WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER.! 
Sm Wiiuiam Jackson Hooker died at Kew, after a 
short illness, on the 12th of August last, in the eighty-first 
year of his age. 
Seldom, if ever before, has the death of a botanist been so 
widely felt as a personal sorrow, so extended were his rela- 
tions, and so strongly did he attach himself to all who knew 
him. By the cultivators of botany in our own country, at 
least, this statement will not be thought exaggerated. AJ- 
though few of our botanists ever had the privilege of person- 
ally knowing him, there are none who are not much indebted 
to him, either directly or indirectly. It is fitting, therefore, 
that some record of his life and tribute to his memory should 
appear upon the pages of the “ American Journal of Science.” 
The incidents of his life are soon told. He was born on 
the 6th of July, 1785, at Norwich, England, where his father 
— who survived to even a greater age than his distinguished 
and only son— was at that period confidential clerk in a 
large business establishment. He was descended from the 
same family with “the Judicious Hooker,” author of the 
“Ecclesiastical Polity.” The name William Jackson was 
that of our botanist’s cousin and god-father, who died young, 
and was soon followed by both his parents; in consequence 
of which their estate of Sea-salter, near Canterbury, came to 
young Hooker while yet a lad at the Norwich High School. 
He could therefore indulge the taste which he early developed 
for natural history, at this time mainly for ornithology. But 
the chance discovery of that rare and curious moss, Buxbau- 
mia aphylla, which he took to his eminent townsman Sir 
James Edward Smith, directed his attention to botany, and 
fixed the bent of his long and active life. He now made ex- 
1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xli.1. (1866.) 
