BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 425 
successfully taught to speak. Not only are children who are simply 
deaf, sometimes sent to idiot-schools ; but idiotic children who hear 
perfectly are often sent to institutions for the deaf and dumb, when 
it becomes the painful duty of the principal to undeceive the parents 
as to the real condition of their child. The difficulty in distinguishing 
these two classes of defective persons arises from the absence of 
articulate speech. Children who are deaf from infancy, and idiots, do 
not naturally speak, but from very different causes. In the one case, 
the cause is lack of hearing; in the other, lack of intelligence. The 
judgment of unskilled persons regarding the intelligence of deaf- 
mutes should evidently be received with caution. It is only to be 
hoped that the number of idiotic deafmutes returned in the census 
has been over-estimated. Before accepting the results as thoroughly 
reliable, it would be well to know whether or not the persons who 
made the returns were competent to judge in the matter. 
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL. 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 
II].—JoszrpH Datton Hooker. 
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, whose name is more intimately 
associated with New Zealand botany than that of any other writer 
on the subject, was born at Halesworth, in Suffolk, on 30th June, 
1817. In 1820, his father, the eminent William Jackson Hooker, was 
appointed Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, 
and it was in that city that the subject of our memoir was educated, 
taking his degree of M.D. in 1839. Under the careful tuition of 
his father he had already acquired an excellent knowledge of botany, 
and having entered the medical staff of the Royal Navy, he was 
appointed in the same year Assistant-Surgeon on board H.M.S. 
* Erebus,” then under commission for a voyage of discovery in 
Antarctic regions. H.M.S. “Terror” was sent along with the 
“Erebus,” and the expedition was placed under the command of 
Captain, afterwards Sir James Ross. In joining the expedition as 
botanist, Hooker’s real object was to extend his own knowledge of 
and to investigate the botany of the regions explored. The work of 
antarctic exploration commenced in the spring of 1840, and during 
the ensuing three years Hooker was enabled to carry on his 
researches, not only in New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Islands 
lying south of our colony, but also in many‘outlying spots such as 
Kerguelen Island, Fuegia, and the Falkland Islands. In considering 
the prominent position which he occupies as an authority on New 
Zealand botany, it is well to remember that the expedition only 
visited a small portion of these islands. Towards the end of 1840 
some time was spent at Lord Auckland’s and Campbell Islands, 
where Hooker and his coadjutor Dr. Lyall, collected some 370 species 
of plants; while in the beginning of 1841 the vessels visited the Bay 
