6 
held this position he was throughout closely occupied with his sub- 
antarctic work, the third section of which, under the subordinate 
occupied in working out the results to be derived from a study o 
the plants of the northern circumpolar regions. This subject, cog- 
nate to much of his work connected with corresponding southern 
regions, had first redeived his attention in 1856, when working out 
the collections brought together during the Franklin searches ; he 
returned to it in 1861 when dealing with those collected in the 
M‘Clintock expedition. In the following year he dealt with the 
subject in a comprehensive fashion in his‘ Outlines of the distribution 
of Arctic plants,’ a paper that is one of the classics of phytogeography. 
But while all this was in progress he undertook the contribution 
to the series of Colonial Floras prepared under Government autho- 
rity at Kew, of a ‘ Hand-book of the New Zealand Flora,’ in two 
volumes, the first of which appeared in 1864. 
The period while Hooker was Assistant Director was also marked 
by the publication of three important papers, more restricted as to 
subject, but of the highest value as contributions to our knowledge 
of morphological botany. These were a study of the structure and 
affinities of the Balanophoreae, published in 1856; a study of the 
origin and development of the pitchers of Nepenthes, published in 
1859, and a study of the genus Welwitschia, published in 1863. 
The second of these studies had also an important physiological 
bearing. 
Another group of phytogeographical problems occupied Hooker’s 
attention during this period. They had indeed been before him 
almost from the commencement of his active career, and his interest 
in them dates from his own visits, made on the way to the circumpolar 
regions, to the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde Islands, 
St. Paul’s Rock, Ascension, St. Helena and South Trinidad. But the 
problems were as imminently present in connection with his visits to 
other islands and in connection with his studies of the vegetation of 
the Galapagos Group im 1847, and of Raoul in the Kermadec 
