SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER—PRAIN. 661 
ordinary official. The performance of these duties, however, did not 
impede his Antarctic studies, and in 1860, which saw the completion 
of the great work on the botany of the Antarctic voyage, Hooker was 
able to add still further to his extensive knowledge of topographical 
botany. In the autumn of that year he was asked by Capt. Wash- 
ington, hydrographer of the Royal Navy, to take part in a scientific 
visit to Syria and Palestine. In the course of this journey he ascended 
Lebanon and investigated the history, position, and age of the cedar 
grove which has made that mountain a household word, but of which 
until then nothing was accurately known. 
On the death of the venerable Sir William Jackson Hooker in 1865, 
Hooker was appointed director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, in suc- 
cession to his father. This position he held during the next 20 years. 
The engrossing work and added responsibilities of this period did not, 
however, prevent Hooker from taking his full share of those public 
duties which naturally fall to the lot of men of his eminence. He 
presided over the thirty-eighth meeting of the British Association 
held at Norwich in 1868, and over the department of zoology and 
botany in the biological section at the meeting held at Belfast in 
1874. In 1873 he undertook the arduous duties of president of 
the Royal Society, and occupied the presidential chair for the next 
five years. Nor did these duties entirely debar him from further 
botanical travel. In 1871 he undertook, in company with the late 
Mr. Ball and Mr. G. Maw, a botanical expedition to Morocco and the 
Atlas Range; in 1877, in company with his intimate friend, Dr. Asa 
Gray, and with Dr. Hayden, of the United States Survey, he took 
part in an important botanical journey to Colorado, Wyoming, 
Utah, the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and California. 
From the time of his retirement in 1885, Hooker’s life was spent 
at The Camp, near Sunningdale, where he had built for himself a 
home, the grounds of which, furnished with all the advantages that 
knowledge and taste can provide, contain one of the most interesting 
collections of plant forms in this country. Here he devoted himself 
with the energy and enthusiasm of one commencing his career to the 
completion of tasks already in hand and to the initiation of new ones. 
His critical acumen, which remained unaffected by advancing age, 
and his physical vigor, which became seriously impaired only a few 
weeks before his death, enabled him, in the freedom from administra- 
tive duties which retirement had brought, to accomplish work which 
as regards its amount must be considered the ample harvest of a 
lifetime, and as regards its quality, and no higher tribute could well 
be bestowed, fully sustained the reputation of his earlier publications. 
The work which Hooker accomplished can be but briefly outlined 
here. Space forbids a complete enumeration of his many contribu- 
tions to natural knowledge; all that can be done is to endeavor to 
