XIX 
George Bent ham , F.R.S. 
Society, the meetings of which, the anniversary dinners, and 
those of its club, he punctually attended. Soon after this 
Robert Brown proposed his name for election by the Royal 
Society, but withdrew it before the day fixed for election, 
to mark the dissatisfaction on the part of the scientific 
Fellows with the management of the Society, when a Royal 
Duke was made President. It was not until 1862 that he 
was again proposed and elected. 
In 1829, at the joint solicitation of his friend Mr. Joseph 
Sabine, the Hon. Secretary, and Dr. Lindley, Assistant 
Secretary, who were at issue as to the management of the 
Horticultural Society, he accepted the honorary secretaryship 
himself, and held it until 1840. On his entering office the 
Society was in a perilous position from debt and dissensions, 
from which, with Bindley ’s active co-operation, he rescued it. 
It was during his term of office that the celebrated Chiswick 
Horticultural fetes were inaugurated, which gave a new life 
to the science. At the first of these, held on April 3, 1832, 
seventeen hundred persons were present. It was during the 
same period that so many of our most popular garden-plants 
were introduced, especially from California, through collectors 
sent out by the Society (Douglas, Hartweg, and others). 
These plants were named, and many novelties amongst them 
described, by Bentham in the Society’s publications ; to which 
he also contributed a translation of Targioni-Tozetti’s ‘ His- 
torical Notes on Cultivated Plants,’ in which he added 
much valuable matter to the author’s work. At about this 
time Dr. Wallich returned from India with his enormous 
collection of Himalayan, Burmese, and Indian plants, destined 
to be named and distributed to the principal herbaria in 
Europe by the Honourable East India Company. In fur- 
therance of this great work Bentham offered his aid to 
Dr. Wallich, with whom he co-operated zealously for several 
successive years. Over and above his gratuitous labours as 
an assistant, he undertook the naming and distributing of the 
orders Euphorbiaceae and Gramineae, lithographing the tickets 
of the latter with his own hand. This marks an epoch in 
