
“Mr. Theodore Bent possessed a singular charm of manner, and an eager intelligence. His own object in travel was mainly archæological, but he was keenly anxious to assist any other branch of science to which he could be of use.” (From an obituary, possibly by Bent’s friend and Kew Director, William Thiselton-Dyer himself, in Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew], Vol. 1897, No. 125/126 (May – Jun., 1897), p. 206).
Starting in the 1890s with their trips to Africa and Arabia, celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, either formally (with the assistance of RBG Kew and the Natural History section of the British Museum, inter alia), or informally (collecting at random themselves), started to make botanical and zoological collections to return to England with, very much in the tradition of contemporary scientific enquiry: their acquisitions would then be passed on to interested institutions, or go on show in their London townhouse at 13 Great Cumberland Place, a stone’s throw from Marble Arch.
Occasionally they would encounter some plant or creature ‘new to science’, and a search online for ‘bentii’ will reveal a handful of species named after the couple, hence the theme of this article!
Botanical Finds

No better place to start than the famous Herbarium at Kew Gardens, London, where the atmospherically controlled cabinets are the repositories of several plant species bearing the Bent name – often in the original pressing medium undertaken in the field, and still with the contemporary labelling – thrilling objects still.
A quick search on the Kew site will reveal these exotic names, and clicking the links will bring up photographs of the actual examples (or similar) that returned with the explorers to London from Southern Arabia (helped by the skills of Kew botanist William Lunt (1871-1904) who adventured with the Bents).
The species of interest to us include: Justicia bentii; Ceropegia bentii, Echidnopsis bentii, Pentatropsis bentii; Strobopetalum bentii; Trichodesma bentii; Anogeissus bentii; Terminalia bentii; Kalanchoe bentii; Kalanchoe bentii subsp. bentii; Kalanchoe bentii subs. somalica; Kickxia bentii; Linaria bentii; Nanorrhinum bentii; Andropogon bentii.
Of these discoveries, perhaps the Kalanchoe is the most often referred to, particularly due to the account, perhaps apocryphal, that seeds from the Bent expedition plant eventually flowered at Kew (in June 1900).

In his touching obituary, Kew director William Thiselton-Dyer outlines the scope of Bent’s collecting for the institution: “The interesting botanical results of their memorable journey to the Hadramaut (in 1893-4), on which they were accompanied by Mr. William Lunt, a member of the staff of the Royal Gardens, are given in the Kew Bulletin for 1894 (pp. 328-343). Those of their second journey in Arabia Felix in 1894-5, were published in the Kew Bulletin for 1895 (pp. 180-1860. The materials they obtained brought out clearly the relations of the Flora of Southern Arabia to Africa on the one hand, and to Western Asia on the other. They returned last winter to the same region, visiting in addition the island of Sokotra. But the plants they obtained have not yet been worked up.” (Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew], Vol. 1897, No. 125/126 (May – Jun., 1897), p. 206)
Having left Sokotra towards the end of January 1897, Bent wrote to Thiselton-Dyer at Kew from their base in Aden:
“My dear Dyer… I got your letter on our return from Socotra where we passed two months. I botanized for you as I thought we might be able to add some trifle to Balfour’s and Schweinfurth’s collections but I felt diffident in my work having 2 experts before me and moreover I had to throw a good many specimens away owing to mould after excessive damp. However we have a fair number and a few seeds as well and Mrs Bent photo’d a good many of the quaint trees… We start on Saturday for an expedition to the Yaffi country from here. It is reported one of the most fertile districts of Yemen. I hope to continue collecting. We shall hope to be back in England for the end of April if the plague does not cut Aden off from steamer communication before then, which is just now the topic engrossing everyone here. Mrs Bent joins me in kind regards…Yours sincerely, J. Theodore Bent” (23 January 1897; Kew Archives: Directors’ Correspondence, Vol. 179/7, KADC0308)

