CHAPTER XXXIV 



THE PRESIDENCY (continued) 



IN 1877 Hooker received knighthood in the Order of the Star 

 of India. He had received his C.B. in 1869. There being then 

 no vacant K.C.B., this was offered together with knighthood 

 en attendant a K.C.B. after longer services. That the first 

 honour of the kind to be offered him should be the C.B. was 

 quite unexpected. It would have been more appropriate and 

 in many ways more acceptable had he been offered Companion- 

 ship of the Star of India. His services to Indian science had 

 begun before his official connexion with Kew, and had continued 

 since gratuitously. The Court of Directors snubbed him before 

 he set out, refusing him assistance and official letters of intro- 

 duction to India and even a passage out. Both the Court and 

 its successor, the India Board, made no move of recognition, 

 though they constantly wrote to him for information and 

 for recommendations in filling up appointments : though he 

 rescued all Falconer's, Griffith's and Heifer's collections from 

 destruction, and himself distributed them all over Europe and 

 America, with catalogues and numbers. It was Hooker who 

 surveyed and mapped the whole province of Sikkim and 

 opened up the resources of Darjiling at the cost of captivity 

 in Sikkim and the consequent loss of all his instruments and 

 part of his notes and collections. Yet the India Board actually 

 sold on Government behalf the presents the Eajah made him 

 after his release, though they owed the annexation of the 

 province and the Government sites of the Tea and Cinchona 

 cultivation to his misfortunes and his energy. On his return 

 U5 



