xxii George Bent ham, F.RS \ 
of Sir W. Hooker. On the other hand, the idea of Bentham’s 
giving up botany was a shock to his scientific friends at 
home and abroad, and especially to the oldest and most 
intimate of them, Sir W. Hooker, who begged him to 
reconsider his intention, combated his own modest estimate 
of himself as a mere amateur systematise and pointed out 
to him that a residence in London offered the means of study 
at Kew, where a room, containing his own herbarium, should 
be devoted to his use, and where he would be in proximity 
to the garden, museum, and collections already at Kew. 
Fortunately Sir W. Hooker’s counsels, backed by those of 
other friends, especially Dr. Lindley, prevailed. In 1855 he 
took up his residence in London, for the first few years in 
Victoria Street, Westminster, and for the remainder of his 
life in 25 Wilton Place, between Hyde Park and Belgrave 
Square. From London he went to Kew daily (a few weeks 
of autumn holidays excepted) for five days a week, with 
perfect regularity, arriving at 10 a.m. and leaving at 4 p.m., 
devoting the evenings to writing out the notes of his day’s 
work, and never breaking the long fast between breakfast at 
8 or 8.30 and dinner at 7.30 or 8. c With such methodical 
habits, with freedom from professional or administrative 
functions, which consume the time of most botanists, with 
steady devotion to his chosen work, and with nearly all 
authentic material and needful appliances at hand or within 
reach, it is not surprising that he should have undertaken 
and have so well accomplished such a vast amount of work, 
and he has the crowning merit and happy fortune of having 
completed all that he undertook ’ (A. Gray, Memorial). 
No sooner was Bentham settled within reach of Kew than 
he was induced by Sir W. Hooker to inaugurate a series of 
Colonial Floras, which had been planned by the former, and 
of which the first is that of Hong-Kong 1 . It was followed 
by the ‘Flora Australiensis,’ in seven volumes, which is the 
first flora of any large continental area that has ever been 
1 The ‘Flora Hong-Kongensis,’ published in 1861, one vol. 8vo, pp. 455, 
contains 1,003 species. 
