By the age of seven, he could speak French, German and Russian, and he learned Swedish during a short residence in Sweden while still a child.

The family made a long tour through France, staying two years at Montauban, where Bentham studied Hebrew and mathematics in the Protestant Theological School.

[5] While studying at Angoulême, Bentham came across a copy of A. P. de Candolle's Flore française, and became interested in the analytical tables for identifying plants.

Having inherited his father's estate the previous year, he was now sufficiently well off to do whatever he wanted, which was botany, jurisprudence and logic.

This Stanley Jevons declared to be undoubtedly the most fruitful discovery made in abstract logical science since the time of Aristotle.

The book passed into oblivion, and it was not until 1873 that Bentham's claims to priority were finally vindicated against those of Sir William Hamilton by Herbert Spencer.

His chief occupation for the next few years was his contributions to the Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis, which was being carried on by his friend, A. P. de Candolle.

[16] The editor, Richard Brinsley Hinds, had been surgeon on HMS Sulphur 1835-41 while she explored the Pacific coast of the Americas.

He, therefore, offered them to the government on the understanding that they should form the foundation of such necessary aids to research in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

However, he yielded to the persuasion of Sir William Jackson Hooker, John Lindley and other scientific friends.

In 1855 he took up his residence in London, and worked at Kew for five days a week, with a brief summer holiday, from this time onwards until the end of his life.

[15] In 1857, the government sanctioned a scheme for the preparation of a series of Floras or descriptions in the English language of the indigenous plants of British colonies and possessions.

His greatest work was the Genera Plantarum, begun in 1862, and concluded in 1883 in collaboration with Joseph Dalton Hooker.