SCALE OF PENSION 269 



whose services have all along been remunerated on a scale 

 accommodated to the prospective gilding of their declining 

 years, if they survive so long. 



His term of public service extended over forty-seven years, 

 seventeen in the Naval service (1839-1855) and thirty in the 

 Civil service, under the Board of Works, his name remaining 

 on the Navy list till 1870. Under the terms of his appoint- 

 ment to Kew, ten years' nominal time was to be added as a 

 1 special award ' for Kew in calculating his retiring pension. 



On the latter point the Treasury's reluctance gave way to 

 the explicit testimony of the Board of Works. On the naval 

 question they were more stubborn. 



In 1870 by Order in Council all Assistant Surgeons who had 

 not served afloat during the five previous years were compul- 

 sorily retired on pay of £200. Hooker came under this order. 

 Before 1870 there had been no retirement scheme for Assistant 

 Surgeons. The continuance of his name on the Navy list, 

 which brought him no higher pay, had been thought useful to 

 Kew in various ways, and was especially so when he went to 

 Syria with the Hydrographer. During the seventeen years 

 from 1839, he was serving either afloat or ashore, always under 

 orders in India or publishing the botany of all the Voyages in 

 the South from Cook's onwards, and had no idle half-pay time. 

 His last service afloat had been eight years before he came 

 under the Board of Works as Assistant Director of Kew. 



The Treasury now proposed to disregard this Order in 

 Council, and to calculate his naval retired pay on the current 

 scale of £54 15s., as if it had existed in 1855. To this proposal, 

 put forward at first tentatively and in private form, Hooker 

 objected strongly, even though it appeared possible by cutting 

 down his rightful naval allowance to make his ' special award ' 

 for Kew larger than what he was entitled to receive — an act of 

 grace instead of simple equity. 



Backed by the Board of Works and by counsel's opinion 

 as to the inability of the Treasury by an administrative act to 

 alter the naval pension awarded by Order in Council and con- 

 firmed by Parliament, he continued to press his point. As he 

 expressed himself to Huxley (November 11, 1886) : 



