SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER—PRAIN. 667 
period devoted to its preparation and publication the work received 
the unremitting care and attention of its director and its compiler. 
Other works, however valuable they may be, admit, as a rule, of 
some relative estimate. To the Index Kewensis no such mode of 
judgment is applicable; it is simply invaluable, and stands a lasting 
monument to the wisdom and generosity of Darwin, the piety and 
sagacity of Hooker, the care and fidelity of Jackson. While this 
Index was in progress, Hooker arranged for publication in 1895 a 
century of drawings of orchids, for which he provided descriptions, 
from among the manuscript figures placed at his disposal by the 
Calcutta herbarium in connection with his own work on the Flora of 
British India. Scarcely had the responsibility attaching to the prep- 
aration of the Index been laid aside ere Hooker undertook, as an act 
of justice to the memory of a distinguished predecessor, to edit the 
Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, during Captain Cook’s 
first voyage, 1768-71; this work was published in 1896. 
The time-consuming and exacting labor which the preparation of 
the Indian flora entailed had barely ended when the chivalrous gen- 
orsity of Hooker was once more invoked. The late Dr. Trimen had 
undertaken the preparation of a Handbook of the Flora of Ceylon. 
Three volumes of this work were issued between 1893 and 1895. 
While it was in progress Trimen was mortally stricken; the third vol- 
ume was issued with the hand of death upon the author. When 
Trimen died the Government of Ceylon sought Hooker’s aid. With 
indomitable courage the veteran of over 80 undertook the heavy task 
of completing the work of another author who had fallen a victim in 
the prime of life, under restrictions as to scope and style which, 
whether they met with his approval or not, were at any rate different 
from those hitherto observed by himself. Perhaps no more touching 
token of regard than this was ever paid to the memory of a friend. 
The fourth volume of the Ceylon flora, to some extent edited from 
material left by Trimen, appeared in 1898; the fifth and concluding 
volume, which it fell to Hooker to prepare himself, was issued in 
1900. Still, as he himself once expressed it, ‘“‘drageing the lengthen- 
ing chain” of the Botanical Magazine, Hooker devoted the next two 
years of his own life to writing that of his father, which appeared in 
the Annals of Botany in December, 1902. Coincident with the 
appearance of this tribute of filial piety came the arrangement which 
relieved him of some of the pressure which the editing of the Maga- 
zine entailed, but not the anticipated freedom. At the request of 
the Government of India, Hooker undertook to prepare for the 
Imperial Gazetteer a sketch of the vegetation of the Indian Empire. 
This.task, one of the most difficult, when regard is had to the limita- 
tion of space almost necessarily imposed, that could well be as 
taken, was successfully accomplished and has resulted in an essay 
