FATHER AND SON 161 



He had wished to send a present to his brother, but it was 

 too late ; or to other relations, if his mother were still obsti- 

 nate about making use of what he did not want ; and to her 

 he writes (December 6, 1842) : 



I wish you would not lay aside the few pounds I sent 

 home for me, for I shall not want it ; if I can only get enough 

 to keep me respectably I shall be content to live from hand 

 to mouth, and I would not give a penny for a fortune which 

 is sure to prove a curse to most men and a breeder of idle- 

 ness ; however, it is all very well to talk so when there is 

 no chance of getting one, but I should much prefer that 

 the bills were used, indeed had I not thought they would 

 be, I should have put them into a V.D.L. bank, or invested 

 it there in land and sheep ; however, it is all the same to me. 



The years of service in one of His Majesty's ships gave 

 Hooker, as it gave both Darwin and Huxley, 1 an invaluable 

 acquaintance with the realities of things, and there was ' a 

 masonic bond ' between these friends * in being well salted in 

 early life.' But the voyage did not alter his career as it altered 

 the career of the other two. He was already a naturalist 

 enlisted in the ranks of pure science ; a rising botanist when 

 he set out, a botanist of higher repute when he returned. 

 From Sir William's point of view, the only serious danger was 

 that he might desert botany for zoology. Hence, as has been 

 said, his delight to receive early assurance that Joseph cared 

 most for botany and intended to devote himself to it when he 

 came home. Here he could best help on his son, with the 

 added satisfaction of knowing that his collections and library 



1 Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) studied at Charing Cross Hospital and 

 entered the Navy as Assistant Surgeon. Through Sir John Richardson at 

 Haslar, who had noticed his scientific ability, he was appointed to the expedition 

 under Captain Owen Stanley in the Rattlesnake frigate, which was to survey 

 the east coast of Australia and the islands as far as New Guinea (1846-50). His 

 work on the Oceanic Hydrozoa won him the F.R.S. at the age of twenty -seven, 

 and the Royal Medal the following year. In 1854 he obtained a professorship 

 at the Royal School of Mines, whence sprang the Royal College of Science at 

 S. Kensington, where he was Professor of Biology and afterwards Dean. 

 President of the British Association 1870 ; of the Royal Society 1883-5 ; Privy 

 Councillor 1892. As Darwin's most vigorous upholder and expositor, as an 

 educational reformer and a brilliant and forceful essayist and speaker, he was 

 one of the chief factors in breaking the shackles imposed on thought and opinion. 



