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 tlie 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 



