WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 325 
of the species in his herbarium which it was desirable to fig- 
ure, an outlet for these was made by the “ Icones Plantarum, 
or Figures, with brief descriptive Characters and Remarks of 
New or Rare Plants selected from the Author’s Herbarium.” 
Ten volumes of the work were published, with a thousand 
plates (in octavo), at the author’s sole expense, and with no 
remuneration, between the years 18387 and 1854, the drawings 
of the earlier volumes by his own hand, of the later, by Mr. 
Fitch, whom he had trained to the work. 
Botanists do not need to be told how rich these journals 
are in materials illustrative of North American botany, con- 
taining as they do accounts of collections made by Scouler, 
Drummond, Douglas, Geyer, ete. Equally important for the 
botany of our western coast, especially of California, is ‘‘ The 
Botany of Captain Beechey’s Voyage ” (4to), in the elabora- 
tion of which Sir William Hooker was associated with Profes- 
sor Walker-Arnott. But his greatest contribution to North 
American botany —for which our lasting gratitude is due — 
was his “ Flora Boreali-Americana” (2 vols. 4to, with 238 
plates), of which the first part was issued in 1833, the last in 
1840. Although denominated “the botany of the Northern 
parts of British America,” it embraced the whole continent 
from Canada and Newfoundland, and on the Pacific from the 
borders of California, northward to the Arctic sea. Collec- 
tions made in the British arctic voyages had early come into 
his hands, as afterwards did all those made in the northern 
land expeditions by the late Sir John Richardson, Drum- 
mond, ete., and the great western collections of Douglas, 
Scouler, Tolmie, and others, while his devoted correspondents 
in the United States contributed everything they could fur- 
nish from this region. So that this work marks an epoch in 
North American botany, which now could be treated as a 
whole. 
We should not neglect to notice that, from the year 1827 
down to his death, he conducted that vast repertory of figures 
of the ornamental plants cultivated in Great Britain, the 
** Botanical Magazine” (contributing over 2500 plates and 
descriptions) ; a work always as important to the botanist as 
to the cultivator, and under his editorship essential to both. 
