CHAPTER VIII 



RETURN TO ENGLAND I AND VISIT TO PARIS 



THE ships reached Woolwich on September 7 and were paid 

 off on the 23rd, after a commission of four years and five months. 

 Captain Koss had landed at Folkestone and hurried to London. 

 For some days the Hookers had to be content with his news 

 that all was well ; Joseph, as a junior officer, could not get 

 away from his ship, and it was not till the evening of the 9th 

 that he reached home on a week's leave ' in high health and 

 spirits.' ' He is not stouter,' writes Sir William to Dawson 

 Turner, * than when he left us, and very unaltered more 

 manly broader in the shoulder. He is badly off for clothes, 

 and we had to assist him from my wardrobe to enable him to 

 go to church yesterday.' 



Soon he settled down to a six months' spell of hard work, 

 enjoying everything at home and about Kew, and working at 

 his father's side on his plants, ' when not impeded by frequent 

 calls to London and numerous engagements ' ; working, as 

 his mother puts it, ' like a dragon, like a grandson of my dear 

 Father's, and always happy when so employed.' 



First came the Antarctic Flora. But though Koss had 

 made formal application for a grant towards publication, the 

 official wheels moved with discouraging slowness. 



I have no heart [he exclaims to Bentham, February 10, 

 1844] to do much at my Antarctic plants, having been 

 five years more or less working at them, and my prospects 

 of publishing in a nice form are waning very fast indeed. 

 I most heartily wish that I had at first published a rough 



168 



