THE NEW HEEBAEIUM 229 



family, who had an eye to the ground and house, were 



bitterly opposed to it, and got over iny present chief, who, 

 after the Queen had given the site, continued throwing 

 obstacles in the way. When Lo ! by a stroke of luck, it 

 turned out, when preparing for a legal transfer of the site, 

 that the present Herb., House and grounds all belonged 

 to us ! that old scamp, George IV., having sold it for 84,000 

 to pay his debts, in 1824 ! There was no legal conveyance, 

 but the receipt of the money is to the fore ! Thus both 

 William IV and Victoria have for half a century been giving 

 to others (the King of Hanover and the Herbarium) a house 

 not their own. 



I shall retain the present building for the Library and 

 Working rooms, render them sufficiently fire-proof, and throw 

 out a Herb. Hall at the back in the same style of archi- 

 tecture that suits the site and surroundings. I am all the 

 more glad of this, as George III had given the building origin- 

 ally for Library and Herbarium, and Banks had begun to 

 have it fitted up as such, when his death stopped it all, and 

 it reverted to the King's use. 



The result was thoroughly satisfactory : ' I wish/ he tells 

 Asa Gray, August 2, 1879, ' you could see our Herbarium and 

 Library arrangements before you begin to build, for which I 

 quite saw the need.' 



Hooker had hoped to combine with this needful addition 

 to Kew the physiological laboratory offered by Mr. Phillips 

 Jodrell. The Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction 

 and the Advancement of Science had stated in its fourth report 

 (1874) that * it is highly desirable that opportunities for the 

 pursuit of investigations in Physiological Botany should be 

 afforded at Kew to those persons who may be inclined to 

 follow that branch of science.' 



Hooker was not primarily a physiological botanist, but 

 he well understood the value of this branch of his science. 

 This was being vigorously taken up in Germany under the 

 influence of Sachs, and should be no longer neglected in 

 England, which in olden days had led the way in this direction, 

 before systematic botany, expanding with the discoveries of 

 our expanding empire, had swamped other lines of research. 



