660 ANNUAL, KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



relinquished, in order that Hooker might add, by further travel, to 

 liis 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 northeastern 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, 1S49, 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 join 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 Ms 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 



