xvi MINUTES. [April 25, 



On his return in 1843 Hooker made his home at Kew where his 

 father had been appointed director of the Royal Gardens. He was 

 appointed assistant director in 1855 and, on the death of his father 

 in 1865, director, which position he held till his retirement twenty 

 years later. We always think of Hooker as at Kew. It was there, 

 aided by the large collections formed in great part by his father and 

 himself, that he finished his different floras ; there that he brought 

 to perfection the Garden which had been raised by his father from 

 insignificance to be the leading botanical garden of the world ; there 

 that many American botanists were received with a cordiality doubly 

 welcome because they were encouraged by his sympathy and aided 

 by his advice. 



Hooker was undoubtedly the leading botanical systematist of his 

 day. For this branch of botany he not only had great natural ability, 

 but he also had opportunities for studying in the field the floras of 

 distant and little-explored regions such as few trained botanists have 

 had. Besides his Antarctic voyage, when he visited New Zealand 

 and Tasmania as well as more southern regions, he spent the years 

 1848 to 185 1 in an exploration of the Himalayas in company with 

 Thomas Thomson, — an expedition involving great hardships among 

 hostile people, but rich in results, and later he made trips to Palestine 

 and Morocco. On his last long journey in 1877, he travelled with 

 his old friend, Asa Gray, among the Rocky Mountains and in Cali- 

 fornia. 



On this occasion we need not consider in detail Hooker's various 

 descriptive works on the floras of the countries he had visited, nor 

 works like the great " Genera Plantarum," written in collaboration 

 with Bentham, technical systematic treatises belonging to the classics 

 of botany. Let us recall rather those qualities of Hooker which 

 made him more than a systematist, which entitled him to rank with 

 Darwin, Wallace, Lyall and Huxley in the brilliant group of natural- 

 ists which has never been surpassed, if it has ever been equalled, in 

 any other country. Like Darwin, Hooker began his botanical career 

 as an explorer of remote regions. The delightful account of the 

 "Voyage of the Beagle" has its counterpart in the "Himalayan 

 Journals " of Hooker. In both we recognize the fact that the 



