288 KEW : 1879-1885 



This gift had a personal as well as a public aspect. Darwin 

 owed a debt of ' happiness and fame to the natural-history 

 sciences which had been the solace of what might have been 

 a painful existence.' He was moved by admiration for the 

 work done at Kew and gratitude for the incalculable aid which 

 for so many years he had received from the Director and his 

 Staff. At the same time his botanical work had shown him 

 the importance of a complete index to the names and authors 

 of the genera and species of plants known to botanists, together 

 with their native countries. The plants he received from all 

 sorts of sources were often incorrectly named, and without 

 precise means of identification by other workers, his own re- 

 searches would be misleading. 



Steudel's ' Nomenclator ' had partly fulfilled this purpose ; 

 but it had been published in 1840, and in the next forty years 

 the number of described plants had been doubled. At Kew 

 the list had been kept posted up by means of an interleaved 

 copy, by the help of funds supplied by private generosity. 

 But this was unpublished. "Wishing definitely then, ' to aid in 

 some way the scientific work carried on at the Eoyal Gardens,' 

 he set aside a considerable sum to complete and publish the 

 Kew ' Nomenclator ' under a scheme drawn up by Hooker at 

 the end of 1881, with the help of the Kew Staff and Bentham, 

 and carried out in detail by Dr. B. Daydon Jackson, the 

 Secretary to the Linnean Society, for ' we should of course 

 all help.' As the work proceeded, Darwin's original idea of 

 producing a modern edition of Steudel was practically aban- 

 doned, and the aim kept in view was rather to construct a 

 list of genera and species (with references) founded on Bentham 

 and Hooker's ' Genera Plantarum.' 



This ' Nomenclator Botanicus Darwinianus,' or more briefly 

 Index Kewensis, was brought out in four quarto volumes 

 between 1892-5. It was no trifling work which proceeded for 

 fourteen years under Hooker's supervision. In 1887, Sir P. 

 Darwin notes, the MS. of the Index was estimated to weigh 

 more than a ton, 1 and the completed work, all the proofs of 

 which Hooker read and criticised, comprised 2500 pages, each 

 1 See G.D., iii. 351-54, on which I have largely drawn. 



