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NATURE 



[August 22, 19 18 



led to the production of that noble fragment, their 

 "Flora Indica." It is illustrated again in that co- 

 partnery with Bentham initiated while Hooker was 

 bearing, unaided, the burden of his directorship, 

 which led to the completion before Hooker retired 

 of that masterly work, the "Genera Plantarurn." 

 A striking instance of that self-abnegation which 

 induced Hooker to take from the hands of fellow- 

 workers who had fallen by the way tasks left by 

 them unfinished is seen in his compliance, at a 

 time when his hands were full to overflowing with 

 duties of his own, with the dying wish of Harvey 

 that he should arrange the materials that distin- 

 guished botanist had prepared for a second edition 

 of the "South African Genera."^ A generation 

 later, undaunted by the weight of his eighty years. 

 Hooker wrote two volumes needed to complete a 

 "Flora of Ceylon," whereof only three had been 

 published when Trimen died. 



Hooker's distaste for popular applause was 

 untinged by any disinclination for intercourse. 

 However busy he might be, no one, young or old, 

 whose errand was serious, ever was turned away. 

 The soul of hospitality, he was also eminently 

 sociable, though he regarded as essential for social 

 intercourse " some place where we never should 

 be disappointed of finding something worth going 

 out for. ' ' When he felt that by so doing he could 

 render real service, he was ready, in spite of his 

 natural reluctance, to undertake those public duties 

 that public men, situated as he was, are expected 

 to perform. 



Throughout his life Hooker exercised on con- 

 temporary work and thought an influence that wa^ 

 wholly good. The diversity of his interests, the 

 extent of his knowledge, the soundness of his 

 judgment, and the singleness of his purpose ex- 

 plain the value of that influence. Generous of 

 praise where praise was due, iie was also, much 

 to the advantage of younger workers, unsparing 

 of blame where blame was deserved. The dis- 

 tinction between Hooker's commendation and his 

 censure lay in this, that work well done by others 

 was to him an abiding memory, but that when a 

 delinquent had been "faithfully dealt with" the 

 delinquency was consigned to oblivion. The affec- 

 tionate regard in which he was held by younger 

 men may be understood. The admiration of those 

 nearer him in age is as readily explicable. Second 

 to none in the accuracy of his observation, and 

 endowed as few have ever been with the inborn 

 faculty of co-ordination. Hooker possessed in addi- 

 tion one of the rarest of capacities : he remained, 

 throughout his life, free from the thrall of that 

 barrier to progress and foe to intellectual develop- 

 ment, a craving for formal consistency. 



But what is perhaps most remarkable in the life 

 of Hooker is the circumstance that his influence, 

 in a country such as ours, should have been as 

 great as it deserved to be. The reason for this is 

 to be found in his magnetic personality. It has 

 been the l6t of few men to possess so many friends 

 as Hooker did ; fortune has given no man friends 

 more faithful. These friendships were too numer- 

 • ous for census here. Their origin may be traced 

 NO. 2547, VOL. lOl] 



in every case to some community of interest, yet 

 the common interest out of which they grew was 

 by no means always botanical — one of the warmest 

 was that between him and Henry Yule, of 

 " Hobson-Jobson " fame. Some of these associa- 

 tions, like those with Paget and T. Thomson, 

 dated from boyhood; others, like those with 

 Charles Darwin and Asa Gray, began after his 

 return from the Antarctic; others, again, like 

 those with Falconer and Hodgson, went back to 

 his days in India. The faculty remained unim- 

 paired by time; Hooker's "troops of friends " 

 enrolled recruits to the last. What such friend- 

 ships implied we may measure best by reading the 

 letters exchanged by Hooker with Darwin and 

 Huxley; the genesis of one of the closest is dis- 

 closed in the home letters written by Gray while 

 on his first visit to Europe. "The Life and Letters 

 of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker " is " dedicated to 

 the memory of many friendships." No more fitting 

 superscription could well have been devised for 

 Mr. Huxley's volumes than that approved by Lady 

 Hooker. 



TYCHO BRAHE'S STUDIES OF COMETS. 



Tychonis Brake Opera Omnia. Tomi Quarti, 

 Fasciculus Prior. Pp. 376. (K0benhavn : 

 Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1918.) 



AS some documents intended to appear in 

 vol. iv. of the collected works of Tycho 

 Brahe are inaccessible owing to the war, the 

 volume has been divided into two portions, of 

 which the first has just been published. It con- 

 tains the treatise " De Mundi .^therei Recenti- 

 oribus Phjenomenis, " which was printed at 

 Uraniborg in 1588; this deals mainly with the 

 comet of 1577, which was the brightest of the 

 seven comets that appeared during Tycho's career 

 as an observer ; his observations of it sufficed 

 definitely to dispel the Aristotelian doctrine, which 

 Tycho had himself held up to that time. Thus in 

 writing of the nova of 1572, and comparing it 

 with Hipparchus's nova, Tycho said: "It would 

 be absurd to fancy that a great astronomer like 

 Hipparchus should not have known the diff"erence 

 between a star of the ethereal region and a fiery 

 meteor of the air, which is called a comet." How- 

 ever, his principles were to take nothing on trust 

 from ancient authorities, but to submit theory to 

 the test of careful observation, excepting the case 

 of the solar parallax, for which he used the re- 

 ceived value of 3', though his instruments were 

 capable of showing that the true value was much 

 smaller. 



When a very bright comet appeared in 1577 

 Tycho naturally took advantage of it to endeavour 

 to determine the nature and orbits of these bodies. 

 The book describes his first observation of the 

 comet. On, the afternoon of November 13 he was 

 engaged in fishing with some of his assistants. 

 Looking up to the western sky, to see the pro- 

 spects for observation that evening, he saw a 

 bright object, and pointed it out to the assistants, 

 who took it for Venus ; but Tvcho said that was 



