238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



director of Kew Gardens was William Aiton, who had charge of it 

 for thirty years, and died in 1793. He was succeeded by his son 

 Townsend Aiton, who held the position for forty-eight years, when he 

 resigned in 1841. Up to this time the establishment had been much 

 restricted, but it was now given up by the royal family to the charge 

 of the government, in the interests of science, and for the advantage 

 of the people. 



Sir William Jackson Hooker, Professor of Botany in the University 

 of Glasgow, became director in 1841, and he then commenced that 

 wonderful series of transformations which in the course of his twenty- 

 four years' directory made Kew Gardens the first establishment of its 

 kind in the world ; while its character has not only been worthily sus- 

 tained, but very appreciably expanded, advanced, and elevated, by 

 his son and successor, the subject of the present sketch. 



Dr. Joseph Dalton Hooker was born June 30, 181 7. He was an 

 only son, and his mother was a woman of ability, who shared in the 

 scientific and artistic reputation of her husband. Educated under the 

 scrutiny of his parents, the subject of this memoir was prepared from 

 the outset for his career as a botanist and a scientific observer. Des- 

 tined at first for the medical profession, young Hooker took his medical 

 degree at an early age, but, under the influence of his hereditary 

 preference for botany, the profession was given up, and he took to 

 science. His medical education was, however, of great value to him 

 in his subsequent experience both as botanist and traveler. 



His first adventure in any public capacity as a botanical inquirer 

 was one that eminently befitted him in his then twofold character of a 

 practitioner of the healing art and as a purely scientific investigator. 

 This was in 1839, when, having but just entered upon his twenty- 

 second year, he took part as assistant-surgeon and naturalist on board 

 the Erebus in the expedition sent out, under the command of Sir 

 James Ross, to the Antarctic Ocean. Ostensibly Dr. Hooker's posi- 

 tion throughout that memorable voyage was that of a medical officer 

 on one of her majesty's ships-of-war : in reality his especial object 

 all the while was to study the botany of the various regions touched 

 at in those remote portions of the antipodes in the course of the expe- 

 dition. 



It is well to remember that Hooker received, during this four years' 

 voyage, only the moderate pay accruing to him as a medical officer, his 

 outfit being provided by his father, as well as his books and his instru- 

 ments. Throughout the whole of that period, moreover, Sir William 

 defrayed the expenses constantly incurred by his son when on shore, 

 both in traveling and in collecting, notwithstanding the whole of the 

 fruits of his labor, thus accumulated at considerable cost, were sought 

 out for no private end, but for the advantage of a national establish- 

 ment. Even after his return homeward, Dr. Hooker magnanimously 

 determined to forego all claim to promotion in the royal navy, devot- 



