Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker 249 



touch with the social life of the community. He was suc- 

 cessful in raising the sum of 10,000 to aid the somewhat 

 exiguous resources of the Society. In 1877 he obtained 

 leave of absence to visit the Rocky Mountains of Colorado 

 and Utah, and added much to our knowledge of the fossil 

 flora of those districts, and later he returned to his first love 

 and made a determined effort to complete his " Flora of 

 British India," which was accomplished in seven volumes 

 during the next fourteen years. In 1885 he retired from the 

 Directorship of Kew, and was succeeded by Sir William 

 Thiselton-Dyer, but he never ceased working. 



Hooker was the recipient of numerous honours, including 

 the O.M., which was personally presented to him at Sunning- 

 dale, to which village he had retired, on behalf of King 

 Edward VII. on his ninetieth birthday. 



Hooker stands out as the greatest authority the world 

 has yet produced on the subject of the Distribution of Plants ; 

 although he did much other work, this alone confers on him 

 immortality. 



Hooker was capable of enduring great physical fatigue, 

 capable of working continuously with very short intervals of 

 sleep. Somewhat highly strung he disliked public functions, 

 though when forced to do so he could make an eloquent and 

 stirring speech. He was extremely kind and courteous, and 

 always ready to help the younger men. He retained his 

 faculties to the last, and continued to work to the end of his 

 long, laborious, and successful life. 



We have seen that most of the progress of the physiology 

 of plants was due to British workers; but naturally in the 

 last quarter of the eighteenth century Great Britain had to 

 some extent remained isolated from the science of the 

 continent, and the currents of botanical thought flowed at 

 somewhat different angles on the two sides of the Channel. 

 We shall see later how Huxley inaugurated a new departure 

 in the teaching of biology, and with him came the laboratory. 

 Hitherto the botanists had been content with their botanic 

 gardens, their herbaria, and with a few roughly devised 

 physiological instruments. With " the coming of the labora- 

 tory," however, things altered. Huxley had round him an 

 ardent body of young workers. His first demonstrators 



