SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER — PRAIN. 663 



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, Prsecursores ad 

 Floram Indicam, dealing more completely with a number of impor- 

 tant natural families. Finally, 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 phytogeographical 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 moment. 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 



