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144 and was continued by him till his death in 1865. Owing to the munificence of Bentham's bequest to the Kew Herbarium for its continuance and illustration, it remains still as the principal channel for the description and delineation of new and rare plants from the Kew Herbarium. The fact that the number of the plates is now about 3000 gives some idea of the magnitude of this work, which was started by Sir William Hooker in the later days of his Glasgow professorship.

It might well be thought that the production of the works already named would have sufficed to occupy a life-time, especially when it is remembered that they were produced in the intervals of leisure after the performance of the official duties of a professor, and later of the Director of the growing establishment at Kew. But there still remain to be mentioned that noble series of publications on the Filicales, which gave Sir William Hooker the position of the leading Pteridologist of his time. The series on ferns began with the Icones Filicum (1828-31) in two folio volumes, with 240 coloured plates by R. K. Greville, the text being written by Hooker. The same authors again cooperated in the Enumeratio Filicum (1832), a work projected to give the synonymy, citation of authors, habitat, and description of new and imperfectly known species. But it only extended to the first 13 genera, including the Lycopodineae, Ophioglosseae, Marattiaceae, and Osmundaceae, and was then dropped. Here may be conveniently introduced a number of volumes, which were for the illustration of ferns, but not systematically arranged. They were issued from time to time, and collectively give a large but not a coordinated body of fact. They were, the First Century of Ferns, issued in 1854; the Filices Exoticae in 1859; a Second Century of Ferns in 1861; British Ferns also in 1861, and Garden Ferns in 1862.

There still remain to be mentioned three great systematic works on ferns, each of which is complete in itself, viz. the Genera Filicum, the Species Filicum, and the Synopsis Filicum. The first of these was the Genera Filicum (1838-40), a volume issued in parts, royal octavo, with 126 coloured plates illustrating 135 genera. It goes under the joint names of Francis Bauer and Sir William Hooker, the latter being described on the