SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER—PRAIN. 6638 
Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1848. But if on his return to England 
in 1851 he reverted with energy to the elaboration of his Antarctic 
results, the Indian material was not neglected. He began, in col- 
laboration with Thomson, that Flora Indica, the issue of which in 
1855 has already been alluded to. In connection with this work two 
sumptuous illustrated folios were issued; the first, on The Rhodo- 
dendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya, was edited from Hooker’s notes, 
sketches, and material, by his father, between 1849 and 1851; the 
second, Illustrations of Himalayan Plants, chiefly made for an Indian 
friend, Mr. Cathcart, in the Darjeeling neighborhood, was edited, 
with descriptions by Hooker himself, in 1855. 
This was, however, by no means all that he was able to accom- 
plish. In addition to the families formally described in the solitary 
volume of their Flora Indica, Hooker and Thomson discussed in the 
Linnean Society’s Journal various problems of interest relating to 
individual Indian plants, and issued a series of papers, Preecursores ad 
Floram Indicam, dealing more completely with a number of impor- 
tant natural families. Fimally, Hooker’s Himalayan Journals, one of 
the most fascinating books of travel in our language, in which his 
Indian journeys are dealt with generally, was issued in two octavo 
volumes in 1854. Probably no botanical field work has proved more 
fertile in interest or provided material of greater value in the discus- 
sion of biological and phytogeogrephical problems than that done by 
Hooker. Yet great as were his botanical results and pardonable as 
it is in the bontanical worker to. look upon these as Hooker’s highest 
achievement, it is doubtful whether the topographical results were 
not of even greater mument. These results, reduced by Hooker him- 
self, with the assistance, as he tells us, of various Anglo-Indian 
friends who came under the magic spell of his personality, were 
arranged at Darjeeling during the early months of 1851. They 
formed the basis of a map, published by the Indian trigonometrical 
survey, with the aid of which, such is its accuracy and its detail, the 
operations of various campaigns and political missions have been 
carried to a successful issue. 
The 10 years during which Hooker was assistant director at Kew 
were marked by extraordinary activity. The time that could be 
spared from executive duties was far from being entirely absorbed in 
Antarctic and Indian work. In 1862, and again in 1864, he dealt 
with important collections of plants from Fernando Po and the 
Cameroons in papers valuable in themselves and in the evidence they 
afford that his interest in the flora of the Dark Continent, first evinced 
in 1847, had never abated. This interest showed itself once more in 
a paper of 1875, which may be mentioned out of sequence, on the 
subalpine vegetation of Kilimanjaro. In this case, however, the 
interest was associated with another which had guided much of his 
