REMOVAL TO KEW 133 



And thus was initiated that profuse and rapid course of pub- 

 lication which characterised the period of office of Sir William 

 Hooker in Glasgow. The duties of the chair were comparatively 

 light, and only in his later years did he extend them voluntarily 

 into the winter months. He worked year in year out, early 

 and late, at his writing, and rarely left home. The 21 years of 

 his professorship were perhaps the most prolific period of his 

 literary production. It was brought to a close in 1841, by his 

 appointment to the directorship of the Royal Gardens at Kew, 

 which had in March 1840 been transferred from the Crown, under 

 the Lord Steward's Department, to the Commissioners of Woods 

 and Forests. Sir William had been for some time desirous of 

 changing the scene of his activities from the relatively remote 

 city of Glasgow to some more central point, and the opening at 

 Kew not only satisfied this wish, but also put him in command 

 of the establishment in which he saw, even in its then unde- 

 veloped state, the possibility of expansion into a botanical centre 

 worthy of the nation. 



In the spring of 1841 Sir William removed to Kew, taking 

 with him his library, his private museum and herbarium. This 

 was the first of those incidents of denudation of the botanical 

 department in Glasgow, the direct result of the system that 

 held its place in the Scottish Universities till the Act of 1889. 

 Till that date the chair was ''farmed" by the professor. Almost 

 all the illustrative collections and books of reference were his 

 private property. Whenever, as has repeatedly been the case in 

 Glasgow, the occupant of the chair was promoted elsewhere, he 

 naturally took his property with him, and the University was 

 denuded, almost to blank walls. Fortunately that is so no 

 longer. But in the present case the collections were removed, 

 and finally formed the basis of the great museums, and of the 

 herbarium of Kew. 



At the time of Sir William's appointment Kew itself was in 

 a very unsatisfactory state. The acreage of the garden was 

 small compared with what it now is. The houses were old, and 

 of patterns which have long become obsolete. Only two of 

 them are now standing, viz. the Aroid house near the great 

 gates, and the old Orangery, now used as a museum for timbers. 



