38 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



and were only too apt to interrupt any other occupation at other 

 times. A dangerous attack of rheumatic fever, incurred while 

 nursing his father in his last illness, resulted in the apparently 

 complete suspension of work during 1865 ; but the acquisition 

 of Lindley's Orchid Herbarium at this time, and the purchase 

 by the Government, in 1867, of Sir WilHam Hooker's mag- 

 nificent collections of plants, books, and manuscripts, makes 

 this a fitting place in our narrative to allude to the great assistance 

 that both Sir William and Sir Joseph Hooker derived from their 

 subordinates, and from voluntary assistants. Perhaps, like the 

 Tudor sovereigns, they evinced no small part of their genius in 

 the choice of these helpers. The Gardens at Kew owed much to 

 the botanical enthusiasm of curators like the elder John Smith, 

 who preserved them from destruction in 1840, and, at a later 

 period, George Nicholson. Professor J. S. Henslow had been 

 almost a joint founder of the Museum of Economic Botany with 

 Sir William Hooker ; w-hilst by engaging such assistants as J. E. 

 Planchon, Dr. Oliver, and Mr. J. G. Baker, the founder of the 

 Hookerian Herbarium made it fit to become, as national property, 

 a suitable centre for the organized scientific botanical work of the 

 Empire. Not only did Dr. Oliver undertake the editing of the 

 Flora of Tropical Africa, but under his headship the responsibility 

 for the Herbarium was largely taken from the shoulders of the 

 Director ; v/hilst Mr. Baker's unrivalled critical acumen not only 

 ably completed Sir WilUam Hooker's pteridological undertakings, 

 but also made him a court of appeal on such groups of British 

 plants as Roses, Brambles, and Mints, and gave to Kew some of 

 the importance in British botany which it already possessed with 

 reference to the plants of the rest of the world. The presence 

 of such men and of such unofficial workers as Bentham and 

 Reichenbach helped to make Kew Herbarium the Mecca of foreign 

 botanists. 



On his father's death Hooker took over the editorship of the 

 Botanical Magazine, which he carried on from the 91st to the 

 130th volume, with the assistance of Mr. Hemsley in the last two 

 volumes, those for 1903 and 1904. This is, as botanists are aware, 

 not a magazine in the ordinary sense of the term, but merely a 

 series of plates of new or interesting plants with brief descriptive 

 letterpress. Its monthly preparation would not, therefore, by 

 itself, prove a very onerous undertaking for its editor, helped as 

 he was by a competent Herbarium staff. An interesting history 

 of the magazine by Mr. Hemsley, revised from that in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle for 1887, was issued in a General Index 

 volume in 1906. 



It w^as, perhaps, more at the annual gatherings of the British 

 Association than elsewhere that Hooker succeeded in reaching 

 the general public. His address on Insular Floras at the 

 Nottingham meeting in 1866, published in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle in the following year ; his Presidential Address, on the 

 Origin of Species, at Norwich in 1868 ; the address on Carnivorous 

 Plants, at the otherwise sensational meeting at Belfast in 1874 ; 



