814 RETIREMENT, TO 1897 : DARWINIANA, ETC. 



was much work to be done in reduction and verbal correction ; 

 but the longest task was the identification of the plants men- 

 tioned under native names. 



To Mrs. Darwin 



Feb. 27, 1896: 



I am busier than ever getting through the last Vol. 

 of the ' Flora of British India,' the Grasses, the hardest 

 work I ever had ; and editing Sir J. Banks' narrative of 

 Cook's first voyage. This interests me much, for it nowhere 

 appears that Banks ever worked as a Naturalist proper 

 so to speak, whereas his Journal shows that he employed 

 himself with extraordinary zeal and industry to collecting 

 and observing throughout the voyage that he is in fact the 

 earliest of those Voyager Naturalists of which Darwin is 

 the greatest. The Journal is admirably kept ; even at sea 

 he never let a day pass without an observation : and the 

 accounts given in ' Cook's Voyage ' of the manners and 

 languages &c., &c. of the people are all from Banks' Journals. 

 It is of course well known that Hawkesworth was permitted 

 to draw what he pleased from Banks' Journal when publishing 

 Cook's and that the result is a composite work ; but this 

 result gives no idea of what Banks really did. Reggie 1 is 

 aiding me most efficiently. 



His less specialised scientific interests are particularly re- 

 flected in the correspondence with the Rev. J. D. La Touche. 



Mr. La Touche, under whom at various times Hooker placed 

 three of his sons for coaching, was a man of wide interests and 

 stimulating influence, a Shropshire clergyman whose broad 

 liberalism was barely contained within the strict pale of the 

 Church. He was a keen geologist, and fostered local activity 

 in science. Hooker gives him practical advice as to running 

 a field club ; appreciates his son's geological work in the 

 Himalayas. But the bulk of the correspondence Hooker 

 wrote him seventy-six letters between 1886 and 1898 abounds 

 in references to the books they read, their current interests, 



1 His fourth son. Sometime Secretary to the Royal Statistical Society ; 

 afterwards Head of Branch under Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. Author 

 of many papers published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. 



