330 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



constitutionally buoyant to the last. He had made no small 

 progress in the work, and had carried the sheets of the initial 

 number through the press, when an attack of diphtheria, then 

 epidemic at Kew, suddenly closed his long, honored and most 

 useful life. 



Our survey of what Sir William Hooker did for science 

 would be incomplete indeed, if it were confined to his pub- 

 lished works — numerous and important as they are — and 

 the wise and efficient administration through which, in a 

 short space of twenty-four years, a Queen's flower and kit- 

 chen-garden and pleasure-grounds have been transformed 

 into an imperial botanical establishment of unrivaled interest 

 and value. Account should be taken of the spirit in which 

 he worked, of the researches and explorations he promoted, 

 of the aid and encouragement he extended to his fellow- 

 laborers, especially to young and rising botanists, and of the 

 means and appliances he gathered for their use no less than 

 for his own. 



The single-mindedness with which he gave himself to his 

 scientific work, and the conscientiousness with which he lived 

 for science while he lived by it, were above all praise. Emi- 

 nently fitted to shine in society, remarkably good-looking and 

 of the most pleasing address, frank, cordial, and withal of 

 a very genial disposition, he never dissipated his time and 

 energies in the round of fashionable life, but ever avoided the 

 social prominence and w r orldly distinctions which some sedu- 

 lously seek. So that, however it may or ought to be regarded 

 in a country where court honors and government rewards have 

 a factitious importance, we count it a high compliment to his 

 sense and modesty that no such distinctions were ever con- 

 ferred upon him in recognition of all that he accomplished 

 at Kew. 



Nor was there in him, while standing in a position like that 

 occupied by Banks and Smith in his early days, the least 

 manifestation of a tendency to overshadow the science w r ith 

 his own importance, or of indifference to its general advance- 

 ment. Far from monopolizing even the choicest botanical 

 materials which large expenditure of time and toil and money 