This letter is worth a few quick notes: 1) Balfour and Schweinfurth were the two great contemporary botanists for the area (Bent was amateur of course); 2) We learn from Bent of the problems of keeping the botanical specimens in good condition; 3) Bent makes a reference to Mabel’s photography – sadly very little of her work survives; 4) Warning bells go off for us in terms of Bent’s references to what is to prove his final trip into the field: his obsession with South Arabia is his undoing – not the ‘plague’, but malaria.
Full accounts of the botanizing Bents are to be found in Mabel Bent’s Southern Arabia (London, 1900) and volume three of her “Travel Chronicles” (Oxford, 2010).
Molluscs
“The British Museum is much indebted to Mrs. Bent for the donation of this valuable collection.”
On their final trip together, to Sokotra and east of Aden, in early 1897, the Bents made efforts to bring back to London, inter alia, various marine and land snails. Although faced with having to handle all her melancholy duties following Theodore’s death in May 1897, Mabel was determined to fulfil her obligations to those institutions interested in their collections as swiftly as possible. One such was the Zoology Department of the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum).

And yet, just a matter of months before, the couple were happily embarking on their exploration of the remote island off the Horn of Africa. In her notebook covering Sokotra, Mabel records (Tuesday, 22 December 1896) that the “Butterfly, Botanical, Shell, and Beetle collections have been started”, and on Christmas Eve (Thursday, 24 December 1896): “We shall have been here a week this evening. The camels are roving round and it is said that the baggage shall be bound in bundles this evening and that we shall start tomorrow after prayers, even a little way. Yesterday we had a delightful day. We started after breakfast with luncheon, gun, butterfly net, photography, shell box, beetle box and flower basket.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3, pp. 288-9, Oxford, 2010)
Later, in her 1900 book Southern Arabia (Appendix II) there is a reference to this collection (‘A LIST OF THE LAND AND FRESHWATER SHELLS COLLECTED IN SOKOTRA BY MR. AND MRS. THEODORE BENT’) by Edgar A. Smith, F.Z.S., Assistant Keeper of Zoology, British Museum:
“Previous to the researches of Mr. and Mrs. Bent, only forty-eight land and freshwater molluscs had been recorded from Sokotra. In addition to twenty-three of these species, they were fortunate in obtaining eleven new forms, some of them very remarkable. These have been described and figured by the writer in the ‘Journal of Malacology,’ vol. vi., pp. 33-38, plate v., figs. 1-9. and in the ‘Bulletin of the Liverpool Museum,’ vol. ii. No. 1, p. 12. The British Museum is much indebted to Mrs. Bent for the donation of this valuable collection.”

More specifically, Smith writes: “The most recent account of the terrestrial and freshwater Mollusca of the island of Socotra is that published by Mr. Crosse in the Journal de Conchyliologie, 1894, pp. 341-375… Since this catalogue appeared, nothing has been added to our knowledge of the island. During the present year [1897] the British Museum has received from Mrs. Theodore Bent a series of land and freshwater shells collected by herself and her late husband whose devotion to exploration was unfortunately terminated by death. This collection contains the majority of the known species and several others new to science. The fact that as many as nine new forms were discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Bent would appear to indicate that many new species have yet to be found in unexplored parts of the island.” (Journal of Malacology, 1897, vol. vi. pp. 33-38, plate v., figs. 1-9)
Smith allocated two new shell species to the Bents: Buliminus bentii and Lithidion bentii (unclick ‘marine only’ top right on this WoRMS site).

Under the entry (3) for Buliminus (Passamaiella) bentii, n. sp., Edgar Smith writes: “The only two specimens collected by Mr. and Mrs. Bent are in a bleached condition, exhibiting traces of horny or brownish colour only towards the apex. The form of this very interesting species is very remarkable and at once distinguishes it from other allied species. The great contraction of the aperture is very peculiar, it is also remarkable in that the parietal callus does not actually join the extremities of the peristome, but is separated both above and below by a slight notch of channel. It is a melancholy pleasure that one feels in associating this very curious species with the name of the late Mr. Bent.” (Journal of Malacology, 1897, vol. vi. pp. 33-38, plate v., figs. 1-9)
The Bents’ molluscs are still neatly arranged and labelled in their cabinets and drawers within the Natural History Museum, and available for consultation by researchers on request (if you ever see them, let us know). The NHM collections can be searched and their online page for Lithidion bentii reveals a wonderful dataset, including an image of the NHM accession log (page 61, dated 21 July 1897) in which all the Mabel Bent Sokotran collection is inventoried.
Arachnids
Scorpions

