406 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC. 



making very sure of the value of their reports, were as re- 

 pugnant to Hooker as they were to his friend Huxley. The 

 present generation can remember the laughable explosion of 

 the de Eougemont boom which took place at a meeting of the 

 British Association : a much more notable personage with a 

 tale of tropical exploration and hunting and discoveries in 

 natural history provoked a furore in 1861, followed by a 

 storm of criticism which has never been definitely settled, the 

 most balanced opinion being that very probably what he said 

 was substantially true, but that no less probably his so-called 

 experiences, which were not borne out by subsequent reports 

 from local collectors, had merely been gathered from hunters 

 on the coast. 



The man [writes Hooker to Dr. Anderson, 1 July 7, 1861] 

 is a victim of Murchison's lionizing system : an unscientific 

 bad observer is raised to a first-rate scientific geographical 

 lion, and after that has to write a book to justify all the fuss 

 made about him. The poor man is honest enough in pur- 

 pose, but is dizzy with all that has been done to him and 

 unable at any time to write he exposes himself awfully of 

 course. 2 



But this Leonine Heresy was not without a medicinal 

 value. 



1 Thomas Anderson (1832-70), botanist, M.D. Edin. 1853, entered Bengal 

 medical service in 1854. Director of the Calcutta Botanical Garden, organised 

 and superintended the Bengal Forest Department 1864; left an incomplete 

 work on the Indian Flora. 



2 In November 1862 Hooker received a letter from Gustav Mann, the Kew 

 collector at Fernando Po, saying that he had been across the country described 

 by this traveller, and that his accounts were all unreal. Mann himself suffered 

 under another 'lion' of the Geographical Society. This was Sir Richard 

 Burton, Orientalist and traveller, who, Hooker tells Darwin, ' has in a public 

 despatch, filched away all poor Mann's credit for the ascent of the Cameroons, 

 calls it his expedition, planned and carried out by him, and calls Mann his 

 volunteer associate. I never read anything so gross in my life. Poor Mann 

 had set his heart on the thing for 2 years, had failed the first time, and was 

 actually leaving Fernando Po for the ascent, when Burton arrived at F. Po 

 as Consul, did leave and had ascended the Mt. several weeks before Burton, 

 following him, was at its foot ; having prepared the way and provided guides 

 and everything. I am quite disgusted, but hardly know how to act. I dislike 

 and despise the Geogr. Soc. way of going on so much, that I do not like to 

 bring the matter forward there, and a.s to having a quarrel with Burton, we all 

 know what it is to touch pitch.' 



