378 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PROSPECTS 
at £6000.^ Bentham, moreover, left Pontrilas and settled 
first at Kew and later in London ; saw to the final arrange- 
ments of his herbarium, and continued his own botanical 
work, more especially the monumental Genera Plantarum 
hi collaboration with Hooker. 
This accession both weighted the scales in favour of Kew 
as against the other and in many ways less suitable centre 
of botany at the British Museum, and offered a new factor in 
the problem of the ultimate destination of the Hooker collec- 
tion. As to the status of the Herbarium he tells Harvey 
(January 21, 1857) : 
We have no funds for buying plants ; my Father pays 
himself for all appertaining to the Herbm. as of yore,, and 
calls it his own. We should hardly dare to ask for money to 
buy Ciyptogams, as the Herbm. is upheld ostensibly for the 
naming of the Garden plants, and we are not yet in a con- 
dition to throw down the gauntlet to the British Museum. 
We have just drawn up the Garden Report and pitched it 
very strong about the uses of the Herbarium as a scientific 
adjunct to the Gardens. 
With the death of Robert Brown in 1858 the question 
came to a head. Ten years before, the Parhamentary Com- 
mission had determined that on Bro\\ai's death they would 
abohsh the Botanical Department ; and, Hooker confesses, 
' every reason for doing so then is redoubled in force since, 
1 In the Memoir of his father, p. Ixxx, J. D. H. writes : ' This was second 
to my father's alone in England in extent, methodical arrangement, and 
nomenclature, and was placed in the same building. Its formation was begun 
in 1816, in France, where and in the Pyrenees Mr. Bentham collected diligently ; 
but its great expansion by the inclusion of exotic plants dated from his intro- 
duction to my father in Glasgow in 1823, when the friendship between the 
two commenced which remained undisturbed for forty-two years. From 
that date the two botanists may be said to have hunted in couples for the 
aggrandisement of their libraries end collections, sharing their duplicates, 
Mr. Bentham giving my father the preference in all cases of purchase, &c. 
The one great difference between their aims was, that the former confined his 
herbarium to flowering plants, whilst my father's rapidly grew to be the 
richest in the world in both flowering and fiowerlcss plants. The offer of 
this gift was prearranged with my father, who with his wonted disinterestedness 
put aside the obvious fact, that its acceptance wovdd greatly diminish the 
value of his own herbarium and library, should the Government ever con- 
template its purchase.' 
