SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER 41 



Some 17,000 species are described in its pages, which number 

 5668 ; but, from the first. Hooker was assisted in the description 

 of most of the Natural Orders by a number of other botanists, so 

 that most of his ow^n work was editorial. Even this was more than 

 he could accomplish for the later volumes, the supervision of 

 which fell to Mr. C. B. Clarke, who was already a voluminous 

 contributor. On the completion of this great undertaking. Hooker, 

 who had been made a Knight Commander of the Star of India in 

 his sixtieth year, was made a Grand Commander of the Order. 

 Perhaps his last really remarkable work, except in so far as all 

 the work of a man over fourscore years of age is remarkable, was 

 the little Sketch of the Flora of British India that he prepared in 

 1904 for the new edition of the Imperial Gazetteer of India. It 

 only occupies fifty-five octavo pages, but it comprises an admirable 

 taxonomic and statistical aperc2C of the flora of the vast area 

 involved, with a most suggestive revision of the views as to its 

 origin and distribution which its author had put forward in 1855. 

 The introductory portion of this Sketch was reprinted in the 

 Journal of Botany for 1904, and was accompanied by a very 

 pleasing photographic portrait of its author. 



Another laborious undertaking was brought to a conclusion in 

 1873 by the publication of Mrs. Hooker's translation of Le Maout 

 and Decaisne's General System of Botany under Hooker's editor- 

 ship. The volume is, perhaps, most often consulted for its 

 beautiful analytical drawings ; but the editor added numerous 

 notes on the affinities of the Orders, and gave details of the re- 

 distribution of the genera into tribes in advance of the publication 

 of the Genera Plantarum, , concluding with a chapter on the 

 principles of classification, and a synopsis of the entire vegetable 

 kingdom in Classes, Cohorts, and Orders. In this, the cohorts 

 are of far greater value, as the direct result of the joint labours of 

 Bentham and the writer, than is the division into four classes 

 by which Acrogens and Thallogens are placed in the same grade 

 as Dicotyledones and Monocotyledones. It is not possible here 

 to discuss that further disputable systematic conclusion by the 

 authors of the Genera — the creation of the series Discijiorce. 

 Hooker's contributions to his wife's translation have given it a 

 lasting importance in the history of systematic botany. 



If, as we have already suggested, the Primer, which he contri- 

 buted to Macmillan's Series in 1876, was in some respects rather 

 an echo of the teaching of a passing period than a step in advance 

 in education, the fault was, perhaps, in part that of the scheme. 

 The space was very restricted : the compilation of a primer or 

 first book is by no means an easy task; and Hooker had no expe- 

 rience as a teacher of children. One of the defects of such works 

 in the " seventies " was their exclusive attention to external 

 anatomy. It might have been hoped that the establishment of 

 the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew, which was opened in the year in 

 which the Primer was published, would do much to foster those 

 physiological studies in which the countrymen of Stephen Hales 

 had hitherto been remiss ; but it is, perhaps, the absence of ade- 



