XX 
George Bentham, F.R.S. 
his career, for it was his introduction to a tropical flora 
(which he was never privileged to see), and afforded the chief 
materials for his first work on exotic plants, the ‘ Scrophu- 
larineae Indicae,’ published in 1835. This was followed, in 
18 36, by the completion of his great work, ‘ Labiatarum 
genera et species, or a description of the genera and species 
of the order Labiatae, with their general history, characters, 
affinities, and geographical distribution,’ which gave him a 
position in the very foremost ranks of taxonomic botanists 1 . 
It was followed, in 1837, by his enumeration of plants collected 
in the Swan River district by Baron Hugel (Vienna, 1837), 
which is remarkable as showing the ease and rapidity with 
which he mastered a Flora totally different from those he 
had previously studied. 
From the summer of 1836 till the early part of 1837 he 
resided with his wife in Germany, visiting the principal 
Botanic Gardens and Herbaria, especially engaged in studying 
the order Leguminosae ; his account of these and of the 
botanists whom he met was communicated in letters to Sir W. 
Hooker, and published (anonymously) in the Companion 
to the Botanical Magazine (Vol. ii) and Journal of Botany 
(Vol. i). They are very interesting as contributions to the 
History of Botany in the first third of the century. During 
the winter at Vienna he published his masterly ‘ Commen- 
tationes de Leguminosarum generibus ’ in the ‘ Annalen des 
Wiener Museums ’ (Vol. ii). 
In 1846-7 he undertook, accompanied by his wife, an 
extended tour in Europe. Commencing with Hamburg, they 
visited Copenhagen, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Moscow, 
Odessa, Constantinople, Trieste, Bologna, Florence, Leghorn, 
Naples, Rome, Palermo, and Geneva. What he saw in these 
towns and their environs of botanical, horticultural, and other 
1 To give some idea of the thoroughness of Bentham’s methods, it is well to 
state, that in prosecution of this work he visited the following herbaria : — in 1830 
Hamburg and Berlin; in 1831 Paris, Geneva, Avignon, and Montpellier ; in 1832 
Hamburg again, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, and Munich ; in 
1833 Paris and Montpellier again; and in 1834 Bonn, Frankfort, Geneva again, 
Pavia and Turin (Labiat. Gen. and S., Pref. p. v). 
