MEMOKIAL FBOM MEN OF SCIENCE 171 



he must be patient. Kew, politically, was of negligible 

 importance; Cabinet solidarity could not be imperilled' on 

 its account. It was the politician's instinct to look at the 

 affair as a personal matter. Granted that the First Com- 

 missioner's action had been rough, even incorrect — to take 

 offence was to be too thin-skinned. Now that complaint 

 had been made and considered, all could be smoothed over by 

 a general expression of confidence that in the future the rules 

 would be observed. 



But it was a great deal more than a matter of personal 

 offence. True that the attack was on Hooker's personal 

 position ; but in his person were attacked Kew itself, and 

 science and administrative fair dealing. It remained to make 

 Kew less negligible politically ; to send the Prime Minister 

 an expression of the weightiest scientific opinion, and finally, 

 to lay the matter before Parliament, through Sir John Lubbock, 

 the natural representative of science in the House of Commons. 



Accordingly a full statement of the case was drawn up over 

 the signatures of Sir Charles Lyell and Darwin, of George 

 Bentham, Sir Henry Holland, George Burrows, George Busk, 

 and H. C. Eawlinson, Presidents respectively of the Linnean 

 Society, the Boyal Institution, the Colleges of Physicians and 

 Surgeons, and the Geographical Society, of Sir James Paget 

 (the surgeon), William Spottiswoode (afterwards President of 

 the Boyal Society), and Professors Huxley and Tyndall. 1 

 This recited the history of Kew, its debt to the two Hookers, 

 and the overbearing acts of Mr. Ayrton. The concluding 

 paragraphs run as follows : 



It but rarely falls in either with our duties or our desires 

 to meddle in public questions ; and not until we found Dr. 

 Hooker maimed as regards his scientific usefulness — not 

 until we saw the noble establishment of which he has hither- 

 to been the living head in peril of losing services which it 

 would be absolutely impossible to replace ; not, indeed, 

 until we had observed a hesitation upon your part which 



1 Tyndall, writing to Huxley on April 27, remarks that the Government 

 lacks ' inner fibre of rectitude sufficiently strong to resist Ayrton, so the only 

 plan is to lift up the hands of Joshua by external aid. What a smashing 

 memorial could be written on this correspondence.' 



