304 SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER 



biographical sketch of Sir Joseph Hooker. Several such have 

 already appeared. The interest of the reader will be more readily- 

 engaged by indicating the various lines of activity in which he 

 excelled. He was never a professional teacher, except for a short 

 period of service as deputy for Graham in Edinburgh. There 

 was a moment when he might have been Professor in Edinburgh, 

 but it passed. He left no pupils, except in the sense that all 

 botanists have learned from him through his books. We shall 

 contemplate him rather as a Traveller and Geographer, as a 

 Geologist, as a Morphologist, as an Administrator, as a Scientific 

 Systematist, and above all as a Philosophical Biologist. He 

 played each of these several parts in the Drama of Science. 

 The endeavour will be made, however imperfectly, to touch 

 upon them all. 



The experiences of Hooker as a traveller began immediately 

 after taking his degree, with his commission in 1839 as Assistant 

 Surgeon and Botanist in the " Erebus." Scientific Exploration 

 was still in its heroic age. Darwin was only three years back from 

 the voyage of the " Beagle." We may well hold the years from 

 1 83 1, when the " Beagle" sailed, to 185 1, when Hooker returned 

 from his Indian journey, or 1852, when Wallace returned from 

 the Amazon, to have been its golden period. Certainly it was 

 if we measure by results. Unmatched opportunity for travel in 

 remote and unknown lands was then combined with unmatched 

 capacity of those who engaged in it. Nor was this a mere 

 matter of chance. For Darwin, Wallace, and Hooker all seized, 

 if they did not in some measure make, their opportunity. 



The intrepid Ross, with his two sailing ships, the " Erebus " 

 and the " Terror," probed at suitable seasons during four years 

 the extreme south. The very names of the Great Ice Barrier, 

 M'Murdo Sound, Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, made 

 familiar to us by adventures seventy years later under steam, 

 remain to mark some of his additions to the map of the world. 

 Young Hooker took his full share of risks, up to the point of 

 being peremptorily ordered back on one occasion by his com- 

 manding officer. To his activity and willingness, combined 

 with an opportunity that can never recur in the same form, is 

 due that great collection of specimens, and that wide body of 