Scorpions are tricky things, best handled with care, including when it comes to classification.
In a letter to her family, posted from the Hadramaut, Mabel intends to shock: ‘I had a scorpion in my glove the other day. I dragged it out of the finger with my nail and shook it into my hand. Fancy the horror of seeing a black scorpion 1½ inches long.’ (Mabel’s family letter, 13 January 1894, archived (rgs243954) at the Royal Geographical Society, London)

When it came to telling the story for her book Southern Arabia (1900, p. 107), she goes into more detail: “As we were leaving Haura [Hawra], just standing about waiting to mount, I felt something hard in one finger of my glove which I was putting on. I thought it was a dry leaf and hooked it down with my nail and shook it into my hand. Imagine my terror on lifting my glove at seeing a scorpion wriggling there. I dropped it quickly, shouting for Mahmoud [the expedition’s zoological collector, see below] and the collecting-bottle, and then caught it in a handkerchief. This was the way that Buthia Bentii introduced himself to the scientific world, for he was of a new species.”

Or so Mabel thought when she was writing. Her scorpion had indeed been classified as new species in 1895 by the respected British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock (1863-1947) at the reading of his paper to the Linnaean Society in London on 7 March 1895 (and subsequently published the same year as: ‘On the Arachnida and Myriapoda obtained by Dr. Anderson`s collector during Mr. T. Bent’s expedition to the Hadramaut, South Arabia; with a supplement upon the scorpions obtained by Dr. Anderson in Egypt and the Eastern Soudan’. Journal of the Linnaean Society 25: 292-316.
In his paper, Pocock makes two references to Mabel’s specimen (p. 316), although ‘B. Benti’ never seems to have been published directly: “Butheolus thalassinus is new to the British Museum”, he writes “and the acquisition of seven specimens has filled up an important gap in our series of Scorpions. Moreover, it has enabled me to compare the species both with Buthus Benti and with Nanobuthus Andersoni.” This suggests that Mabel’s scorpion was part of the British Museum’s collection at the time, but it was subsequently not accepted as a new species, being reclassified as the known Butheolus anthracinus. (There seems to be no record of Mabel’s find now in the NHM; it was probably discarded, or it rests with the museum’s grouping of B. anthracinus, or Mabel might even have wanted to keep it herself as a memento of her ‘horror’ in 1894. Those curious to see an image of B. anthracinus, and thus how Mabel’s specimen might have looked, can click here.)
Insects
There are two insects especially closely associated with the Bents in relation to their 1893/4 expedition to the Hadramaut; they were published in 1895.
Polyclada benti (Halticidae)
Polyclada is a genus of beetles belonging to the family group Leaf beetles, but for more on this creature we turn to C.J. Gahan, who read a paper to the Linnean Society in London on 7 March 1895, about a year after the Bents returned from Southern Arabia, in which he spoke ‘On the Coleoptera obtained by Dr. Anderson’s Collector during Mr. T. Bent’s Expedition to the Hadramaut, South Arabia’, his paper was subsequently published (Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, 1895, Vol. 15, pp. 285-291).

Gahan’s description of Bent’s beetle (p. 291) is rather difficult to follow as it is written in Insect, e.g.: “Head almost entirely reddish testaceous in colour; somewhat finely and closely aciculate-punctate above. Prothorax pale testaceous, marked above with six black spots, of which two are close to the anterior margin, while the remaining four are arranged in an arcuately transverse series close alongside the basal margin…”
Ectrichodia Andersoni (Hemiptera) – but we prefer Ectrichodia Benti

