SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER 43 



forms previously passed over, considerably improved it. His 

 association with the Index Ketvensis, under the bequest of his 

 friend Darwin, although it has been repeatedly misrepresented 

 and exaggerated in the public Press, was no mere sinecure. The 

 work was emphatically Dr. Jackson's ; but Hooker read the 

 proofs and added geographical references. An even more remark- 

 able undertaking was the completion of Trimen's Handbook 

 of the Flora of Ceylon — a botanist dying at the age of fifty-two, 

 leaving only three-fifths of his work completed, his task is taken 

 over by another botanist of eighty and satisfactorily concluded 

 by him at eighty-three ! Hooker had not only to edit Trimen's 

 materials but also entirely prepared the account of the Graminece 

 in the fifth and final volume issued in 1900. 



Interested in Banks " as the pioneer of those naturalist 

 voyagers of later years, of whom Darwin is the great example," 

 Hooker, in 1893-6, had a transcript made of the copy of Banks's 

 journal during his voyage with Cook which is in the Botanical 

 Department of the British Museum. This he edited and published 

 in the latter year. 



No attempt has been made here to exhaust the list of Hooker's 

 papers, and, perhaps, some bibliographer blessed with leisure will 

 tell us how many genera and species he described in the course 

 of his long botanical career, from Polytrichum semilamellatum in 

 1840 to Impatiens notoptera in 1911. The genus to w^hich the 

 last-named species belongs was the occupation of the last months 

 of his life, and, in the interesting detailed bibliographical account 

 which he has recently contributed to the Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 Mr. Hemsley states that no fewer than one hundred and fifty 

 species bear the affix " Hook. /." 



As the object of the present sketch has been mainly a briefly 

 critical appreciation of his botanical work, it is needless to attempt 

 to enumerate the many honours by w^hich academies and univer- 

 sities honoured themselves in honouring Hooker ; the honorary 

 Doctorates of Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, and elsewhere; the 

 Copley and Darwin Medals of the Koyal Society ; the special medal 

 struck by the Linnean Society in 1897 and the Darwin- Wallace 

 Medal of 1908 ; and, finally, the Order of Merit in his ninetieth 

 year. 



The heat of last summer told on the long vigorous constitu- 

 tion, and Hooker died, at Sunningdale, after a very brief illness, 

 on December 10th. He was buried in the churchyard at Kew, 

 near his father and grandfather, in the presence of a large gather- 

 ing of British men of science. 



Hooker was twice married, first to Frances Harriet, daughter 

 of Professor J. S. Henslow, and secondly to Hyacinthe, daughter 

 of the Kev. W. Symonds of Pendock and widow of Sir Wilham 

 Jaidine. 



It may be well to place on record that in addition to the fine 

 portrait by Sir Hubert Herkomer at the Linnean Society, Hooker 

 also appears among the Brethren of the Charterhouse in the well- 

 known picture by the same artist, now at the Tate Gallery. 



