SCIENTIFIC INTEEESTS 31 



{Pulmonaria angustifolia). Joseph, examining these, concludes 

 ^that it is one and the same with our common lungwort 



(P. officinalis), but that Linnaeus' P. officinalis is not a British 

 [plant. 



From his visit to Yarmouth he returned on November 8, 

 land on the 10th his father writes : 



I need hardly tell you that the boy has enjoyed his visit 

 much and seems really grateful for the privileges he has 

 enjoyed, especially under your roof. He is quite disposed 

 to work at the classes, and set out yesterday morning before 

 breakfast to enter them. He takes Surgery, Chemistry, 

 Materia Medica, Anatomical demonstrations, and occasion- 

 ally the dissecting-room. He is gone to-day to endeavour to 

 arrange with Mr. Arnott ^ to give him two hours a day at 

 Latin, as you kindly suggested. Thus you see his time will 

 be fully occupied, and he can only reckon on a hohday now 

 and then to allow him to devote some attention to naturahst 

 pursuits. 



Next summer we find him geologising, in Arran, with his 

 friend Thomas Thomson.^ And to go forward a year, on 

 January 9, 1839, Sir William tells Dawson Turner : 



^ George Arnott Walker Arnott (1799-1868), who had given up the law 

 for botany, was a close friend of Sir W. Hooker, with whom he collaborated 

 from 1830-40 in describing the plants of Beechey's v6yage, and in 1850 in the 

 sixth edition of the British Flora. In 1839 he acted as Sir William's substitute, 

 and from 1845 till his death held the Glasgow chair of Botany. 



2 This Thomas Thomson (1817-78), naturalist and traveller, was the 

 eldest son of Thomas Thomson, Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow from 1817. 

 A schoolfellow of the Hooker boys, he was equally devoted to science, and at 

 the age of seventeen did some remarkable original work in geology, and later, 

 no less original chemical work under Liebig. He graduated M.D. in 1839 with 

 the Hookers, and entered the service of the East India Company as assistant 

 surgeon. He had a perilous adventure during the invasion of Afghanistan, 

 ill-famed for the massacre of the Khoord Kabul, for he was captured by the 

 Afghans at Ghazni, and narrowly escaped being sold into slavery in Boldiara, 

 1842. Meantime, as later during the Sutlej campaign and his subsequent stay 

 in the Punjaub, he studied Indian and Himalayan botany. As one of the com- 

 missioners for marking the boundary between Kashmir and Chinese Tibet in 

 1847, he travelled into little known regions, embodying his geological and 

 botanical observations in his book, Travels in the Western Himalayas and Tibet, 

 in 1852. At the end of 1849 he joined Hooker at Darjeeling, and travelled with 

 him for fifteen months on his later expeditions, especially to the Khasia Moun- 

 tains. Returning to England in broken health, he spent several years at Kew, 

 working at his collections, and bringing out, in collaboration with Hooker, the 

 first and only volume of the Flora Ir^ica. From 1854 to 1861, he was again 

 in India as superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens in succession to 

 Dr. Falconer, Professor of Botany. Later he lived again for a time at Kew. 



