and his purse, with characteristic singleness of 

 purpose. He combined with the duties of President those 

 of Secretary, Treasurer, and Editor of the botanical parts 

 of the Transactions and Journals, spending a part or the 

 whole of one day a week in the Society's rooms during the 

 eleven years of his presidency. On the final transference 

 of the Society's collections, library, and portraits from the 

 rooms in old Burlington House to those they now occupy, 

 he arranged the whole himself, classifying the books, and 

 literally with his own hands placing them on the shelves 

 they now occupy. His presidential addresses were re- 

 m irkable for their grasp and wide range, and those who 

 knew him only as a systematist and descriptive writer 

 were surprised to find the great powers of analysis and the 

 sound judgment he displayed in discussing evolution and 

 its bearings, the writings of Haeckel, geographical distri- 

 bution, the condition and prospects of fossil botany, deep- 

 sea life, abiogenesis, methods of biological study, and the 

 histories and labours of the Natural History Societies 

 and their journals, and the scientific periodicals of every 

 civilised quarter of the globe. 



On the conclusion of the "Genera Plantarum" in the 

 spring of 1SS3, his strength, which hid for some years 

 shown signs of diminution, suddenly gave way, and, after 

 several ineffectual attempts to resume his studies, his 

 visits to Kew ended, and, lingering on under increasing 

 debility, he died of old age on September 10 last, when 

 within a few days of his eighty-fifth year, leaving no 

 family, and directions that his funeral was to be a strictly 

 private one. 



The above sketch conveys no idea of the prodigious 

 amount of systematic and descriptive work in Phanero- 

 gamic botany that Bentham accomplished. In the 

 "Genera Plantarum" there is hardly an order of any 

 importance that he did not more or less remodel. His 

 labours on the Composite, Graminese, Cyperaceae, and 

 t )n Inde.L are especially noticeable, and he contributed 



