SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER — PftAIN. 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 hi 

 1900. Still, as he himself once expressed it, "dragging 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 under- 

 taken, was successfully accomplished and has resulted in an essay 



