THE 



JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



BEITISH AND FOEEIGN. 



SIE JOSEPH DALTON HOOKEE. 

 (1817-1911.) 



By G. S. Boulger, F.L.S. 



It was certainly not merely the effluxion of time that had given 

 Sir Joseph Hooker the position of the greatest botanist in Britain, 

 if not in the whole world, at the time of his death. True, his 

 ninety-four-and-a-half years had made him the doyen, perhaps, of 

 every scientific society to which he belonged and of the botanists 

 of the world ; but men of science have before now attained as 

 great an age. Of these years, however, an exceptionally large pro- 

 portion — roughly speaking, seventy — had been years of scientific 

 output ; and that output had been, from first to last, wide in 

 range and of an importance which must assuredly have a lasting 

 effect upon botany. Time and space permit now merely the 

 outline of an appreciation of this life-work. 



Sir Joseph's name appears on many plates, especially on those 

 of mosses, hepatics, lichens, and algae, in his Flora Antarctica ; 

 and such histological drawing, as in those of Myzodendron, is of a 

 high order, though the landscapes in the Himalayan Journals are 

 certainly not equal, from an artistic standpoint, to such work as 

 that of Edward Forbes. Few of us, however, ever think of Sir 

 Joseph Hooker, as we do of his father, as a botanical artist. 



For ten years Assistant Director and for twenty years Director 

 of Kew, he necessarily devoted time and energy to administration 

 which botanists may well grudge. Here again what he accom- 

 plished was, perhaps, not as remarkable an achievement as was 

 Sir WilHam's. In 1840 Sir William, already fifty-five years of 

 age, came to Kew with everything to be created ah initio. He 

 brought with him an extensive nucleus for a library and herbarium ; 

 but, practically, gardens, arboretum, houses, museum, and staff 

 had yet to be established. The revival of the practice of sending 

 out collectors, as Banks had done, and the establishment of 

 systematic correspondence with foreign and colonial gardens and 

 botanists, laid the foundation of that regular centralized organ- 

 ization which now obtains. Sir Joseph, who became Assistant 

 Director at thirty-eight and Director at forty-eight, inherited the 

 results of his father's work, though there can be no question as 

 to the ability evinced in its further development. 



Journal of Botany. — Vol 50. [Jan. 1912.] b 



