PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



Hooker's Antarctic voyage led him to produce six splendid 

 and famously illustrated (by Fitch) quarto volumes, two 

 each entitled Flora Antarctica, Flora Novce Zealandice 

 and Flora Tasmanice. The last work is most familiar to 

 Australians, partly because of the intimate relations of the 

 flora of Tasmania and of the mainland, and partly because 

 it contains the classical essay entitled "On the Flora of 

 Australia." 



He had maDy rambles in Tasmania with Ronald Gunn, 

 and his active botanical correspondence with that gentle- 

 man and W. H. Archer, was only terminated by their 

 deaths. Indeed he took an especial interest in the flora of 

 that beautiful island. 



He wrote less on Australian plants, partly because his 

 opportunities for travel on the mainland were so few, (he 

 visited Sydney and the Blue Mountains), and partly because 

 he was not so fortunate, as in Tasmania, in obtaining 

 coadjutors to correspond with him, and send him material, 

 after his return to Europe. The loss was ours, for it would 

 have been to the advantage of Australian botany to have 

 had the vigorous and analytical mind of a Hooker focussed 

 on more of our botanical problems. 



It must not, however, be for a moment supposed that he 

 was not greatly interested in Australian botany. For 

 example, both his father and himself took great interest in 

 the collections made by Drummond in Western Australia, 

 while when a young South Australian and subsequently 

 Victorian botanist, in the person of Mueller, showed him- 

 self making competent investigations of the Australian 

 flora, he received continuous and substantial encouragement 

 from the great man whose loss we now mourn. 



He took the warmest interest in the Flora Australiensis 

 prepared by his friend Mr. Bentham, while his active 

 sympathy towards Australia, as the head of the great 



