WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER 



9 



great feeling for art. The power of draughtsmanship came 

 also from the Cotmans through his mother, Maria Turner, for 

 her grandmother (Dawson Turner's mother) was Elizabeth 

 Cotman, but the faculty thus transmitted was that of the 

 copyist rather than the art-lover. 



William Jackson Hooker, inheriting love of the garden 

 and books from his father, of art from his mother, was one of 

 those who came into the world with the true spirit of the 

 naturahst, a characteristic he transmitted in full measure to 

 his son. Like all such, his love for the outdoor world took 

 him into field and wood and intimacy with the life of nature ; 

 in his school-days he collected insects and flowers and read 

 books on natural history, and early got to know the flowers 

 and mosses, the liverworts and hchens and freshwater algae 

 round his home in the heart of that county which possesses 

 two-thirds of the species of British plants. No sordid cares, 

 such as often overshadow a young man's future, prevented 

 him from indulging his bent ; for at the age of four he 

 inherited a competency from his cousin -godfather, William 

 Jackson of Canterbury, and as he grew up, he resolved to 

 devote himself to travel and natural history. A keen sports- 

 man, he made a fine collection of the birds of Norfolk ; close 

 relations with Kirby and Spence ^ and Alexander Macleay ^ 

 spurred his pursuit of entomology. 



His science and his scientific drawing both won early notice. ■ 

 When he was twenty he discovered, near Norwich, a species 

 of moss {Buxhaumia a'pliylla) previously unknown in Britain ; 

 and three years later Sir J. E. Smith, in dedicating to him the 

 genus Hookeria, made special mention of his illustrations of 

 Dawson Turner's Fuci and of the difficult genus Jungermannia. 

 ' . The latter genus, be it noted, was an especial favourite of his. 

 He pubhshed a monograph on the British Jungermanniae 



^ William Kirby (1759-1850), entomologist, nephew of J. J. Kirby : edu- 

 cated at Caius Coll., Cambridge, was an original Fellow of the Linnean Society 

 1788. He published a famous Introduction to Entomology (1815-26) with 

 William Spence (1783-1860), F.R.S. 1818, Hon. President of the Entomological 

 Society, to which he bequeathed his collection of insects. 



» Alexander Macleay (1767-1848), F.R.S. 1809, entomologist and Colonial 

 Statesman; was Colonial Secretary foi New South Wales 1825-37. 



