250 



NATURE 



[December 21, 191 1 



country into Tibet; if he did not actually reach he 

 at least had opportunities of seeing the noble peak 

 uf Chunilari, which had helped to fire his youthful 

 iinbition to become a great traveller. Towards the 

 (lose of the year 1848 Hooker had an opportunity, 

 which has come to no one since, of crossing the 

 western frontier of Sikkim and exploring a portion 

 of eastern Nepal. During the greater part of the 

 time spent in the eastern Himalayas, Hooker travelled 

 and surveyed alone, but in October, 1849, he was 

 i. lined by Dr. Campbell, the superintendent of Dar- 



tling. who had obtained official authority to visit 

 ->ikkim. Shortly after Campbell joined him, the Sik- 

 Icim authorities seized the opportunity thus offered to 

 imprison and maltreat Campbell, at the s.ame time 

 confining Hooker, whom, however, they refrained from 

 injuring. The captives were released towards the 

 end of December, 1849, and the next three months 

 were spent by Hooker in arranging at Darjeeling his 

 vast collections. 



Early in 1847 ^^- Thomas Thomson, of the Indian 

 Medical Service, son of a colleague of the elder 

 Hooker in the University of Glasgow, and an old 

 classmate and intimate friend of his own, had been 

 deputed by Lord Hardinge to visit and report upon 

 certain portions of the western Himalaya and Tibet. 

 This mission completed, Thomson made his way to 

 Darjeeling in order to join Hooker, and the year 1850 

 was devoted by the two friends to the botanical inves- 

 tigation of eastern Bengal, Chittagong, Silhet and the 

 Khasia Hills. 



On his return to England in 185 1 Hooker resumed 

 the task of publishing his Antarctic results, and began, 

 in conjunction with Thomson, to elaborate those of 

 the Indian journeys. The collaboration of the two 

 friends in the preparation of a " Flora Indica," the 

 first and only volume of which appeared in 1855, 

 ceased when Thomson returned to India, and the 

 appointment of Hooker in that year to the post of 

 assistant director at Kew under his father brought 

 with it duties more than adequate to occupy the time 

 and attention of an ordinary official. The perform- 

 ance of these duties, however, did not impede his 

 Antarctic studies, and in i860, which saw the com- 

 pletion of the great work on the botany of the Ant- 

 arctic voyage, Hooker was able to add still further 

 to his extensive knowledge of topographical botany. 

 In the autumn of that year he was asked by Captain 

 Washington, hydrographer of the Royal Navy, to take 

 part in a scientific visit to Syria and Palestine. In 

 the course of this journey he ascended Lebanon and 

 investigated the history, position, and age of the 

 cedar grove which has made that mountain a house- 

 hold word, but of which until then nothing was 

 accurately known. 



On the death of the venerable Sir William Jackson 

 Hooker in 1865, Hooker was appointed director of the 

 Royal Gardens, Kew, in succession to his father. 

 This position he held during the next twenty years. 

 The engrossing work and added responsibilities of 

 this period did not, however, prevent Hooker from 

 taking his full share of those public duties which 

 naturally fall to the lot of men of his eminence. He 

 presided over the thirty-eighth meeting of the British 

 Association held at Norwich in 1868, and over the 

 Department of Zoology and Botany in the Biological 

 Section at the meeting held at Belfast in 1874. In 

 1873 he undertook the arduous duties of president of 

 the Royal Society, and occupied the presidential chair 

 for the next five vears. Nor did these duties entirely 

 debar him from further botanical travel. In 187 1 he 

 undertook, in company with the late Mr. Ball and 

 Mr. G. Maw, a botanical expedition to Morocco and 

 the Atlas range ; in 1877, in company with his intimate 



NO. 2199, VOL. 88] 



friend, Dr. Asa Gray, and with Dr. Hayden, of the 

 United States Survey, he took part in an important 

 botanical journey to Colorado, VVyoming, Utah, the 

 Rocky .Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and California. 



From th<! time; of his retirement in 1HH5, Hooker's 

 life was sfjent at The Camp, near Sunningdale, where 

 he had built for himself a home, the grour"i- '< "hirh 

 furnished with all the advantages that ki 

 taste can provide, contain one of the mo: .. 'ni^ 



collections of plant forms in this country. Here he 

 devoted himself with the energy and enthusiasm of 

 one commencing his career to the completion of tasks 

 already in hand and to the initiation of new ones. 

 His critical acumen, which remained unaffected by 

 advancing age, and his physical vigour, which becam»- 

 seriously impaired only a few weeks before his death, 

 enabled him, in the freedom from administrative 

 duties which retirement had brought, to accomplish 

 work which as regards its amount must be considered 

 the ample harvest of a lifetime, and as regards its 

 quality, and no higher tribute could well be bestowed. 

 fully sustained the reputation of his earlier publica- 

 tions. 



The work which Hooker accomplished can be but 

 briefly outlined here. Space forbids a complete 

 enumeration of his many contributions to natural 

 knowledge ; all that can be done is to endeavour to 

 indicate the various lines of his intellectual activity, 

 and to note how these were affected bv the leading 

 events in his personal history. While still an under- 

 graduate, Hooker had been at work in his father's 

 herbarium in Glasgow. The earliest of his results 

 appear in a paper on Indian mosses, written in col- 

 laboration with the late Prot. Harvey, which was 

 published in 1840, shortly after he had joined the 

 expedition under Ross. Work connected with crypto- 

 gamic plants was one of his strongest early inclina- 

 tions, for some of the most important of his papers, 

 prepared during the years 1844 to 1847, when he had 

 returned from the Antarctic, deal with the hepatics, 

 lichens, mosses, and algae of the southern circumpolar 

 regions. But a predilection for work on fossil botany 

 manifested itself almost as early in his career; another 

 early paper, written and published in 1842, while still 

 botanist on the Erebus, deals with an examination of 

 a Tasmanian fossil wood. As his general work on 

 the Antarctic material he had accumulated made pro- 

 gress, we find, however, that his cryptogamic work 

 came to be done more and more in collaboration with 

 workers who had made some particular lower group 

 their special province. The botanical results of the Ant- 

 arctic voyage occupy six quarto volumes subdivided into 

 three sections : (i) the " Flora Antarctica." completed 

 in 1847, before he left fot- India ; (2) the " Flora Novae 

 Zelandiae." issued in 1853, after his return from the 

 East; and (3) the "Flora Tasmaniae," published in 

 i860, after he had become assistant director at Kew. 



But the preparation of the first section of the 

 Antarctic work did not impede his activities while 

 connected with the Geological Sur\'ey between 1845 

 and 1847. Before undertaking the duties of the post 

 he had already given attention to problems connected 

 with fossil botany ; while attached to the Sur\-ey he 

 prepared during 1846-7 several important papers on 

 the subject, the most notable of these being a discus- 

 sion of the vegetation of the Carboniferous period as 

 compared with that of the present day, which was 

 printed in 1848. But his interest in the subject did 

 not end with the severance of his connection with the 

 Geological Department; two interesting papers on 

 fossil botany from his pen were published in 1855. 

 After his appointment as assistant director, however, 

 he made no further formal contribution to knowledge 

 in this particular field. His Antarctic work and his 



