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LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, O.M., G.C.S.I.* 



Joseph Dalton Hooker, who was born in 1817, and died in 1911, was 

 almost the last survivor of the great group, Darwin, Wallace, Lyell, Huxley, 

 and he played an important part in the revolution of thought which they 

 brought about in the nineteenth century. His unique knowledge of plants 

 and their distribution contributed to the evidences for evolution, and he 

 was Darwin's confident, his keen but friendly critic, and his ardent cham- 

 pion. One of his gifts to posterity was this contribution to the new move- 

 ment ; another was the gradual transformation of Kew from little more 

 than a park to a national institution of world-wide importance, which work 

 was begun by his father and completed by himself in spite of official 

 indifference and even opposition. His third great gift is the written works 

 he has left, especially the Genera Plantarum (in which Bentham col- 

 laborated),' the Index Kewensis, which was financed by Darwin as a gift to 

 the nation, and his various floras with their instructive introductory 

 essays. 



Hooker's opportunities of studying plants were unrivalled, owing to 

 his Botanical expeditions in different parts of the world, and the collections 

 in his charge at Kew ; but they were opportunities often hardly won and 

 beset with difficulties, and his tireless industry never brought him enough 

 of this world's goods to make his work easy. 



His first journey in 1839, when only twenty-two years old but already 

 with a reputation as a botanist, was with Ross to the Antarctic."; and as the 

 objects of the expedition were to establish magnetic observatories at 

 St. Helena, the Cape and Van Dieman's Land, to make observations at 

 various oceanic islands, and then to determine, if possible the position of 

 the South Magnetic Pole and generally to explore the Antarctic regions, 

 Hooker had opportunities for collecting plants from many localities. His 

 equipment was of the scantiest, Government supplying him with 

 nothing but drying-paper and some collecting-cases ; the only glass 

 bottles available were empty pickle bottles, and the only preserva- 

 tive rum from the ship's stores. Fortunately his father had given him 

 microscopes and books, and though at first he had to wait to arrange his 

 Collections after an expedition ashore until his messmates were in bed, 

 Capt. Ross soon provided space and a cabinet in his own cabin, where how- 

 ever damp and cockroaches had to be contended with, and in rough seas 

 the microscope had to be lashed to the table. In spite of' all difficulties, 

 young Hooker collected assiduously, and scarcely needed his father's letters 

 urging him to stick to his work and avoid unnecessary entertainments ; this 

 stern parent thought it a frivolous amusement to join a riding excursion in 

 Madeira to see an ancient crater in the heart of the mountainous island. 



* Life and Letters of Sir JOSEPH Dalton Hooker, O.M., G.C.S.I. Based 

 on materials oollected and arranged by Lady Hooker. By Leonard Huxley. 

 2 Vols. VII and 5i6, and VIII to 569 pp. London, John Murray, 1918. 



