SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER -5 



in administrative work that his sohd results remained in the com- 

 parative obscurity of four or five separate essays, mostly in costly 

 systematic treatises, instead of being in the form of such a book 

 as De Candolle's Geograjohie Botaniqtce. We are at a loss to 

 know why, considering how often fugitive publications of far less 

 value are collected, these admirable essays have never been repub- 

 lished in volume form. Darwin several times urged that they 

 should be so collected. 



Without attempting anything like a complete bibliography 

 of his writings, such as has already been commenced by Mr. 

 Hemsley in the Gardeners' Chronicle/' we must now summarize 

 the facts of Hooker's life. 



In the Annals of Botany for December, 1902, Hooker published 

 an excellent Sketch of the Life and Labours of his father, in which 

 he records that the Hooker family, to which the "judicious" 

 Church historian belonged, was for many generations in Devonshire ; 

 and that his grandfather, another Joseph Hooker, was the first to 

 come to East Anglia, settling in business at Norwich, where Sir 

 William was born. The grandfather, a self-educated man, was a 

 fair German scholar and had a collection of succulent plants, 

 whilst his wife came of an artistic stock. It is noteworthy also 

 that Sir William and his brother, a second Joseph, were both 

 keen entomologists, and that the former was devoted also to 

 ornithology, though he also collected the lichens, freshwater algae 

 and bryophytes of Norfolk before the discovery of Buxbaumia 

 aphylla, then new to Britain, led to his introduction to Dawson 

 Turner, an event that determined the whole course of his life. 

 William Hooker became exclusively a botanist and mainly a 

 cryptogamist. He drew 231 plates for Turner's Historia Fuconcm; 

 was introduced to Banks and Brown; joined the Linnean Society; 

 had the genus Hookeria dedicated to him by Sir James Edward 

 Smith in 1808 ; and made a short but adventurous journey 

 to Iceland in 1809, of which the Journal was privately printed 

 in 1811 and published in 1813. Hoping to go out to Ceylon, 

 he copied more than two thousand of the native drawings 

 of Indian plants, made for Roxburgh, which were then at the 

 India House, these copies forming ten duodecimo volumes, now 

 at Kew. He also thought of visiting Java ; but political and 

 climatic considerations prevented him from having those oppor- 

 tunities for distant travel which his son was destined to enjoy. 

 The Yarmouth bank having a lien on a brewery at Halesworth, 

 in Suffolk, Dawson Turner entered into a partnership with Mr. 

 Paget, the father of the late Sir James Paget, and Wilham 

 Hooker, to carry it on — the latter acting as manager, undoubtedly 

 as a square man in a round hole. In 1814 and 1815 Hooker was 

 in France with the Turners, meeting Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, 

 Lamarck, Mirbel, A. P. De Candolle and Humboldt, and in the 

 June of the latter year he married Maria, one of Dawson Turner's 

 accomphshed daughters. 



Vol. ii. (1911), pp. 428-9. 



