IN THE NETHEELANDS 187 



However, Hooker's natural tact brought him safely through. 



The formalities of travel on the Continent in the forties 

 were exasperating, his passport having to be signed by the 

 Belgian and English Ambassadors in Paris and twice counter- 

 signed by the Prefect of Police. Ten days were filled with 

 fruitless errands, and to crown matters, diligence and train 

 failed to make connection at Valenciennes. 



Brussels, where he stayed a second day to make acquaint- 

 ance with Quetelet,^ at a meeting of the Brussels Academy, 

 is summed up as * a very interesting city, but not strong in 

 Botanists,' though in the Garden ' the collection of Palms was 

 excellent ; ... of other things they have no great store.' 



At Ghent, where he did not fail to see the Eubens pictures, 

 he went over Van Houtte's nursery gardens, * most extra- 

 ordinary, both for the number of species of Botanical plants 

 and of Camellias and other such.' After arranging for exchanges 

 of plants, he was invited to dinner by Van Houtte, who was 

 as hospitable as he was liberal. One point especially in his 

 botanical interests struck his visitor : * he takes the Magazine 

 and is going to have the Journal and the Flora Antarctica.' 



Meantime the discomforts and difficulties of travel in such 

 an Arctic winter are worth recording. March 4 saw delay 

 of trains, the missing of diligence connexions, and consequent 

 midnight journeys. ' I began to think,' he writes, * that I 

 should never get to Holland at all.' March 5 was worse than 

 ever ; 



the roads and rivers were so bad that several passengers were 

 frightened and went round by some place South. Such a 

 cruise I never had by land : the cold was intense, the thermo- 

 meter at 7° with a keen wind. We crossed three rivers, one 

 all frozen and covered with Hummocks and piles of ice, the 

 second, the Maes, 1 J miles broad*, loaded with huge masses of 

 Pack and Berg ice, rushing down to the sea ; the navigation 



1 Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874), a Belgian statistician 

 and astronomer, Director of the Brussels Observatory 1828, and Professor of 

 Astronomy 1836, and from 1834 Perpetual Secretary of the Belgian Royal 

 Academy. Apart from mathematical treatises, his most important work was 

 the book Sur Vhomme et le developfement de ses facuUes (1835), and later he 

 turned his mathematical mind to the study of anthropometry. 



