414 HOOKEK'S POSITION AS BOTANIST 



in Europe on that grand subject, that almost keystone of the 

 laws of Creation, Geographical Distribution.' Never was a 

 forecast more fully justified. Hooker the traveller had pre- 

 pared the way for Hooker the philosopher. 



What he did for the Antarctic in his youth he continued 

 in mature life for British India. While the publication of 

 the ' Antarctic Flora ' was still in progress, he made his Indian 

 journeys. The vast collections amassed by himself and Dr. 

 Thomson were consigned by agreement with Government 

 to Kew. Thither had also been brought the herbaria of 

 Falconer and Griffith. Such materials, with other large 

 additions made from time to time, formed the foundation upon 

 which Sir Joseph Hooker was to base his ' Magnum Opus/ the 

 'Flora of British India.' Though conceived, he says with 

 regret, upon a restricted plan, it ran to seven volumes, relating 

 to 16,000 species. It is, he says in the Preface, a pioneer 

 work, and necessarily incomplete. But he hopes it may ' help 

 the phytographer to discuss problems of distribution of 

 plants from the point of view of what is perhaps the richest, 

 and is certainly the most varied botanical area on the surface 

 of the globe.' This great floristic work was fitly rounded 

 off by his completion of the ' Ceylon Flora,' left unfinished on 

 the death of Dr. Trimen. His last contribution to the Flora 

 of the Indian Peninsula was in the form of a Sketch of the 

 Vegetation of the Indian Empire, including Ceylon, Burma, 

 and the Malay Peninsula. It was written for the Imperial 

 Gazetteer, at the request of the Government of India. No one 

 could have been so well qualified for this as the veteran who 

 had spent more than half a century in preparation for it. It 

 was published in 1904, and forms the natural close to the 

 most remarkable study of a vast and varied Flora that has ever 

 been carried through by one ruling mind. 



The third of Hooker's great Systematic Works is the ' Genera 

 Plantarum,' produced in collaboration with Mr. Bentham. 

 Its three massive volumes contain a codification of the Latin 

 diagnoses of all the genera of Flowering Plants known at the 

 date of publication. It is essentially a work for the technical 

 botanist, but for him it is indispensable. The only real 



