590 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



ship of Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-general of India; the good- 

 will of fine old Admirals ; and the enthusiasm of many high-placed 

 officials (such as Bertram Mitford, Lord Redesclale), and well- 

 tried friends who valued pure science and were spell-bound by 

 Hooker's abilities, persistence, freedom from all desire for per- 

 sonal profit, and simple-minded devotion to one noble end — the 

 building up of what were for him two inseparables, Kew and Botani- 

 cal Science. 



Hooker's more direct contributions to scientific botany are parallel 

 in importance to the creation of the great institution (founded by 

 his father and completed by the loyal help of his son-in-law and 

 successor, Sir William Thiselton Dyer), wherein he worked out 

 during many years the enormous collections of plants brought thither 

 by himself and amplified by official and private collections. His 

 first scientific paper, on some new mosses, was written and published 

 in 1837, when he was only 20 years of age; his last in 1911, on 

 some Indian species of the balsams (genus: Impatiens) — a large and 

 difficult group to which he gave minute study, dissecting them under 

 the microscope and drawing them with all the skill and. assiduity of 

 his youth, until within a few days of his death in his ninety-fifth 

 year. The mere titles of the papers and volumes which Hooker 

 produced in those 71 years of work occupy 20 pages in the " Life." 

 No mere enumeration of their number can give an idea of their 

 bulk, of the number of drawings and often colored pictures which 

 illustrate them, of the tireless industry which produced them, or of 

 their scientific weight and purpose. 



For the convenience of ready publication he carried on through- 

 out his life (with the assistance in later years of other botanists, 

 his chosen colleagues) Hooker's Icones Plantarum, founded by his 

 father in 1837, and the Botanical Magazine, founded by William 

 Curtis in 1787, which has appeared regularly every month during 

 130 years. It was edited for 40 years by Sir William Hooker, on 

 whose death in 1865 Sir Joseph became editor and chief contribu- 

 tor, handing it over in 1904 to his successor as director of Kew, 

 Sir William Thiselton Dyer. For 78 years the two Fitches, uncle 

 and nephew, were the only artists (without rivals for the perfec- 

 tion of their work) employed on the production of the hundreds 

 of plates picturing new or rare plants published in the Botanical 

 Magazine. But Hooker's greatest works were published as separate 

 volumes, usually by the aid of grants from government departments. 

 Such were the Flora Antarctica (1844-1847), 2 volumes, with 198 

 plates; the Flora Nova? Za?landiae (1853-1855), with 130 plates; 

 the Flora Tasmania?, with 200 plates; and the Flora of British 

 India (by J. D. H. assisted by various botanists), 1872-1897, 7 

 volumes. A great number of important papers of smaller bulk, 



