PLUEALITIES WITHOUT SINECURES 375 



fairly profitable and useful life than that of a scientific man 

 who is really attached to his pursuits. 



The same note is sounded in correspondence with Harvey, 

 who, a month before (October 1856), had returned from his 

 three years' cruise in the Indian Ocean and Australia, and 

 had been elected to the chair of Botany in Dublin ^ : 



[Nov. 1856.] You know that I am not a sanguine man, 

 and yet I can see that you have in yourself, with an unem- 

 barrassed life, abundant resources for a fair income, and I 

 am sure that you have resources in your collections and 

 previous career for continuing the life of a pure man of 

 science, with honor and profit to yourself and to the lasting 

 benefit of science. I would much rather see you the Curator 

 of Trin. Coll. Herb, on £100 and free of all Lectureships 

 whatever than hampered with even the Botanical. 



The serious matter was that to the Botanical chair at 

 Dublin various duties had been attached, seemingly ' pluralities 

 without sinecures,' as Hooker defined them,, and especially 

 the duty of lecturing on Natural History at large, for was not 

 Botany a part of Natural History ? Hooker, backed by his 

 father, strongly urged the inexpediency of taking up a Zoo- 

 logical Professorship in any shape at all, joint or disjoint : 



[Nov. 25, 1856.] I cannot say that I at all stomach your 

 Zoological lectures and duties, not from any aversion to 

 Zoology or to your joint Professorship, so much as because 

 it will involve all sorts of other minor and major zoological 

 inroads upon your time. You talk of lecturing on Inverte- 

 hrata as if they were nothing ; do just read Huxley's lectures 

 in the Medical Times ; they are admirable, though in saying 

 so I feel hke the old Scotch wife who said, ' Ae, it was a grand 

 discourse, I couldna understand the ane half of it.' By 

 Jove, the whole science seems to be so changed to what I 

 learned, and the hterature of any one such small Order as 

 Annehda or Rhizopod or Cestoid worm ! so overwhelming, 

 and the new facts so revolutionary, that I cannot fancy any 



1 See p. 400. 



