English botanist George Bentham (1800-84) is most famous as the author of the popular Handbook of the British Flora (1858), which ran into many editions. A distinguished scientist, Bentham was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1862, and served as President of the Linnean Society of London for thirteen years (1861-74). Originally published in 1826, this catalogue of plants from the Pyrénées region of France is Bentham's second work. Inspired by French botanist de Candolle (1778-1841) as well as by the analytical methods of his uncle, the famous philosopher Jeremy Bentham, this book is a systematic overview of the plants found between Figueras, in the north of Spain, and Bordeaux, Narbonne and Montpellier in France. The book opens with the story of Bentham's 1825 three-month trip through the Pyrenees region, with botanist G. A. Walker Arnott (1799-1868), on which the Catalogue is based.
