SCIENTIFIC FUTUEE 167 
contact with men of science ; moreover, its scope was elastic, 
and could easily admit the schemes for further travel which 
he had formed. 
You wish [he writes to Bentham ^ in a letter of 
November 27, 1842] that I should see a Httle of Tropical 
Vegetation after my Antarctic herborizations, and I am 
much obliged to you for your kind desire, which I doubt 
not is good ; but, please Sir, I would rather go home, and 
have no notion of jumping from cold to hot, and cracking 
like a glass tumbler. Have not you Botanists killed col- 
lectors a-plenty in the Tropics ? And I have payed dear 
enough for the little I have got in a healthy climate. 
On my return to England I shall have plenty to do, 
working in my father's herbarium, and when I can get 
enough money I should like to visit the capital continents 
and especially N. America. If entirely my own master, I 
would not object to embark once more for a distant climate 
for the purpose of Botany, and to explore the Islands of the 
South Seas, especially the Society and Sandwich groups. 
I might prefer the Himalaya regions ; but these ought to 
be investigated and are in progress, by the officers of the 
Hon. E. India Company : besides the expense of travelling 
there is dreadful. The only circumstance which has dis- 
appointed me is the not having visited the S. Seas. 
Poor Western Africa remains still unknown, and the Niger 
Expedition worse than a total failure. 
1 George Bentham (1800-84) was the youngest son of Sir Samuel Bentham, 
the naval architect and engineer, and nephew of Jeremy Bentham, the writer 
on jurisprudence. His facility in learning languages was stimulated by early 
residence in Eussia, Sweden, and France (1814-27), and in later life he was 
able to read botanical works in fourteen modern languages, as well as Latin. 
His pursuit of natural history, especially scientific botany, took second place 
to his work in philosophy, logic and law, until set free from other ties by the 
death of his father and uncle (1831-2). Then he devoted himself to botany, 
becoming, with his legal and philosophic mind, one of our greatest systematists. 
It will be seen later in this volume how in 1854, when certain difficulties 
made him contemplate retirement from his work, the Hookers and Lindley 
saved him for botany. He was given the run of Kew, and co-operated in the 
newly started Colonial Floras, undertaking those of Hongkong and Australia, 
and later projected and wrote with Joseph Hooker the monumental Genera 
Plantarum. He was President of the Linnean Society 1861-74. 
