SKETCH OF DOCTOR J. D. HOOKER. 239 



ing four years more to the classification of the treasures he had brought 

 back with him at the close of the expedition. The result of these 

 eight years of toil was visible, in the end, in his splendid publication 

 of the " Flora Antarctica." The comparisons therein drawn of the 

 new plants brought home by Dr. Hooker in great abundance, with the 

 species already familiar to botanists in other parts of the world, helped 

 apparently to realize to naturalists the laws, hitherto but dimly con- 

 jectured, regulating the distributing of plants over the surface of the 

 globe. 



Prior to entering upon the second of his many memorable expedi- 

 tions of research as a botanical collector, Dr. Hooker held the position 

 of botanist to the geological survey of Great Britain. On his return 

 homeward, Dr. Hooker gave to the world, in 1851, as the literary 

 fruits of his long journeyinge, the two important volumes of his " Hima- 

 layan Journals." The three subsequent years were employed by 

 him in arranging his Indian collection. Immediately upon his coming 

 back, he had, moreover, resumed his labors as an assistant to his father 

 at Kew Gardens. Besides this, for nine years together, beginning 

 with 1851 and ending with 1860, Dr. Hooker was employed by the 

 Lords of the Admiralty in editing a series of publications in which 

 were recounted, in chronological sequence, the various botanical dis- 

 coveries of a number of notable voyagers, from Captain James Cook 

 down to Dr. Joseph Hooker himself. At intervals during the years 

 thus occupied, he entered upon several other important journeys to 

 different parts of the European Continent, visiting, besides these, at 

 other periods, the north of Africa and the far West of the great Con- 

 tinent of America. 



Dr. Hooker, in 1855, received the appointment of assistant-di- 

 rector of the Botanical Gardens, with a salary of £400, without any 

 residence. Sir William Hooker was at that time seventy years of age, 

 and was, therefore, fully entitled to have the assistance of his son 

 thus secured to him by the government. Three years after, he had his 

 salary increased to £500 a year, with use of a residence. His father 

 died in 1865, aged eighty-one. 



As an example of industry, during the directorship of the Hookers 

 more than 130 costly volumes, treating upon all branches of botany, 

 have been issued to the world from the Kew establishment. Living 

 plants to the number of between 8,000 and 9,000 annually have, within 

 the same period, from that grand central point of distribution, been 

 sent to various parts of the globe — new and often most precious addi- 

 tions to the treasures of Kew being constantly sought out and brought 

 homeward through the agencies employed by the ever-vigilant direct- 

 ors. The correspondence involved in this constant interchange of 

 communications between them and the botanists of both hemispheres 

 has been such that 40,000 letters, it has been calculated, have, in the 

 course of the comparatively brief interval we are referring to, been 



