From George Bentham   24 November 1864

25. WILTON PLACE, S.W.

Nov 24/64

My dear Sir

I have just received yours of the 24 Septr¹ and regret much to hear that the boxes per Sussex had received damage although I know not the particulars for the letter you mention as having sent by the previous mail never reached me² — I saw the boxes packed and wherever they seemed to require it I have had (out of my own pocket) new lids or new linings and am as much surprised as annoyed at their having suffered.

I am sorry there should have been some mistake about the freight — with that I personally have nothing to do. When at first you wrote to me that you would pay the freight both ways³ Dr (or Sir William I forget which) Hooker said that that was a great deal for you to do and that it should be paid one way out of the garden funds It appears probable that at the time of the change in the head gardener there was some omission in the directions to the agent For the future it would be better that you should not prepay the freight here but that it should be paid each way on arrival of the boxes which would obviate all mistakes.

I wonder you should have taken offence at what I said about postage⁴ I was very indignant at the Government proposal to double the postage at the very moment when we were voting £20,000 to Rowland Hill for having reduced it and urged the few friends I have connected with Australia to write as little as possible under the new regulation — however before the mailday came Government changed their minds and the postage never has been raised. The reason of my not writing by every mail is that which I gave you from the first that I have very little time for writing letters and have stopped all correspondence that is not absolutely necessary Every description of my Floras is written out at least twice over, the six hours work I get in the middle of the day is fully taken up by the examination of plants and search into books — all the writing out for press has to be done at home in the morning and evening then the proofs and revises — besides my annual addresses various reviews and minor papers and I cannot entrust any of the writing or compiling to other hands even if I could afford it so that it requires a great deal of courage after all that and at my age to sit down to write letters, — and I have written a great deal more to you than I ever expected to do.

When I make any observation about money matters it is not but that I fully recognise your liberality as I stated in my preface and there is never any thought in allusion to you or your Government — but I always think that some of the other Governments might have followed the example of yours. Out of the £250 I get I have to pay down £100 to Reeve⁵ — then (not reckoning the copies which by your desire I have charged to you) I take 12 copies on my own account to give to those who have assisted me with specimens etc. and Reeve will not charge them to me less than 17'⁶ each. I have much to pay in carriage of specimens from the continent, in postages and various minor expenses attending on the work so that on the whole I scarcely clear £125 per volume which is very poor pay for a twelvemonths hard work after having been nearly 40 years in the trade.

I have now just commenced Myrtaceae having finished Leguminosae for Genera Plantarum.⁷ On reworking the Caesalpinieae from the rich materials we now have and which throw new lights on various affinities I have been obliged considerably to modify my former arrangements — only in two cases as regards Australian plants — I find that some Araulean species quite destroy all definite limits between Guilandina & Caesalpinia, and after Roxburgh⁸ we must reduce the former to a section of the latter⁹ — and Erythrophloeum appears to be nearer allied to Dimorphandra and Burkea among Caesalpinieae (where Brown first put it) than to Parkia and Pentaclethra among Mimoseae to which Brown subsequently removed it.¹⁰ We shall then have the strictly valvate corolla all in Mimoseae as in Parkia & Pentaclethra it is the calyx only that is imbricate, whilst the corolla is certainly imbricate also in Erythrophloeum.

Thanks for your notes on my 2d vol. I have not made up my mind about Supplements. Repeated supplements and addenda to Supplements are practically very inconvenient and I think that my time is more usefully employed in continuing the body of the work. Numbers of criticisms will of course be made on the published volumes errors pointed out and additions made — all these I shall take a note of and if life and strength are spared me to bring the work to a conclusion, embody them all in one general Supplement.¹¹

With regard to the delimitation of genera and species every botanist has their own opinion and no one is of sufficient authority for others to defer to — except in some cases Brown and De Candolle. I come to the best conclusion I can but I do not in the least expect you to agree with me. I am often in very great doubts myself and an additional specimen or a different train of thought may turn the scale one way or another. Our acquaintance with species is at best very imperfect; the greater part of the facts we state are more or less conjectural and scarcely anything in botany is capable of mathematical demonstration. You find I admit far too many species — you may be perfectly right — on the other hand botanists of as great or greater experience than myself and on whose judgement I place the greatest reliance think that I unite too many species — and they may be right too, all I can do is to act to the best of my judgement fully admitting its great fallibility. The idea that true species are absolutely limited in Nature which you insist on so strongly is one that I long maintained in opposition to Alphonse de Candolle, Jos. Hooker and others whose views on subjects of the kind are founded on more general knowledge than I can boast of — and I now find that my own opinions are much shaken, the spirit of enquiry awakened by Darwin's extraordinary labours have thrown so much light (comparatively speaking) on the history of biological succession as to break down all absolute tests of a species — and there are very few naturalists of ability who would now venture to specify the absolute differences between a species a race and a variety. It is in each case a question of nice appreciation which must vary with the constitution of every mind, and one must have a strong conviction to set up ones own opinion against that of the majority of experienced botanists. Genera the more we know of them prove to be still more arbitrary. There is scarcely a single large genus in Leguminosae that is clearly defined from adjoining ones — intermediate species are almost always found sooner or later Mirbelia is a very bad genus although it has a technical character Oxylobium passes as much into Gastrolobium as into Chorizema and Gastrolobium into Pultenaea this again into Dillwynia and so on almost all through the Australian Podalyrieae which might have made all one or at most two genera Crotalaria passes into Lotononis and many others Tephrosia into Millettia and many other Robinioid genera Swainsonia into Lessertia and through various degrees into Colutea — and no quite constant character separates these from Astragalus Caragana &c. But to assist the human mind we must make genera which are better or worse according to the ability of he who defines them. I have no pretensions to doing better than others. I do the best I can often giving up my own ideas for what I conceive to be the general judgement of those of more experience than myself.

I see you object to some of the specific names I have taken up¹² — as to MS ones I have always given up my own although recorded in several herbaria — for yours but where specific names are published it is a rule which De Candolle and present botanists more than ever insist on, that when a species is removed from one genus to another the oldest specific name is to be retained without very strong reasons to the contrary and if I were not to do so it would be certainly done for me by the first who should follow me.

The volume I have now commenced will be one of very hard work as I must include about 1400 species to compensate for the thinness of the last — it will I hope go to the end of Compositae but still I hope to bring it out by the end of 1865 if I retain my health.

Ever yours sincerely

George Bentham

Dr F. Mueller &c &c

Astragalus

Burkea

Caesalpinia

Caesalpinieae

Caragana

Chorizema

Colutea

Compositae

Crotalaria

Dillwynia

Dimorphandra

Erythrophloeum

Gastrolobium

Guilandina

Leguminosae

Lessertia

Lotononis

Millettia

Mimoseae

Mirbelia

Myrtaceae

Oxylobium

Parkia

Pentaclethra

Podalyrieae

Pultenaea

Swainsonia

Tephrosia