y GALAPAGOS FLOKA 169 
short synopsis of all the new species with terse diagnoses 
and nothing more, it would have been printed in the Journal 
and no one would have known of it at the Admiralty ; while 
it would secure the priority of discovery. It is not having 
my name at the tail of a specific one that I care about, 
but I do want our Expedition and country to have the 
merit. 
Next is the Syecies Filicwm, in which he was helping his 
father, working * as the man does who blows the Organist's 
bellows, at the rougher part,' a work among the lesser studied 
plants profitable to the student, though one of the most difficult 
*and laborious that could be picked out in all Botany. 
Then came a task suggested by Darwin ; he continues to 
Bentham : 
I am also working up very slowly a paper on Galapagos 
Island plants, from Mr. Darwin's and Macrae's collections. 
I find it a very slow job indeed, as there are very few species 
of a genus or Nat. Ord. and so dissecting one plant is no 
help to another. There are more new species than I expected, 
but then I have begun at the small orders and Cryptogamia ; 
I have done the Ferns, twenty-eight in number, and am now 
amongst the grasses, which are terrible. Fancy two new 
Panicums ; I cannot make them agree with any others, 
and yet every one will say I only made them new species 
to save the trouble of finding out their proper names —then 
there is a vile Eragrostis Poa identical with an Afghanistan 
one ! but undescribed, and another group of the genus 
Eutriana whose spikelets vary in a most instructive manner, 
some abortive, some $, some cJ, some ^, some with two 
flowers, some with more, and altogether the most unsatis- 
factory thing possible to describe. 
Finally the long accumulations of his father's Herbarium 
were clamouring to be set in order, ' probably by arranging 
together all the loose bundles, thus making a grand total 
of all the Herbarium, and then going through the whole, 
taking each Nat. Ord. by itself, taking from it what is wanted 
for the Herbarium, and putting the rest aside as duplicates. 
Would not this be a grand work ? * 
