660 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
relinquished, in order that Hooker might add, by further travel, to 
his first-hand knowledge of the vegetation of sub-Antarctic and tem- 
perate regions, a corresponding acquaintance with the botany of 
tropical countries. The region selected was uortheastern India, then 
a practically unexplored tract. The undertaking, originally designed 
as a private enterprise, through a series of happy accidents received 
official recognition, and the expenses involved were to a partial 
extent met from public funds. Hooker left England in November, 
1847, reaching India in January, 1848. After some three months 
spent in the Gangetic Plain and Behar, during which he ascended the 
sacred hill of Parasnath, Hooker made his way to the Himalayas, 
reaching Darjeeling in Sikkim in the middle of April. The next 
two years were devoted to the botanical exploration and topo- 
graphical survey of the Himalayan State of Sikkim and of a number 
of the passes which lead from that country into Tibet; if he did not 
actually reach he at least had opportunities of seeing the noble peak 
of Chumlari, which had helped to fire his youthful ambition to become 
a great traveler. ‘Toward the close, of the year 1848 Hooker had an 
opportunity, which has come to no one since, of crossing the western 
frontier of Sikkim and exploring a portion of eastern Nepal. During 
the greater part of the time spent in the eastern Himalayas, Hooker 
traveled and surveyed alone, but in October, 1849, he was joined by 
Dr. Campbell, the superintendent of Darjeeling, who had obtained 
official authority to visit Sikkim. Shortly after Campbell joined 
him, the Sikkim authorities seized the opportunity thus offered to 
imprison and maltreat Campbell, at the same time confining Hooker, 
whom, however, they refrained from injuring. The captives were 
released toward the end of December, 1849, and the next three months 
were spent by Hooker in arranging at Darjeeling his vast collections. 
Early in 1847 Dr. Thomas Thomson, of the Indian medical service, 
son of a colleague of the elder Hooker in the University of Glasgow, 
and an old classmate and intimate friend of his own, had been deputed 
by Lord Hardinge to visit and report upon certain portions of the 
western Himalaya and Tibet. This mission completed, Thomson 
made his way to Darjeeling in order to jom Hooker, and the year 1850 
was devoted by the two friends to the botanical investigation of 
eastern Bengal, Chittagong, Silhet and the Khasia Hills. 
On his return to England in 1851 Hooker resumed the task of 
publishing his Antarctic results, and began, in conjunction with Thom- 
son, to elaborate those of the Indian journeys. The collaboration of 
the two friends in the preparation of a “Flora Indica,” the first and 
only volume of which appeared in 1855, ceased when Thomson 
returned to India, and the appointment of Hooker in that year to 
the post of assistant director at Kew under his father brought with - 
it. duties more than adequate to occupy the time and attention of an 
