June 2, 1898] 



NATURE 



107 



however, there are more accurate methods generally 

 available, by which the navigator can find the position of 

 his vessel — methods approximating to those of the astro- 

 nomer in his observatory, whose more refined instruments 

 and abstruse calculations supply the seaman with the 

 data necessary to combine with his own observations, 

 and fix the position of his ship with all needful accuracy. 

 In a subsequent paper I will explain how this is done.^ 



J. F. RUTHVEN. 



ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE 

 LINNEAN SOCIETY. 



THE anniversary meeting of the Linnean Society of 

 London, held at Burlington House on May 24, 

 was the occasion of presentation, by its Fellows, to Sir 

 Joseph Dalton Hooker, G.C.S.I., C.B., F.R.S., of a com- 

 memoration gold medal, in addition to that of the Society's 

 annual gold medal, which was awarded to Surgeon- 

 Major G. C. Wallich, M.D., the veteran naturalist of the 

 cruise of H.M.S. Bulldog. In presenting the medal to 

 Sir Joseph Hooker, the President, Dr. A. Giinther, 

 F.R.S., made the following remarks. 



The completion of a monumental work in botany, the " Flora 

 of British India," lias been chosen by our Council as a fit 

 occasion for the Linnean Society to pay its tribute to the recog- 

 nition of the eminent services which have been rendered to 

 biological science by Joseph Dalton Hooker. A gold medal, 

 specially struck for the occasion, of which copies could be 

 distributed among his numerous friends and admirers, was 

 considered to be the most appropriate and the most enduring 

 form to serve as a memorial of this desire of the Society. 



If I attempted, or were competent, to pass in review the 

 work by which J, D. Hooker has advanced botanical science 

 and enriched its literature, the few words I intend to address to 

 you would swell into a biography ; for of the sixty years which 

 have elapsed since he entered the service of science, there are 

 but few in which he has not left his mark upon its history. 



The four years which he passed with the Antarctic ex- 

 pedition, and the three years during which he wandered among 

 the ranges of the Himalayas, were the period in which he saw 

 nature in her most diversified, grandest and purest aspects, 

 and was brought face to face with the mysteries of the dis- 

 tribution of life over the globe. Then and for many years 

 afterwards he made these phenomena and their causes the object 

 of his special study. His writings on the subject have had the 

 most powerful influence on, and were the guide in all subsequent 

 inquiries. His travels were of the highest importance, and that 

 not with regard to our biological knowledge alone; his intimate 

 acquaintance with geology, meteorology, his proficiency as a 

 surveyor have rendered his accounts of the countries visited by 

 him equally valuable to the geographer. 



When biology entered upon that eventful period of its history, 

 in which the doctrine of continuous evolution by natural 

 selection was striving to replace that of distinct creations, 

 Hooker was one of the foremost champions of the former. 

 Many systematic workers in zoology and botany were apprehen- 

 sive at the time of dangers arising to their methods from the 

 new doctrine. Hooker dispelled such fears by his own example ; 

 he continued his systematic work, but he showed at the same 

 time that it was not the end, but only the means to the end, of 

 biological research. 



The part which he took, during the lifetime of his father, and 

 during the twenty years of his directorship, in raising the Royal 

 Gardens at Kew to their importance and eminence, is known to 

 all of you. But I cannot pass this short allusion to his official 

 work without referring to the position which Kew has taken as 

 the centre of advice and help for the kindred institutions in 

 India and the Colonies. This bond had been already established 

 by the father ; but it was strengthened by the son's personal 

 acquaintance with their capabilities, and his sympathy with their 

 needs. 



His official duties, sufficiently arduous by themselves, did not 



1 Throughout this paper the earth has been treated as a sphere. Of 

 course it is really a spheroid with a compression of 1/300 in the polar axis. 

 This hardly affects general principles, though it introduces slight modi- 

 fications and corrections in detail. For these, and the rules of computation 

 in cxtenso, the reader is referred to such standard and practical works as 

 Riddle, Raper, Merrifield, Leclcy, and others. 



prevent him from obeying other den>ands of science, when he- 

 was called upon to perform the functions of President of the 

 British Association in 1868, and of the Royal Society from. 

