ii 



his twenty-fourth year onward, be regarded as his serious life's work, 

 interrupted more or less, however, for some years by legal research 

 with a view to a professional career, and by the services which he 

 rendered in the preparation of his uncle's works for the press. 



Mr. Bentham's first botanical work, published in 1826, was his 

 " Catalogue des Plantes Indigenes des Pyrenees et du Bas 

 Languedoc," the result of a careful botanical exploration of the 

 Pyrenees, in company with the late Dr. Arnott (afterwards Professor 

 of Botany in the Uuiversity of Glasgow) . To appreciate rightly this 

 little work of 128 pages, we must compare the botanical science of 

 that date with our present detailed knowledge of Pyrenean Botany, 

 and of the relation of the vegetation of this region to that of other 

 European chains. At that time there was no accurate scientific 

 account of the Botany of the Pyrenees, and the loose practice of the 

 authors of local floras freely allowed, on the most slender indirect 

 evidence, admission into their enumerations of very unlikely species. 

 But Mr. Bentham says, " Pour donner a mon catalogue une utilite plus 

 generale que celle des simples compilations, si faciles a faire et par 

 consequent si multipliers malgre leur peu d'utilite, je me suis attache 

 a n'y admettre aucune observation, aucun synonyme que je n'ai pas eu 

 occasion de verifier par moi-meme, ou, si je me suis ecarte de cette 

 regie, cela n'a ete que tres-rarement, et toujours en citant la personne 

 de qui je les tiens." This habit of carefully scrutinizing his data he 

 maintained to the end of his life. Besides an enumeration of Pyrenean 

 plants this catalogue includes critical essays on several peculiarly 

 difficult genera, especially Cerastium, Helianthemum, Linum, Medicngo, 

 Myosotis, and Orobanche. 



Mr. Bentham's botanical life in England may be regarded as begin- 

 ning with his association with the late Dr. Wallich in the distribution 

 of the enormous Indian collections of that naturalist, and with his 

 elaboration of the great natural order Labiatae, and of the Indian 

 Scrophulariaceae : orders which some years afterwards he revised for 

 the " Prodromus Systematis Xaturalis Regni Yegetabilis " of his 

 friend De Candolle. It is in these works that we may first recognise 

 the peculiar qualities which give value to all Mr. Bentham's taxo- 

 nomic work. They show an insight, of so special a character as to 

 deserve the name of genius, into the relative value of characters for 

 practical sj stematic work, and, as a consequence of this, a sure sifting 

 of essentials from non-essentials in each respective grade. At the 

 date of these works the broad foundations in classificatory Phanero- 

 gamic botauy had, we must remember, been already securely laid ; 

 and the pressing need, supplied so precisely at the right time by 

 Mr. Bentham, was for a systematist capable of reducing to order the 

 number of genera which in some of the largest natural orders were 

 still simply an unorganised mob. 



