EAELY COLLECTIONS 6S 



he should visit some of the high mountains, ' which everywhere 

 afford what I consider by far the most interesting plants.' 

 The Algae in the high south latitudes are particularly worth 

 collecting, and indeed should be collected everywhere if no 

 phaenogamic plants be available, even if they be known species, 

 in order to determine their distribution. 



Throughout, it may be noted, Sir William is the systematist, 

 the collector, and describer, urging his son to look for more 

 plants and especially those missed by the latest travellers, 

 such as Wright 1 in the Falklands, and to get his friends to 

 collect specimens ' in quantities not in driblets ' at all stages, 

 so as to have ample material for Floras of all the places he 

 visits, and the mistakes he corrects in his letters are those of 

 identification tested by extant accounts. On the same prin- 

 ciple, just as Eobert Brown bade him * collect everything,' 

 so Hooker sagely acknowledges, ' such scraps as are useless 

 for other purposes may yet, so long as they exhibit the Natural 

 Order to which they belong, prove of service in illustrating 

 the geography of plants.' 



But later collections were more satisfactory. No extenua- 

 ting circumstances needed to be invoked when, at last, in 

 June 1842, there arrived the plants and notes from Kerguelen's 

 Land, the Aucklands, and Tasmania, which rumour had sent 

 to the bottom along with the ship that carried them. Among 

 these notes Lady Hooker reports 150 drawings, * with highly 

 magnified dissections, some almost worthy, my husband 

 says, of Bauer's pencil.' Sir William, after looking through 

 the collection with Eobert Brown, writes enthusiastically : 

 ' Believe me, dear Boy, they have given me infinite pleasure, 

 for they prove that you must have been diligent, and conse- 

 quently successful.' And again (July 7, 1842) of the drawings 

 and notes : * I expected much of you ; but these have far 



1 William Wright (1735-1819), a naval surgeon who, being unemployed, 

 took up private practice in Jamaica (1764-77), finally becoming honorary 

 surgeon -general of the island. He corresponded with Banks and others, 

 discovering especially a native species of cinchona in Jamaica. After botanical 

 study in England and military adventures abroad, he finally settled in 

 Edinburgh in 1798. Among his friends was Sir W. Hooker, to whom he 

 presented a collection made in Iceland to replace Sir William's that had been 

 burned. 



