THE BOOK SHELF 2:11 



these and other chapters have much of interest for the general reader and 

 present matter which cannot fail to stimulate both professor and student 



The book makes a strong appeal for the recognition of zoology in its broader 

 sense and presents in a most convincing manner the intimate relations existing 

 between the reaction of animals to environment and the welfare of man. It 

 may be characterized as an inspiring interpretation of animal life in its broadest 

 phases by one keenly interested in explaining the problems and guided by a 

 reverent appreciation for truth, the unrevealed as well as the known. It 

 would not be surprising if this little volume came to be regarded as one of 

 the treasure books of science, since it presents a most attractive picture of 

 animal life (including man) and cannot fail to stimulate those who desire to 

 take part in solving the many mysteries of natiure. 



E. P. Felt. 



Joseph Dalton Hooker, by Prof. F. O. Bower, Regins Professor of Botany in the 

 University of Glasgow. 62 pp. London, Society for Promoting Christian 

 Knowledge, New York, The MacMillan Co. 

 The biography of a man who has done things is always interesting, especi- 

 ally when written by one who is a ma.ster of the craft. The little book which 

 bears the above title is the fascinating story of the life of one of the great men 

 of his time. Many men of science, as well as the successful in other fields of 

 endeavor have won their way in the face of obstacles by their unaided ability 

 and the genius which consists in "the capacity for work," but Joseph Hooker 

 who indeed possessed that genius had also the early advantages of favorable 

 inheritance and fostering environment. Both grandfathers were naturalists 

 and his father was Sir William Jackson Hooker, F.R.S., for twenty years Regins 

 Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow and afterward director till 

 his death of the Royal Gardens at Kew. 



His formal education consisted in attendance at the Glasgow High School 

 and afterwards the attaining of degrees at the University, but his most valuable 

 scientific education came through association with his father. He and his 

 brother aged seven and eight, respectively, used to attend their father's eight 

 o'clock lectures and the boys were allowed to go with their father and his 

 students on their collecting trips around Glasgow on summer excursions into 

 the Highlands. There experiences in roughing it stood him in good stead on 

 his arduous journeys in the Antarctic, the Himalayas and, later, on the trip 

 that he made when he was sixty years old in the company of our own Asa Gray, 

 his longtime friend, into the Rockies and the Sierras of the Western United 

 States and in California. 



He was a lifelong, close, and sympathetic friend of Charles Darwin and 

 his powerful champion. He was associated with him in the period of labor 

 and struggle when he was working out the origin of species. The chapter on 

 "The Species Question" vividly summarizes this part in the life of Hooker. 

 "The great bulk of Joseph Hooker's works were written frankly as a botanist 

 for botanists," "Few ever have known plants, few ever will know them, as 

 Hooker knew them. Such knowledge comes only from growing up with them 

 from earliest childhood as he did." But he was no mere specialist. "His 

 topographical work in vSikkin (India) would have given him a place as geogra- 

 pher. His observations of the effects of denudation in the Himalayas 



