LIFE ATNT' t.ETTERS OF STK JOSEPH nOOKER 131 



below, in accordance with the helpful practice adopted in many 

 biog-raphies. It must however be admitted that Mr. Huxley was 

 exceptionall}^ favourably placed as to material : Hooker himself was 

 " an indefatigable letter writer .... add to this his journals of travel, 

 his various books, his scientific essays— the first written at nineteen, 

 the last at ninet\^-four — the material to draw upon has been super- 

 abundant," especially when added to these are the Life and Letters 

 of Darwin and of the author's father. 



It would be impossible in the space at our disposal to give anything 

 like an adequate sketch of the contents of the volumes : so far as a 

 general sketch of Hooker's life is concerned, this indeed is scarcely 

 necessary, in view of the full notice by Mr, JBoulger which appeared 

 in this Journal for 1912 (pp. 1-9, 31-43). The chapters Avhich tell 

 of Hooker's relations with his family, especiallj^ that devoted to his 

 "early days," which contains an "autobiographical fragment set 

 down late in his life," are of much interest. His father and his 

 maternal grandfather (Dawson Turner) both began their botanical 

 studies with the mosses, and " at the age of five or six" Joseph showed 

 .a love of these plants: "my mother used to tell an anecdote of me 

 that, while I was still in petticoats, I was found grubbing in a wall 

 in the dirty suburbs of the dirty city of Glasgow, and that when she 

 asked me what I was about, I cried out that I had found Bryum 

 argenteum (which it was not), a very pretty little moss I had seen in 

 my father's collection, and to which I had taken a great fancy." 

 The paternal Hooker was not slow to encourage the incipient taste ; at 

 the age of seven Joseph was attending his lectures on botany and he 

 had from an early period expressed a hope that his son would succeed 

 him in the Glasgow professorship. As a result of this poor Joseph's 

 nose was alwa3^s kept very close to the botanical grindstone ; even 

 when he was twenty-three his father's letters " urge to stick to 

 botanical work exclusively— to avoid wasting his time in unnecessary 

 entertainments ; counsel indeed scarcely needed for one who cared so 

 little for the ordinary attractions of Societ}-." Nor did the father 

 hesitate to express his dissatisfaction with the plants sent — this 

 at one time made the son fear that he " was physically incapaci- 

 tated for the high trust reposed in " him. " If ever, on my return," 

 ho wrote from St. Helena in 1840, " I am enabled to follow up 

 botany on shore, I shall live the life of a hermit, as far as society is 

 concerned; like Brown, perhaps, without his genius." The reply 

 throws a somewhat new light on the generally accepted character of 

 ]h-own : " If you are no more than a hermit than Brown, I shall not 

 complain ; whether you know it or not, he is really fond of society 

 and calculated to shine in it ; and to my certain knowledge, never so 

 ha2:)py as when he is in it." 



Joseph Hooker was not only a voluminous but an excellent letter- 

 writer, and it is not too much to say that the value of the volumes 

 rests largely on the very extensive use that has been made of his 

 letters, which abound in interest chiefly though by no means 

 exclusively botanical. His descriptive powers were considerable — the 

 Himalayan Journals, first published in 1854 and twice reissued in 

 cheap form, illustrates this, and the letters written home during the 



