June 6, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



527 



suppose that we even adopted the size, quality of 

 paper, brevity of description, etc., which charac- 

 terized De Oandolle's prodromus, and we should, 

 even under these conditions, fill twelve such vol- 

 umes, at least . . . about eighteen years' fadr work 

 would be needed. 



He then asks, how is such an undertaking 

 to be supported ? — " neither our government 

 nor the East India Company will give a siun 

 in any way proportional to the work." But 

 the idea was never given up, and in 1897, 

 after an interval of about fifty years, Hookar 

 saw the publication of the last volume of " The 

 Flora of British India." This he regarded as 

 only a beginning — a preliminary assembling 

 of scattered materials — and during the last 

 years of his life he incessantly urged Indian 

 botanists to study the living plants, and revise 

 every part of the " Flora.' His own work on 

 the Balsaminacese, carried on after he was 

 ninety years old, represented the beginning of 

 such a revision. 



To the last. Hooker retained his special 

 interest in the people of India as well as its 

 '■ Flora." Thus, in the year of the coronation 

 of King Edward VH.: 



As I was at the Waterloo Station yesterday, four 

 Indian regiments filed past me — they sent the 

 blood flying to my finger tips, such grand fellows, 

 and such gentlemen, such proud yet pleasant faces, 

 such an air oi dignity and self-respect. 



In the Himalayas, he did some geological 

 work which later proved of more value than 

 he had anticipated. But when he studied 

 fossil plants, he did not consider that he was 

 leaving his special botanical field. "I am no 

 geologist: my work is fossil botany; as legit- 

 imately a branch of Botany as is muscology; 

 fossil plants, though imperfect, are stiU pure 

 plants ; and. though dead as species, they form 

 and show links between existing forms, upon 

 which they throw a man-ellous light." Later 

 on, he came to be very skeptical about the 

 value of much of the work of the paleobotan- 

 ists, and in 1887 expressed himself thus : 



It is an ugly fact that, tempting as is the study 

 of fossil botany, every competent botanist with a 

 large knowledge of existing floras, and that has 

 tried his hand on it, has given it up, notably 



Brown, Brongniart and Lindley, or these have sub- 

 sequently confined themselves to specimens exhibit- 

 ing stru<rture, as fossil wood, etc. — whilst Oliver, 

 Bentham, etc., have only shaken their heads when 

 asked to identify a fossil plant. If you are ever 

 at the Herbarium and will look at the multitudes 

 of figures of leaves in Gardner, Lesquereux and 

 other works, the vagueness of the identifications 

 vrill strike you at once. There is a standing joke 

 at the Herbarium [Kew], if you have a plant the 

 affinities of which puzzle you, "fossilize it and 

 send it to a paleontologist and he will give you the 

 genus and species at once." 



As materials accumulated at Kew, and 

 Hooker foimd before him long series of speci- 

 mens from numerous localities, he recognized 

 many intermediates between supjwsedly dis- 

 tinct species. Thus he was led to make great 

 allowances for variation, becoming what is 

 sometimes called a " lumper." Darwin called 

 his attention to the probability tliat many of 

 the observed intermediates might actually be 

 hybrids, and in a characteristic letter he 

 replied : 



The dismal fact that you quote of hybrid transi- 

 tions between Verbascum thapsus and nigrum (or 

 whichever two it was) and its bearing on my prac- 

 tise of lumping species through intermediate 

 specimens, is a very horrible one; and would open 

 my eyes to my own blindness if nothing else could. 

 I have long been prepared for sucb a case, though 

 I once wrote much against its probability. I feel 

 tolerably sure I must have encountered many such, 

 but have not had the tact to discern them, when 

 under my nose, and hence I feel as if all my vast 

 experience in the field has been thrown away. 



It seems almost unbelievable to-day, that 

 after Hooker's splendid work on the Antarctic 

 floras and Indian explorations, he should have 

 been so hard put to find a means of living by 

 botany, that he was advised to abandon the 

 subject. He was told that there was a vacancy 

 in the mineralogical department at the British 

 Museiun, and. 



To be sure I know nothing of crystallography, 

 mineralogy, chemistry, etc., but the trustees are 

 above such prejudice against a man who could 

 wear a white neckcloth with ease, and take his fair 

 share of their abuses with equanimity, which would 

 be an all-powerful teetimonial. I hate the idea 



