SIR JOSEPH HOOKER — LANKESTER. 589 



his " Life 1 and Letters " enable us to do, to what native gifts of mind 

 and character, on the one hand, and to what fortunate circumstances 

 of training and association on the other, this contribution was due. 

 Those are the inquiries which must always be of foremost interest 

 when we are in possession of the detailed story of a great man's life. 



Hooker was before and beyond everything else, a great botanist, 

 the greatest " knower " of plants of his day, whether we estimate the 

 immense number and variety of plants which he knew, or the thor- 

 oughness of that knowledge, or the vast area — that of the whole 

 earth's surface — the vegetable population of which became familiar 

 to him, either in the dried collections of travelers or (to an extent 

 never achieved by any earlier or contemporary botanist) in their 

 living condition. The latter result was attained in two distinct 

 ways: Firstly, by his prolonged and often perilous journeys to the 

 Southern Hemisphere, to India and the Himalayan region, to Pal- 

 estine and the Lebanon, to the Atlas Mountains and to North Amer- 

 ica; and secondly, by his control of the most extensive and admirably 

 organized botanic garden in the world, where living plants were 

 almost daily received or were raised from seed sent from every part 

 of the earth's surface. 



Probably the greatest permanent benefit conferred on mankind 

 by Hooker — his greatest contribution to science — was his organiza- 

 tion, as a great and permanent state institution, of the gardens, plan- 

 tations, glass houses, museums, laboratories, and the incomparable 

 herbarium, at Kew, together with its highly trained staff of all 

 grades, its splendid and continuous series of publications, its world- 

 wide correspondence and close relations with botanical institutions in 

 the colonies and India, so as to form a vast living mechanism, work- 

 ing under his incessant care for the increase of botanical science. 

 The indifference, the opposition, the sheer brutality, by which his 

 efforts were too frequently opposed, and the ultimate triumph by 

 which his tenacity of purpose, his honesty and unworldliness of 

 character, were rewarded, can be realized and appreciated by the 

 reader of this book. So also can one learn with pleasure of the fine 

 men, both among his scientific colleagues and the few intelligent 

 officials with whom he had to deal, who sympathized with and helped 

 him. 



Here we may read the full story of the ignorant insolence of one 

 Ayrton — an obscure politician who became a minister of the Crown, 

 and proposed to make Kew into a mere pleasure garden and to 

 give his orders to Hooker as to a head-gardener, but was, by a 

 timely rally of wiser statesmen and lovers of science, brought 

 to heel like a whipped dog. Here, too, we read of the mean financial 

 tricks of the East India Co.; the delays of the Admiralty; the stupid 

 parsimony of the Treasury relieved by the generosity and friend- 



