xlvi NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
to this country, and complete sets deposited in the Botanical 
Herbarium at Kew." ^ 
Mr. John Miers, a great authority on South American plants, 
wrote two very long letters to Spruce in 1874, full of botanical 
details, and accepting many of Spruce's suggestions and his 
corrections of the statements of other botanists, etc. 
In an obituary notice by Dr. Isaac Bayley Balfour, the writer 
speaks of his essay upon the Palms of the Amazon as being ^ 
" classical," and that his work upon the Hepaticae of the Amazon 
and Andes " is now generally recognised as the most important 
book upon the group that has appeared in recent years " ; and 
he adds that, " though ostensibly descriptive and systematic, his 
writings are weighty in the discrimination of characters and in 
the adjustment of boundaries ; but over and above this they have 
the charm of deserving to be read between the lines, for they 
abound with interjected suggestions, often most pregnant. For 
instance, the question of the evolution of the leafage of the 
Hepaticae and its relation to that of the higher plants may be 
raised in a footnote ; the water supply and the biological relation- 
^ Mr. Stabler could not tell me where he found this statement by Mr. 
Bentham given in his " Obituary Notice of Richard Spruce" in Proceedmgs 
of Botanical Society of Edinburgh (Feb. 1894). Dr. B. Daydon Jackson 
kindly searched all the Presidential Addresses to the Linnean Society, as 
well as the articles referring to Spruce in the Journal of Botany, without 
finding it. I then applied to Mr. A. Gepp of the Natural History Museum 
(who had written an obituary notice of Spruce), and he informs me that his 
colleague, Mr. James Britten, has found it in a seven-page pamphlet, without 
author's or printer's name, headed — Statement of the Results of Mr. Richard 
Spj'uce's Travels in the Valley of the Amazon, and in the Andes of Peru and 
Ecuador. 
Then follows a description, year by year, of Spruce's work, concluding with 
a "Note by Mr. Bentham, President of the Linnean Society, on Mr. Spruce's 
Services to Botany" — which, after referring to his work in Great Britain and 
the Pyrenees, concludes with the passage quoted above. 
This pamphlet bears the MS. inscription : 
"J. J. Bennett, Esq., with Mr. Clements R. Markham's compliments, 
June 10, 1864." 
As this was only a fortnight after Spruce's return to England, the statement 
appears to have been one of the documents used by his friend Mr. (now Sir) 
Clements Markham, for the purpose of obtaining for him the small Civil List 
Pension of ^50, which was granted him the following year, as stated by 
Mr. Stabler. 
These circumstances may account for the fact that Mr. Bentham has pub- 
lished no general estimate of Spruce's work in any of his papers describing 
portions of his collections, or elsewhere, and renders it more important that 
the above statement should be preserved here. 
