SIR JOSEPH UALTON H0()KI-:K 



O.M., G.C.S.I., r.H.. M.n., l-.K.S. Il.sl7-l'»ni. 



By F. O. H0\V1:R. S( .1).. F.K.S., 

 Rcfiiiis Professor of Botany in the Vniicrsity of Glasf>ou\ 



( HlIii}^ the Cluiiniuni's Address to the Coiifereiiee of Delej^ntes dt the Dundee 

 Assoeiiition for the Adviiiieenieiit of Seienee. 1912. j 



Meetiii)^ of the British 



I HAVE thought that in addressing this conference of 

 delegates, I could not do better than take as my subject 

 Sir Joseph Dalton Hool<er, whose death in December, 

 1911, has closed a strenuous life of ninety four years. 

 The life we now commemorate was one of action through- 

 out. Naturally with age the bodily strength waned. But 

 Sir Joseph Hooker's vivid mind remained unimpaired to 

 the end. He even continued his detailed observations till very 

 shortly before his death in December last. The list of his 

 published works extends from 1807 to 1911, a record hardly 

 to be etjualled in any walk of intellectual life. 



I do not propose to give any consecutive biographical sketch 

 of this great man. Several such have already appeared. I 

 think I sh<all better engage your interest 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 

 assistant in Edinburgh. There was a moment when he mi_ght 

 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 was all of these, and almost 

 any of these heads might have sufficed for a complete address. 

 I will endeavour, however imperfectly, to touch upon them all. 



The experiences of Hooker as a traveller began iunnediately 

 after taking his degree, with his commission in 1S39 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 1831. when the " Beagle" sailed, to 

 1851, 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 Koss, 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. Yotmg Hooker took his full share of risks, up to 

 the point of being peremptorily ordered back on one occasion 

 by his commanding 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 fact which he acquired. On the outward and 

 return voyages, or in the intervals when the season was not 

 favourable for entering the extreme southern seas, the 

 expedition visited Ascension, St. Helena, the Cape, New- 

 Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Kerguelen Island, Tierra del 

 Fuego, and the Falkland Islands. The prime object of the 

 voyage was a magnetic survey, and this determined its course. 

 But it brought this secondary consetiuence ; that Hooker had 

 the chance of observing and collecting upon all the gre.it 

 circumpolar areas of the southern hemisphere. The results 

 he later welded together into his first great work, " The 

 Antarctic Flora." 



Very soon after his return from the Antarctic the craving 

 for travel broke out afresh in him. He longed to see a 



tropical Flora in a mountainous country, and to compare it 

 at different levels with that of temperate and arctic zones. 

 Two alternatives arose before him : the Andes and the 

 Himalaya. He chose the latter, being influenced by promises 

 of assistance from Dr. Falconer, the Superintendent of the 

 Calcutta Garden. But before he left England his journey 

 came under the recognition of Government. He not only 

 received grants on the condition that the collections made 

 should be located in the Herbarium at Kew. but he was 

 accredited by the Indian Government to the Rulers, and the 

 British Residents, in the countries whose hitherto untrodden 

 ways he was to explore, .'\fter passing the cold season of 

 184S in making himself accpiainted with the vegetation of the 

 plains and hills of Western Bengal, he struck north to the 

 Sikkim Himalaya. Hither he had been directed by Lord 

 Auckland and by Dr. Falconer, as to ground unbroken by 

 traveller or naturalist. The story of this remarkable journey, 

 its results and its vicissitudes, including the forcible detention 

 of himself and his companion. Dr. Campbell, by a faction of 

 the Court of Sikkim, is to be found in his " Himalayan 

 Journal." This most fascinating volume of travel was 

 published in 1854. It tells how he spent two years in the 

 botanical exploration and topographical survey of the .state of 

 Sikkim, and of a number of the passes leading into Thibet; 

 and how towards the close of 1848 he even crossed the 

 western frontier of Sikkim. and explored a portion of Nepal 

 that has never since been open to travellers. In 1849 he 

 returned to Darjeeling, and busied himself with arranging his 

 vast collections. Here he was joined by an old fellow- student 

 of Glasgow, Dr. Thomas Thomson, son of the professor of 

 that name. The two friends spent the year 1850 in the 

 botanical investigation of Eastern Bengal. Chittagong, Silhet, 

 and the Khasia hills. In 1851 they returned together to 

 England. 



The botanical results of these Indian journeys were 

 immense, and they provided the material for much of Hooker's 

 later scientific writing. Nearly seven thousand species 

 of Indian plants were collected by these two Glasgow 

 graduates. But Hooker was not a mere specialist. His 

 Journal is full of other observations, ethnographical, orni- 

 thological and entomological. His topographical results 

 especially were of the highest importance. They formed the 

 basis of a map published by the Indian Topographical. Survey. 

 By the aid of it the operations of various campaigns and 

 political missions have since been carried to a successful 

 issue. If he were not known as a botanist, he would still 

 have his assured place as a geographer. 



After his return from India, nine years ensued of quiet 

 work at home. But in 1860 Hooker took part in a scientific 

 visit to Syria and Palestine, ascending Mount Lebanon, where 

 he specially paid attention to the decadent condition of the 

 Cedars, his observations leading later to a general discussion 

 of the genus. Again a period ot ten years intervened, his 

 next objective being Morocco. In 1871, with Mr. Ball and 

 Mr. Maw, he penetrated the Atlas Range, never before 

 examined botanically. His last great journey was in 1877, 

 when he was sixty years of age. With his old friend. Prof. 

 .Asa Gray, of Harvard, he visited Colorado. Wyoming, Utah, 

 the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and California. 

 Prof. Coulter, of Chicago, who was one of the party in the 

 Rockies, has told me how difficult it was to round up the two 

 elderly enthusiasts to camp at night. 



This is an extraordinary record of travel, especially so when 

 we remember that all the journeys were fitted into the intervals 



400 



