Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Letter not found. For the text given here, see Leader (Melbourne), 9 February 1884, p. 13, where the text is introduced thus: ‘The following letter from the venerable George Bentham to Baron Von Mueller, was read at the annual meeting of the Linnean Society of New South Wales on 30th January‘.

November 1883

My principal object in now writing to you is to say, that this is — I fear — the last letter you can receive from me. For the last six months I have been quite disabled from continuing my botanical pursuits and correspondence, and I now see that I can never hope to resume them. I first began collecting and forming my herbarium in 1818; my first botanical work of any importance was my Catalogue des plants de Pyrenees et de Bas Languedoc,

2

Bentham (1826).

published in 1826; but I had already written on other subjects, and from 1823 to 1828 I published more on classification, on logic, law, &c., than on botany. From 1828 to 1833 I endeavored to keep up botany as well as law, which I had adopted as a profession. In 1833 I finally gave up law, and devoted myself thenceforward exclusively to botany. In 1854 I gave over my botanical library and herbarium to Kew, and for the next 23 years went daily down there (from London) to work, devoting to it six or eight hours a day, five or six days in the week, steadily and continuously, with the sole interruption of an occasional summer vacation of a few weeks. After, however, the tedious winter 1882-83, I broke down in my 83rd year, and have done nothing since May last. I had, however, finished my share of the Genera Plantarum

3

Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).

of which you will have received the latest part from Sir Joseph Hooker; and I have now only, in taking leave of you, to thank you for all the pleasure I have had in my correspondence with you.—