 1873-1878. And since his retirement from the public service iiv 

 1885, at an age when most men seek for rest from their labours^ 

 we have seen him still prosecuting his work with that single- 

 minded devotion to science which has been characteristic of the 

 whole of his life. 



The prosperity of the Linnean Society,, of which he has been- 

 a Fellow since 1842, has always been to him an object of sf)ecial 

 interest. Some of his most remarkable memoirs appeared in 

 our Transactions ; Bentham, who devoted years of care to the 

 welfare of the Society, was connected with him by ties of closest 

 friendship. And last, but not least, we remember that in 

 honouring the son we are doing homage to the memories of the 

 father and grandfather, both of whom were illustrious Fellows 

 of the Society. 



Sir Jo.seph Hooker, in acknowledging the presentation^ 

 said : 



Mr. President, I cannot express my sense of the great, the 

 exceptionally great honour which your Council has conferred 

 upon me in the founding and awarding of this beautiful medal. 

 In receiving it, let me assure you that I value it as much for the 

 evidence it bears of the friendly regard of my associates as for 

 their all too high estimate of my endeavours towards the pro- 

 motion of science. Furthermore, let me say that from no 

 scientific body could it be received by me with more cordial 

 welcome than from the Linnean Society, which was the first to 

 which I have the honour of belonging to enrol me amongst its 

 Fellows, and which especially cultivates those branches of know- 

 ledge to which I have devoted the best years of my life. To 

 these considerations must be added what you yourself have 

 alluded to, namely, my hereditary interest in a Society of which 

 my father and grandfather were very early Fellows, and both of 

 them contributors to its Transactions. To this latter circum- 

 stance it may perhaps be due that I was elected at a very early 

 age, being, I believe, the youngest member of our body with na 

 further scientific claims on the support of my electors than that 

 I was serving as a naturalist in the Antarctic expedition under 

 Captain Ross, where I happened to be the youngest, as I am 

 now the only surviving officer of those then under the command 

 of that intrepid navigator. I may mention that Captain Ross 

 was himself a Fellow, and had a copy of our Transactions irv 

 his cabin, which was a godsend to me. I was in the Falkland 

 Isles when my election took place, and nearly a year and a half 

 elapsed before my captain and I knew that we were fellow 

 Linneans. 



In 1842 the Lord Bishop of Norwich was President. He 

 was the first of ten under whom I have been privileged to sit. 

 Had the Society adopted the rule of biennial presidents I should 

 have sat under thirty at least, which, in my estimation, would 

 have detracted greatly from the dignity which I attach to the 

 chair, and I venture to think from its utility also. In the year 

 1842 there were 610 members of the Society (including fellows, 

 foreign members and associates) with fully one-fourth of whom 

 I soon became personally acquainted. Twenty-eight years 

 afterwards, that is about midway between the former date and 

 the present time, the number of my personal friends in the 

 Society had risen to one-half of the whole body. Our numbers 

 are now 820,but the proportion of my personal friends among 

 them has inevitably shrunk from my having outlived so many 

 associates of my middle age. And this leads me to ask youjF 

 indulgence for one more egotistical detail. It is that I am per- 

 haps the only Fellow who personally knew four of the 16^ 

 naturalists who, iioyears ago, formed the nucleus of our Society. 

 Of these four I knew two during my later teens • they were the 

 Rev. W. Kirby, the author, with Spence, of the " Immortal 

 Introduction to Entomology " ; and Dr. Heysham, of Carlisle, 

 an excellent entomologist and ornithologist. The others were 

 Aylmer Bourke Lambert, a former President, and the last, as I 

 have been informed, who wore in the chair the presidential 

 three-cornered hat ; and Archibald Menzies, who as naturalist 

 accompanied Vancouver in his voyage in the Pacific, and who- 

 introduced the Araucaria imhricata into England. These all 

 died very near the year of my election. 



Referring now to the prepress of the Society in status and 

 eflSciency during the years that have elapsed since 1842, the 

 record cannot but be gratifying to its Fellows. Of this the best 

 proofs are the incremerU in extent and value of its publications. 



NO. 1492, VOL. 58] 



