XXV11 
George Bent ham, F.R.S. 
the University of Cambridge with an authentically named 
consulting herbarium. This consisted for the most part of 
that of his friend, Dr. C. Leman, F. L.S., a zealous collector, 
especially by purchase, which he was disposed to leave by 
will to Bentham. The latter, on the other hand, urged its 
being left to Cambridge, of which Dr. Leman was a graduate 
in medicine. It was finally arranged between them, that 
on his friend's death the collections should be sent to 
Bentham, who should select from them any specimens which 
he might want for his own herbarium, whilst the remainder 
(the much larger portion), augmented by duplicates from 
Bentham’s herbarium, should go to Cambridge. Aided by 
a small grant from the University for the purchase of paper, 
for the expenses of mounting and poisoning the specimens, 
and for other contingencies, Bentham classified, named, had 
fastened down and enclosed in genus-covers, a consulting 
herbarium of 30,000 species. This great labour occupied 
more or less of ten years of his life. Other gratuitous tasks 
were the ticketing, and dividing into sets for sale, of the 
collections of Robert and Richard Schomburgk in Guiana 
and Brazil, and of Hartweg 1 in British Columbia, California, 
and Mexico. A still greater service to science was his 
undertaking the distribution and sale of the magnificent 
collections of the distinguished traveller Richard Spruce 
in the Amazon region and Peru. These, amounting in all 
to 6,500 numbers, were sent to him as collected, to be 
arranged, named, and divided into twenty to thirty sets, 
for which he obtained subscribers in the principal public 
and private museums in Europe and America. He further 
collected the money due by the subscribers, transmitting 
it to Spruce, who depended on it for the prosecution of his 
thirteen years of exploration, thus saving to all parties the 
expenses of agency and commission. 
Bentham s last work was the ‘ Genera Plantarum,’ of 
1 Of Hartweg’s plants he published a catalogue, with descriptions of new 
genera and species under the title of ‘ Plantae Hartwegianae.’ It enumerates about 
2,000 species. 
