60 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 



will alone immortalise the Expedition. No person seems 

 to have thought of collecting such things before for scientific 

 purposes. 



Happily Hooker's short-sighted eyes stood the strain of 

 the microscopic work fairly well, though he had to turn his 

 unexpectedly good opportunity to account under constant 

 difficulties. This, as the voyage drew towards its close, he 

 describes as follows (March 7, 1843) : 



During our now homeward passage I shall have plenty 

 to do with tropical plants and sea animals ; the latter I must 

 keep up, for there never was such an opportunity as this ship 

 affords for the study, being a slow sailer and my having 

 such accommodation below for drawing and describing them ; 

 not that I care for them at all ; somehow with all the time 

 I have devoted to them they have not won my affections, 

 because I feel sure that two studies in Nat. Hist, cannot 

 be well prosecuted together, and though an easier study, 

 marine animals require much more time than plants to in- 

 vestigate fully ; the drawings will do me some credit if it be 

 only for the time taken and the novelty of their being often 

 done with the microscope lashed to the table. My eyes are 

 as good as ever they were in strength, but my shortsighted- 

 ness ' semper idem ' (always worse and worse). The spectacles 

 you were so good as to send me were not half strong enough ; 

 however, they are much nicer than are procurable out of 

 England, and I shall get new glasses at the Cape. Between 

 examining mosses and the glare of the Ice and snowy spicules 

 in the wind, my eyes smarted very much during the time the 

 ships were in the pack and watered, but never inflamed. 

 They are all right again now. Your spectacles (green) were 

 a great comfort. 



So also with his botanical drawings, done at sea from 

 specimens in his collections. He chooses the best model he 

 can, and if art is deficient, at least he is accurate. Finding 

 a sudden chance to send home his collections from New Zealand, 

 the Aucklands, and Campbell Island, he says (June 6, 1841) : 



The notes were all finished in the Ice, where the smooth water 

 enabled me to resume my old post in the Captain's cabin. 



