BENTHAM, GEORGE (1800-1 884), English botanist, was born at Stoke near Portsmouth on Sept. 22, i800. His father, Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), the only brother of Jeremy Bentham, was a naval architect in the service of the empress Catherine II. of Russia. The Bentham family spent much time on the Continent, and after 1815 settled at Montpellier. There George read A. P. de Candolle's Flore f rancaise and was much impressed with its analytical tables. He began forthwith to collect the mate rials for his first botanical work, Catalogue des plantes indigenes des Pyrenees et du Bas Languedoc (1826). From 1826-32 he acted as secretary to his uncle, Jeremy Bentham, and studied for the bar at Lincoln's Inn. But the inheritance of his father's and his uncle's fortunes made him independent, and enabled him to spend his time in his herbarium and his library.
In 1854 he found the maintenance of a herbarium and library too great a tax on his means. He therefore offered them to the Government on the understanding that they should form the foun dation of such necessary aids to research in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. In 1858 his Handbook of the British Flora was published, and has been reprinted several times, the last edition appearing in 1924. The Government, in 1857, sanctioned a scheme for the preparation of a series of Flora of British colonies and possessions. Bentham began with the Flora Hongkongensis in 1861. This was followed by the Flora Australiensis, in seven vol umes (1863-78). His greatest work was the Genera Plantarum, begun in 1862 and concluded in 1883 in collaboration with Sir Joseph Hooker. He seemed at last only to live for the completion of this monumental work. He died on Sept. io, 1884.
During the period 1826-32, he wrote the Outline of a New System of Logic, with a Critical Examination of Dr. Whateley's Elements of Logic (182 7) and a number of articles on various legal subjects. In his Outline the principle of the qualification of the predicate was explicitly stated for the first time.
See B. D. Jackson, Life of George Bentham (English Men of Science Series, 1906).