From George Bentham   November 1863

25, WILTON PLACE, S.W. ¹

My dear Sir

Although I wrote a few days ago by Southampton² I must now add a few lines by the Overland to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 10th and 24th Sept.³ which have since come to hand. The bills for £5.5.0 which you kindly enclosed are now of no use — in the first place because the amount is already paid out of the £10 you sent in the spring — and secondly because Mr Black to whose order they are drawn left on the 19th for India. He had contracted a pulmonary disease from overwork and was ordered to a warmer climate and has accepted a post at the Bangalore (I believe) garden. Therefore return the bills cancelled for safety.

The box per True Briton has arrived safe as well as its precedessors and I hope shortly to return a box of Papilionaceae.

I am surprised you have not yet received the 30 copies of my first vols for your Government⁴ Reeve told me he had despatched them through Baillière before I left town in July.

I scarcely think it worth your while sending supplementary matter for Orders already published — excepting where you can spare specimens of novelties for the Kew herbarium to keep, which will be always most acceptable

I fear that a few garden specimens have occasionally been sent to you from N. S. Wales. The single specimen named by you Indigofera hebepetala (hebepetala is a MS name of a slight variety of atropurpurae. You must remember that the plants of Hooker and Thomson were hastily distributed without that critical examination which they will undergo for the Indian Flora which Hooker & Thomson are preparing after the plan of Fl. Austral.)⁵ is evidently the I. atropurpurea a Himalayan plant long grown in our gardens but most unlikely to be indigenous in N. S. Wales— so also a specimen marked "from the northern parts of N. S. Wales" is the S. African Tephrosia grandiflora certainly not indigenous in N. S. Wales These cases make me suspect that the Pterospermum acerifolium described vol. 1. p. 233 may after all be from the Sydney Botanic Garden — although that is less unlikely to be found really wild in tropical Australia, than a purely Himalayan or a Cape plant.

Of the 10 Australian herbaceous Indigoferas 8 (including I. oxycarpa which is I. parviflora Heyne) are Indian whilst the shrubby ones are all endemic — I fear I cannot reduce them as much as you do — that is to say I think that several forms must be distinguished which most botanists will call species although others may agree with you in calling them varieties

I have done Tephrosia which has given me a great deal of trouble. The only Indian species is T. purpurea and that assumes in Australia many forms which it never does in Asia or Africa.

Galega tricolor Hooker (Callotropis Don) is nothing but G. persica with a mistake as to its origin.

When you unite Vigna with Dolichos⁶ you surely cannot mean Dolichos as now limited to several Cape species and two S. American ones besides the cultivated D. Lablab. Vigna is on the contrary very closely allied to Phaseolus — one or two species quite intermediate[.] I worked those genera up with much care for Martius' Flora

W.⁷ & Arnott's Glycine contains no Glycine of the elder Linnaeus and is Teramnus but Glycine proper with one true Linnean species includes Johnia, Soja and Leptocyamus.

I see you speak of a Dolichos Benthami⁸ pray let me beg of you again on no account to name any species after me It is known to be against my principles to name species after any one but the discoverer except under extraordinary circumstances and for Australian plants it would have the appearance of my naming plants after myself.

I have not heard anything more of the £100 for the 2d vol. Mr Sargeant promised to let me know as soon as he received the authority to pay it: and as the mail has now been in some days I presume that no instructions have been sent from Melbourne. It is however of no consequence as I am not strictly entitled to it till the vol. is in the printer's hands which will not be till Feby or March

Ever yours sincerely

George Bentham

Callotropis

Dolichos Benthami

Dolichos lablab

Galega persica

Galega tricolor

Glycine

Indigofera atropurpurea

Indigofera hebepetala

Indigofera oxycarpa

Indigofera parviflora

Johnia

Leptocyamus

Papilionaceae

Phaseolus

Pterospermum acerifolium

Soja

Tephrosia grandiflora

Tephrosia purpurea

Teramnus

Vigna