670 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
contemporary, and who, if he had not the advantage of such per- 
spective as time affords, at least had all the benefit of distance in 
space to aid his judgment. It is sufficient here to say that the esti- 
mate made in 1877 has been fully sustained by all that has happened 
since; it is, moreover, interesting to reflect that the hope then so 
fondly expressed that Hooker, already in his sixtieth year, might 
still be only in mid-career has been fulfilled almost to a day. If it 
be urged that in one respect the judgment of 1877 is at a disadvan- 
tage as being from the pen of one who, like Darwin, was bound to 
Hooker by the ties of almost lifelong affection, then we can only say 
that no one now alive who has enjoyed the privilege of Hooker’s 
acquaintance may venture to judge his work, because to know Hooker 
was to love him. The breadth of his interests, the depth of his 
knowledge, and the wisdom of his counsel combined to inspire rever- 
ence and regard. But above all these qualities, and beyond the sin- 
gular charm of his manner, shone the unstudied and unstinted kind- 
ness which compelled affection. 
A member of the Linnean Society since 1842, Hooker was a member 
of the council during 24 years, and for 15 of these was one of its vice 
presidents. He was also a member of the Geological Society, which 
he jomed in 1846. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 
1847, and served on the council during 17 years, for 6 of these as 
a vice president and for 5 as president. A correspondent of the 
Institute and a member of the Academies of Berlin, Bologna, Boston, 
Brussels, Copenhagen, Florence, Géttingen, Munich, Rome, St. Peters- 
burg, Stockholm, and Vienna, he enjoyed, in addition, the freedom 
of practically every society or corporation devoted to the promotion 
of natural or technical knowledge within and beyond the British 
Empire. Not a few of these bodies have bestowed on Hooker still 
further distinctions. On the recommendation of the Royal Society 
he received a Royal medal in 1854; by the same society he was 
awarded the Copley medal, its highest honor, in 1887, and the Darwin 
medal in 1892. From the Society of Arts he received their Albert 
medal in 1883; from the Geographical Society their Founder’s medal 
in 1884; from the Linnean Society their Linnean medal in 1888, a 
medal struck to celebrate his own eightieth birthday in 1897, and 
one of the medals struck in 1908 to commemorate the fiftieth anni- 
versary of the publication of the joint communication of Darwin and 
Wallace on natural selection, in the original presentation of which 
to the society he had played so important a part. The Manchester 
Philosophical Society awarded him a medal in 1898, and in 1907 he 
received, in circumstances of singular dignity, from the Swedish 
Academy, what he himself has characterized as the crowning honor 
of his long life—the solitary medal, struck especially for the occasion, 
