412 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC 



^ 



time to revise his editorial work. Indeed, he saw clearly that 

 the Kew Journal could not advantageously continue, and with 

 the help of old and trusted friends like Bentham and Harvey 

 and Asa Gray, persuaded his father to give it up. 



But the Linnean Journal was restricted to working men 

 of science. To reach a wider pubUc, to spread the general com- 

 prehension of scientific ideas, seemed very important to the 

 advanced wing. To this end a scheme was organised, mainly 

 through Huxley, whose energy was in touch with the Hterary 

 as well as the scientific world in London. From 1858 onwards 

 a fortnightly scientific column was arranged for in the Saturday 

 Beview,^ to which Hooker was too busy to contribute, replying 

 to Huxley's invitation as follows : 



Kew : Wednesday, 1858. 



I have long been under an engagement of honor to 

 Lindley's Gardeners' Chronicle, a paper that has acted most 

 liberally by me, and for which I have not written a line for 

 9 months, and have no present prospect of doing anything 

 for, though I really ought and should. Now I cannot bring 

 myself to the scratch to do articles (and however simple 

 I am well paid even for notices of Botanical Events and 

 translations of short foreign announcements) ; how can I 

 expect to screw myself up to write pregnant columns (for 

 they must be bellyfuUs) for the Sat. Review ? 



Besides all this, as my non-original- work- duties increase 

 here, I proportionately crave to be at original work. I want 

 to get up good papers on obscure and difficult Natural Orders, 

 and such w^ork is quite inconsistent with reviewing. 



I quite feel the want of such a class of articles as you 

 propose and feel my own selfishness in withdrawing ; but I 

 doubt if the good effects would be at all commensurate with 

 the time and labor that we should expend, and I am quite 

 sure that both you and I would be much happier without 

 such trammels. Further I am confident that the articles 

 would in our cases be contributed at the expense of original 

 work, and we should thus ' seek in certain ill, uncertain 

 good.' 



^ It is amusing to find the Saturday, for all its excellence on the literary 

 side, condemned as ' dreadfully sententious and priggish ' and amateurish in its 

 politics, whence its sobriquet of Pall Mall Gazette. 



