6 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



There were four children of this marriage, WilHam Dawson 

 Hooker, the ill-fated elder son, being born in 1816, almost 

 certainly at Halesworth, and not, as I have stated in the Dic- 

 tionary of National Biograjjhy, at Glasgow, and Joseph Dalton 

 on June 30th, 1817. The name Joseph perpetuated that of his 

 uncle — who had died in 1815 and whose collection of insects was 

 purchased for the British Museum — and of his grandfather, who 

 survived for many years, dying ultimately at Kew. The name 

 Dalton was that of his godfather, the Eev. James Dalton, Eector 

 of Croft, in Yorkshire, a botanist to whom the genus Daltonia 

 Hook. & Taylor is dedicated. 



When Joseph Hooker was three years old, his father, with a 

 little family dependent on him and having to face a considerable 

 loss of money, from bad investments apparently, the brewery and 

 the cost of his British JungermannicB, accepted the Eegius Pro- 

 fessorship of Botany at Glasgow, in which post, during the 

 following twenty years (1820-1840) he distinguished himself as a 

 teacher, organized an excellent garden, established a world-wide 

 correspondence, and formed a considerable private library and a 

 very extensive herbarium. 



Educated at the High School and at the University of Glas- 

 gow, much of Joseph Hooker's youth was spent in his father's 

 herbarium. We see the result of this early training in the care 

 taken by the younger botanist in the collection of Cryptogamia, in 

 his excellent drawings, chiefly of these plants, and in the interest 

 in geographical botany which his father had evinced in an admirable 

 summary in Laurie's edition of Malte-Brun's Geogra2Jhy. 



In the sketch of his father's life, from which we have already 

 quoted, we have Sir Joseph Hooker's testimony to his father's 

 " solicitude, with which he fostered my own aspirations to become 

 a traveller and a botanist ; the interest he took in my ambitious 

 projects ; the energy with which he aided me in overcoming every 

 obstacle . . . and prevailed on the higher powers to grant me 

 facilities and funds ; and last but not least, the liberality with 

 which he helped me whenever other resources were exhausted. 

 In this connexion I refer especially to four crises in my scientific 

 career: my appointment to accompany Sir James Eoss in the 

 Antarctic Expedition in 1839 (for which he supplied all my 

 scientific outfit) ; my (unsuccessful) candidature for the Pro- 

 fessorship of Botany in Edinburgh University in 1845 ; my 

 mission to India in 1847 ; and my appointment as Assistant 

 Director of Kew in 1855." 



At the beginning of 1839 the British Government decided 

 to dispatch an expedition under Captain Sir James Clark Eoss 

 for magnetic and geographical research in Antarctic latitudes. 

 Hooker took his degree as M.D. at Glasgow in time to enter the 

 navy as assistant surgeon and botanist to the expedition, and the 

 two exploring ships • Erebus ' and ' Terror ' sailed from Chatham 

 on September 29th, 1839. Hooker was attached to the 'Erebus,' 

 Dr. David Lyall to the ' Terror.' Whilst in the library of the 

 Herbarium at Kew there are various volumes of manuscript 



