99 . 
&.A. NAT., VOL. XV. 
June 1 2th, 1934._ By /. M. Black. 
been called by Sir William Hooker, the Director of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens at Kew, to Mueller’s meritorious work, appointed 
him Government Botanist of Victoria. His boundless enthusiasm 
found a vent in many journeys throughout the State, often 
undertaken alone and later travels carried him over the greater 
part cf Australia. His publications, often illustrated, were very 
numerous and descriptions of new species flowed from his pen. 
He became a Fellow or an honorary member of many scientific 
societies. The King of Wurtemberg made him a “Freiherr” or 
Baron and Queen Victoria knighted him. He spent most of his 
salary in employing collectors of plants and when he was asked 
why he did not marry, he said his work left him no time for 
such a thing. For over 40 years he was the undisputed botanic¬ 
al authority in Australia. 
Robert Brown’s flora dealt almost exclusively with coastal 
plants, for the Blue Mountains had not been crossed in his day 
and all the inland parts of Australia were quite unknown. By 
1860 it had become necessary to compile a descriptive list of all 
known Australia^ plants. This huge task was accepted by 
George Bentham, of whom a word must be said before closing 
this address. He had spent his youth on the Continent of Eur¬ 
ope and had developed the same enthusiasm for plants as Brown 
and Mueller. He was a great, a judicious and a cautious botan¬ 
ist, untiring in his work. He had to examine all the types of 
Australian species, scattered as they were over many herbaria, 
and he had to study all the European collections, dating from the 
time of Cook’s discovery of Botany Bay, as well as the vast 
store of plants sent to him in London by Baron von Mueller. 
That a good deal of his w r ork, especially in certain genera, has 
undergone some revision in recent years, is nothing to be won¬ 
dered at. Bentham laid the solid foundation for all floras of 
Australia. As has been well said, his was the task of rough- 
hewing the vast material into shape, leaving to later specialists 
the closer examination and often the re-arrangement of some of 
his species. His division of such great Australian genera as the 
Acacias and Eucalypts into series or sections is the work of a 
master and has been followed by all subsequent authors. 1 he 
remarkable thing is the indifference which the colonial govern¬ 
ments showed towards the Flora Australiensis after they had 
authorised its compilation by Bentham. One would have imag¬ 
ined that each State, realising the importance of the work, would 
have engaged one or two botanists or collectors to gather speci¬ 
mens in outlying districts. This was not done anywhere except 
in Victoria, where Mueller himself collected and also paid collec¬ 
tors out of his own salary. And this neglect was not due to the 
