WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 327 



special fitness for the place was manifest, and his claims were 

 heartily seconded by the only other botanist who could have 

 come into competition with him in this respect. We refer of 

 course to Dr. Lindley. The office, moreover, was no pecuniary 

 prize ; the salary being only three hundred pounds a year (less, 

 we believe, than the retiring pension of his unscientific super- 

 annuated predecessor), " with two hundred pounds to enable 

 him to rent such a house as should accommodate his herba- 

 rium and library, by this time of immense extent, and essential, 

 we need not say, to the working of the establishment, whether 

 in a scientific or economic point of view." The salary, if we 

 mistake not, has since been increased in some moderate pro- 

 portion to the enlarged responsibilities and cares of the vast 

 concern ; but up to his death, so important an auxiliary as 

 his unrivaled herbarium, and the greatest scientific attraction 

 of the institution, was left to be supported (excepting some 

 incidental aid) out of the Director's own private means. 



Such record as needs here be made of Sir William Hooker 

 as Director of Kew Gardens can be best and most briefly 

 given mainly in the words of a writer in the " Gardeners' 

 Chronicle " for September 2d, to whose ripe judgment and 

 experience we may defer. 



" Sir William entered upon his duties in command of un- 

 usual resources for the development of the gardens, such as 

 had never been combined in any other person. Single in 

 purpose and straightforward in action, enthusiastic in* man- 

 ner, and at the same time prepared to advance by degrees, he 

 at once won the confidence of that branch of the government 

 under which he worked. ... To those in office above him, 

 he imparted much of the zeal and interest he himself felt, 

 which was proved by constant visits to the gardens, resulting 

 in invariable approval of what he was doing, and promises of 

 aid for the future. Another means at his disposal, and which 

 he at once brought to bear on the work in hand, was his ex- 

 tensive foreign and colonial correspondence, including espe- 

 cially that with a large number of students whom he had 

 imbued with a love of botany, and who were scattered over 

 the most remote countries of the globe, and several of whom, 



