ADMINISTRATIVE WORK 137 



ton House, when Hooker succeeded in renewing tenure on the 

 original terms of 1856. President and Council are responsible 

 for the grounds on which the medals are awarded each year, 

 and for scrutiny of the merits of the fifteen candidates whom 

 they recommend for election annually. Now also the whole 

 question of fixing this number at fifteen was redebated. The 

 Society's trust funds for research have to be allotted and recom- 

 mendations made for the allotment of the Government grant. 

 The President sits on the several committees which had charge 

 of these and other questions taken up by the R.S. either on its 

 own account or as advisers to the Government. These matters 

 are multifarious, for the P.E.S. is, so to say, the Attorney- 

 General of science. At the head of his Council and supported 

 by hard-working secretaries, he keeps in touch with the pro- 

 gress and needs of science on the one hand, and on the other, 

 speaks for science in the official world, giving advice or drawing 

 up the instructions required, when public money is to be given 

 for exploration or research or in pensions to science workers 

 or their dependents. In effect, we see Hooker consulted alike 

 about great things and small ; now deep in complex details 

 as to the work done by our Observatories and Admiralty 

 Hydrographer, when it was proposed to establish a new 

 Meteorological Department, and now asked to recommend a 

 head gardener for the Phoenix Park in Dublin. 



Per contra, he was able on occasion to use the dignity of 

 the Royal Society as a lever against official apathy or niggard- 

 liness. There was a small house next the Kew Herbarium, 

 which had been empty for half a century, and standing as it 

 did within the demesne, could not be let to anyone uncon- 

 nected with the establishment. For more than a year Hooker 

 vainly urged the Treasury to have it done up at a trifling cost 

 and assign it, rent free, to J. G. Baker, the Herbarium First 

 Assistant. After two refusals he went in person to one of the 

 under-secretaries, and ' insisted on a reversal of the refusals, 

 telling him that Mr. Baker was an F.R.S., that so was the 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Northcote), and that 

 if it was not done, a representation would be made by some 

 Fellows of the R.S. to the C. of E. and a scandal ensue. After 



