WOEK OF THE ELDER HOOKER 15 



»lants of Parry's and Sabine's ^ Arctic voyages and on the 

 iotany of Beechey's voyage to Behring Strait, the Pacific, 

 id China, compare with his son's Antarctic and Austrahan 

 rork. His ' Flora Boreali- Americana,' his ' British Flora,' his 

 figer Flora ' are paralleled by work in the same fields. His ten 

 )oks on ferns — for he was the leading pteridologist of his 

 ime — ^prelude Joseph Hooker's interest in the cryptogams, 

 rhile the great series of the * Icones Plantarum,' begun in 

 [837 to illustrate new and rare plants selected from the 

 author's herbarium, which later became the nucleus of the 

 :eat Kew Herbarium, was continued under his son and suc- 

 )SSor at Kew, thanks to the bequest left for this purpose 

 )y Bentham. 



For the most part this work of his was a labour of love, often 

 Lvolving financial responsibility as well. Generous to others, 

 id enthusiastic for his work, he thought little of his own 

 iterests in comparison with the scientific privileges offered 

 hj the position at Kew. He drew upon his private means, not 

 mly for his books, but for the ceaseless succession of botanical 

 'magazines of which he undertook the editorship, in order to 

 secure a channel for recording the immense variety of new 

 facts that came before him as director of large and expanding 

 botanical gardens, facts needing to be set on record, though 

 too scattered and disconnected for publication in anything 

 but a ' miscellany.' 



Joseph Hooker's mother, Maria Turner, brought another 

 strongly marked strain of character and capacity into his 



* Sir Edward Sabine, K.C.B. (1788-1883), saw active service in the American 

 war of 1812, but after 1816 devoted nearly all his life to science, especially 

 astronomy and terrestrial magnetism. For his researches on these subjects 

 when in the Arctic with Ross and Parry he received the Copley medal in 1821, 

 and subsequently extended his researches half across the world. He, assisted 

 by Ross and others, made the first systematic magnetic survey of the British 

 Isles, and, paying a visit to Berlin, prompted Humboldt to urge the establish- 

 ment of magnetic observatories throughout the British Empire in connection 

 with those already established elsewhere by other Governments, a proposal 

 which led to Ross's Antarctic expedition. Sabine was President of the Royal 

 Society from 1861-71 ; he had been general secretary of the British Associa- 

 tion 1839-59, except in 1852, when he was President. His magnum o'puSy 

 which included a complete statement of the magnetic survey of the globe, 

 extended over thirty-six years from 1840, in his series of * Contributions to 

 Terrestrial Magnetism * in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 