Before Gahan’s paper (7 March 1895, see above), W.F. Kirby read his ‘On the Insects other than Coleoptera obtained by Dr. Anderson’s Collector during Mr. T. Bent’s Expedition to the Hadramaut, South Arabia’, and this paper, too, appears in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, 1895, Vol. 25, 279-285.
Kirby (p. 279) begins by being critical of the way some of these insects from the Bent expedition were collected: “Many of the specimens, too, were bleached by spirit, which ought never to be used for collecting any insects except hard-shelled and smooth Coleoptera, Hemiptera, etc., which are not liable to be discoloured by it, and have no hair to be matted or delicate exposed wings to be torn.”
“I have named this new species after Dr. Anderson, to whom we are indebted for its discovery.”
Of the large collection of essentially non-beetles brought back by the Bents, Kirby writes that “[one] species I have ventured to describe as new to science; and two or three I am at present unable to determine with certainty, from want of sufficient material” (p. 279). This new species he arbitrarily decides (p. 284) to name after John Anderson (see below) rather than the Bents, whose expedition it was, not Anderson’s. Thus we are reclaiming it for the Bents – Ectrichodia Benti.
The original specimen would appear still to reside in the Natural History Museum, London.
Reptiles

There is a Yemeni lizard named after Theodore Bent, classified as Uromastyx benti. To trace it, we should consult Mabel’s diary:- “In the little directions provided for the zoological collection we read, ‘Little is known of the reproduction of lizards, so special attention, etc.’ Well, Mahmoud [assistant for zoological collection] brought me 2 lizards’ eggs, quite white and very fragile. I put them in a matchbox with tow, packed them in a box and one day found a live and a dead lizard, and as we have two more eggs, now all in a bottle, we feel pleased.” This is a quote from Mabel Bent’s Travel Chronicles (1894, Vol. 3, p. 174), and Mabel drew a small circle in her text here to suggest the lizards’ eggs, and then left a space between two points with the word ‘length’, perhaps suggesting that the dead lizard was measured on her page.

When, after Theodore’s death, she was compiling Southern Arabia (p. 138) she used her notebook at this point to write: “In the little book of directions for zoological collectors we saw, that ‘little is known of the reproduction of lizards, so special attention is to be paid,’ &c. Mahmoud had brought me two little fragile eggs to keep, about half an inch long, and I had put them in a match-box with tow and packed them in my trunk, and on my return to Al Koton I found two little lizards about 1¼ inch long, one alive and the other dead. Both had to be pickled, as we did not understand how to bring so small a lizard up by hand. They proved to be new to science, as was also a large lizard we had found near Haura, whose peculiarity is that he has no holes along his legs to breathe by, like other lizards. His name is Aporosceles Bentii. The first lizard’s egg I had I was determined should not slip through my fingers; but alack! and well-a-day! my fingers slipped through it.” (Mabel might be confusing this lizard with the creature found actually near Al-Mukalla.)
Today, Aporosceles Bentii (Aporoscelis Benti) does not produce much online but the Yemeni lizard named after Theodore Bent is classified variously now within the Agamidae family as Uromastyx benti (it has a CITIES reference incidentally).

The Bents’ reptiles from the Hadramaut (1894-6) were later published by the eminent Scottish anatomist and zoologist John Anderson (1833-1900): “Six examples of [a] handsome lizard, three males and three females, were captured on Mr. Bent’s expedition to the Hadramut by my collector, who, owing to the courtesy of Mr. Bent, was permitted to accompany him throughout his journey. They were obtained near Makulla, below the plateau.”
Anderson’s accounts can be found at:
Anderson, J. (1894). ‘On Two New Species of Agamoid Lizards from the Hadramut, South-Eastern Arabia’. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History including Zoology, Botany and Geology, Vol. 6, 376-8.
Anderson, J. (1896, London). A Contribution to the Herpetology of Arabia with a Preliminary List of the Reptiles and Batrachians of Egypt.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bent, however, started [their 1894 Hadramaut expedition] accompanied by a qualified botanical collector [see ‘Botanical Finds’ above], Mr. Lunt, from the Kew Gardens; and by an Arab zoological collector provided by myself, and to whom I had given full instructions regarding the importance of keeping an accurate record of the locality in which each specimen was collected; but unfortunately he failed to attend to this, and I am therefore not in a position, except in one or two cases, to say more than that the specimens were collected between Makallah and the Hadramut Valley, and between that and the coast as far east as Shehr.” (Anderson 1896: 14-15)
The Bents’ actual lizards (1946.8.11.68-72) from the Hadramaut are still preserved in the Natural History Museum, London, and there is an image available as well as full NHM classification data.
