December 21, 191 1] 



NATURE 



253 



imposed, that could well be undertaken, was success- 

 fully accomplished, and has resulted in an essay com- 

 parable with that on. the botany of Syria and Pales- 

 tine, written thirty years earlier. 



The active intellect which had for five and sixty 

 years taken a fierce delight in laborious days, and had 

 throughout found a task to be more congenial in pro- 

 portion to its difficulty, was not likely to seek satis- 

 faction in an unbroken round of quiet breathing. If 

 new worlds need not be sought for conquest, at least 

 some unregulated province might be reduced to order. 

 Among the families of Indian plants dealt with by 

 Hooker and Thomson in their " Praecursores " one 

 of the most fascinating, whether for the variety of 

 its forms or the intricacy of their relationships, had 

 been the Balsamineae. Since 1859, when their paper 

 appeared, a host of new Indian and Chinese forms 

 had been reported ; the characters met with in some 

 ■of these appeared to invalidate earlier conclusions. 

 To the study of this interesting group Hooker devoted 

 his attention from 1904 onwards, evolving order out 

 of an apparent chaos, and in the course of his studies 

 placed those in charge of most of the important 

 herbaria in Europe under a deep obligation, by supply- 

 ing them with a uniform nomenclature for their 

 specimens. On this work, which, so far at least as 

 the Asiatic forms are concerned, had been practically 

 completed. Hooker was engaged almost to the last. 



Shortly summarised, and omitting here any refer- 

 ence to excursions into the domain of economic, 

 morphological, and physiological botany, or to sys- 

 tematic studies of material from countries in which 

 he did not himself travel, we find evidence of the 

 existence of several definite lines of active interest, 

 athwart which fell the shadow of various outstand- 

 ing events in Hooker's career. The record indi- 

 cates that Hooker's strongest and earliest pre- 

 dilections were perhaps towards the study of 

 cryptogamic plants and work on fossil botany. 

 The first predilection reached its culmination in 

 1844, when he returned from the circumpolar 

 expedition on which he had started in 1839. The 

 pressure exercised by problems, to the elucidation of 

 which the evidence of flowering plants with their more 

 special organisation and more restricted distribution 

 is of greater value, gradually led to the abandonment 

 of this field of study, which was not re-entered after 

 he left for India in 1847. The predilection for work 

 on fossil botany naturally reached its culmination 

 while Hooker was attached to the Geological Survey. 

 Its influence, though not entirely inhibited, was less 

 active after Hooker's return from the East, and this 

 field of study was abandoned when he became assistant 

 director of Kew in 1855. 



The predilection for the study of those problems 

 that relate to the origination and distribution of 

 species, to which his experience as a field naturalist on 

 circumpolar islands and among the peaks and valleys 

 of the Himalayas had given so great an impetus, 

 reached its culmination while he was assistant director 

 at Kew, and is manifested most strongly in the 

 classical essays which date from i860 to 1866. With- 

 out attempting to estimate the interaction effects 

 of the work of Darwin on that of Hooker and vice 

 versa, we may here direct attention to the fact of their 

 existence. Nor could it be otherwise ; the two men 

 studied and wrote, on terms of intimate and affec- 

 tionate friendship, in an atmosphere surcharged with 

 great and pregnant thought. 



With Hooker's succession to the directorship of Kew 

 in 1865, the Antarctic work had practically ended, for 

 the concluding moiety of the New Zealand handbook 

 appeared in 1867. He was now able to do for India 

 what he had already done for Tasmania and New 

 Zealand, and if, when he retired in 1885, only half of 

 NO. 2199, VOL. 88] 



his Indian systematic work had been accomplished, 

 there was no break in its continuity. If we except 

 his masterly sketch of the vegetation of India, pre- 

 pared after the "Indian Flora" had been completed, 

 we are without a record of his conclusions from Indian 

 botanical evidence, comparable with the brilliant 

 generalisations based on his study of the Arctic, Ant- 

 arctic, and insular floras of the globe. This may be 

 a. cause for regret ; it can be no cause for surprise. 

 Not only is the Indian field the wider of the two; 

 Hooker completed the essential preliminary spade- 

 work in the other during the sixteen years between 

 1844 and i860, whereas the corresponding Indian toil 

 exacted over forty years of labour between 1854 and 

 1897. When the Indian preliminary work was done 

 it only served to prove that the relationships of the 

 Indian, Malayan, and Chinese floras are so intimate 

 as to demand their conjoint consideration. 



The completion of the " Indian Flora " in 1897, rather 

 than the demission of the directorship at Kew, marks 

 the close of a period in Hooker's work. The next 

 epoch, a comparatively brief one, was devoted to the 

 performance of acts of piety to the memory and 

 regard for the wishes of predecessors or of contem- 

 poraries whom he had outlived. These tasks ended, 

 the evening of his life was devoted by Hooker to work 

 which in many respects was, even for one so wide in 

 his range and so varied in his interests, a new de- 

 parture. His great "Antarctic Flora," his still greater 

 Indian one, are splendid examples of broad canvases 

 upon which in bold and striking lines the hand of a 

 master has depicted the salient and essential features 

 of a highly diversified landscape, and no one has ever 

 portrayed with a surer touch. In the work to which 

 Hooker devoted the closing years of his life, he has 

 treated a single natural family as a precious gem, 

 upon which, with a hand as sure as the one that has 

 given us the ample atmosphere of his great pictures, 

 he has engraved an exquisite intaglio. 



To offer here an estimate of the quality of Hooker's 

 work would surely be out of place. That task has 

 already been performed in the pages of Nature by 

 one who was in the strictest sense Hooker's contem- 

 porary, and who, if he had not the advantage of such 

 perspective as time affords, at least had all the benefit 

 of distance in space to aid his judgment. It is 

 sufficient here to say that the estimate made fn 1877 

 has been fully sustained by all that has happened 

 since ; it is, moreover, interesting to reflect that the 

 hope then so fondly expressed that Hooker, already 

 in his sixtieth year, might still be only in mid-career 

 has been fulfilled almost to a day. If it be urged 

 that in one respect the judgment of 1877 is at a 

 disadvantage as being from the pen of one who, like 

 Darwin, was bound to Hooker by the ties of almost 

 lifelong affection, then we can only say that no one 

 now alive who has enjoyed the privilege of Hooker's 

 acquaintance may venture to judge his work, because 

 to know Hooker was to love him. Tlie breadth of 

 his interests, the depth of his knowledge, and the 

 wisdom of his counsel combined to inspire reverence 

 and regard. But above all these qualities, and beyond 

 the singular charm of his manner, shone the unstudied 

 and unstinted kindness which compelled affection. 



A member of the Linnean Society since 1842, Hooker 

 was a member of the council during twenty-four years, 

 and for fifteen of these was one of its vice-presidents. 

 He was also a member of the Geological Society, 

 which he joined in 1846. He was elected a fellow of the 

 Royal Society in 1847, and served on the council 

 during seventeen years, for six of these as a vice- 

 president and for five as president. A correspondent 

 of the Institute and a memter of the .Academies of 

 Berlin, Bologna, Boston, Brussels, Copenhagen, 

 Finn lie.', Gottingeti, Mnnirli, Rome, St. Petorsburg, 



