WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 325 



of the species in his herbarium which it was desirable to fig- 

 ure, an outlet for these was made by the " Icones Plantarum, 

 or Figures, with brief descriptive Characters and Remarks of 

 New or Rare Plants selected from the Author's Herbarium." 

 Ten volumes of the work were published, with a thousand 

 plates (in octavo), at the author's sole expense, and with no 

 remuneration, between the years 1837 and 1854, the drawings 

 of the earlier volumes by his own hand, of the later, by Mr. 

 Fitch, whom he had trained to the work. 



Botanists do not need to be told how rich these journals 

 are in materials illustrative of North American botany, con- 

 taining as they do accounts of collections made by Scouler, 

 Drummond, Douglas, Geyer, etc. Equally important for the 

 botany of our western coast, especially of California, is " The 

 Botany of Captain Beech's Voyage" (4to), in the elaboration 

 of which Sir William Hooker was associated with Professor 

 Walker -Arnott. But his greatest contribution to North 

 American botany — for which our lasting gratitude is due — 

 was his " Flora Boreali-Americana " (2 vols. 4to, with 238 

 plates), of which the first part was issued in 1833, the last in 

 1840. Although denominated " the botany of the Northern 

 parts of British America," it embraced the whole continent 

 from Canada and Newfoundland, and on the Pacific from the 

 borders of California, northward to the Arctic sea. Collec- 

 tions made in the British arctic voyages had early come into 

 his hands, as afterwards did all those made in the northern 

 land expeditions by the late Sir John Richardson, Drum- 

 mond, etc., and the great western collections of Douglas, 

 Scouler, Tolmie, and others, while his devoted correspondents 

 in the United States contributed everything they could fur- 

 nish from this region. So that this work marks an epoch in 

 North American botany, which now could be treated as a 

 whole. 



We should not neglect to notice that, from the year 1827 

 down to his death, he conducted that vast repertory of figures 

 of the ornamental plants cultivated in Great Britain, the 

 " Botanical Magazine " (contributing over 2500 plates and 

 descriptions) ; a work always as important to the botanist as 

 to the cultivator, and under his editorship essential to both. 



