344 THE EETURN FROM INDIA 



scheme, would have been his with the rank of surgeon on 

 board the Maeander. 



Feehng that he could manage on his allowance, he had 

 refused while in Sikkim to apply to the Indian Government 

 for any grant in aid of his costly and laborious expedition to 

 the snows, or to allow Hodgson to appeal on his behalf ; but 

 Campbell, before a similar disclaimer could reach him, had 

 made representations to the Government, who generously 

 granted him £100 to cover the cost of feeding his coolies, subject 

 to the approval of the East India Company. However un- 

 willing to ask, he was rriuch gratified in accepting the proffered 

 grant, and was free to spend the more on his collections and 

 on scientific instruments. His total expenditure was £2,200 ; 

 the official allowances were £1,200 : the remainder was con- 

 tributed from his own and his father's purse. 



As for a permanency in the future, he had no wish to take 

 up such a post as the directorship of the Botanical Gardens 

 in Ceylon, offered to him on the death of his friend Gardner 

 in 1849. Indeed his constant wish was to be settled at Kew. 

 His father was short-handed. His former curator, Dr. J. E. 

 Planchon,^ had left him suddenly : ' Citoyen Planchon ' or 

 simply ' the Citoyen ' as he was playfully nicknamed, Planchon 

 of whom Hooker writes home amid the Revolutionary breezes 

 of 1848 : 



I hope Planchon won't be going to Paris now ! He will 

 be drawn (for a soldier) and quartered (not in Barracks), if 

 he does not take better care. I doubt if the Repubhcans 

 are so civil as were Napoleon's soldiers, who, at the battle 

 of the Pyramids, gave the word, * au milieu, les femmes, 

 les anes, et les savants.' 



The little man, to whom the Hookers were much attached, 

 was a paragon of botanical acumen, winning a second nick- 

 name from the ' 9a touche ' with which he invariably clinched 

 a botanical argument ; it was the highest praise to call T. 



1 He afterwards attained great eminence as Professor of Botany in Mont- 

 pellier, where in his researches on the Phylloxera he discovered the only cure 

 for this pest — namely, the grafting of the ordinary vine on the nearly immune 

 stocks of American species. 



