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SIE JOSEPH D ALTON HOOKER* 1817—1911. 



Joseph Dalton Hooker, the younger son of Sir William Jackson Hooker, 

 Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, afterwards Director 

 of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and his wife Maria, eldest daughter 

 of Dawson Turner, F.R.S., banker, of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, was born at 

 Halesworth, Suffolk, June 30, 1817. 



Sir William Hooker {d. 1865) was himself the younger son of Joseph 

 Hooker, a native of Exeter, where he had been in the employ of Baring 

 Brothers, woolstaplers, with whose family he was distantly connected, and 

 had afterwards gone into business at Norwich. There he married Lydia, 

 daughter of James Vincent, worsted manufacturer, grandfather of George 

 Vincent, the artist. Joseph Hooker was seventh in descent from John 

 Hooker, alias Vowell, editor of ' Holinshed's Chronicles,' and uncle of Richard 

 Hooker, the theologian. 



At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries the 

 Eastern Counties possessed a rather remarkable amount of local intellectual 

 activity. It developed a notable school of artists, and indirectly fostered the 

 ■career of many men who attained distinction in various ways. Of this 

 activity Dawson Turner was in some sense a moving spirit. He had himself 

 acquired scientific fame by his botanical work, and he had been the judicious 

 and fortunate collector of a gallery of pictures which have been dispersed, but 

 some of which have found a permanent home in the National Gallery and the 

 Wallace Collection. The facts of heredity are always worth noting, and the 

 descendants of Dawson Turner afford abundant instances. Joseph Hooker 

 was a collector and cultivator of " Succulent Plants." Sir Joseph Hooker 

 thought that his father " presumably derived his love of plants from his 

 father's side, and his artistic powers from his mother's." He, himself, 

 conspicuously inherited both. 



In William Hooker's case, Sir Joseph thought that it was a visit to Dawson 

 Turner " which led to the colouring of his future life." He succeeded 

 through the death of a cousin, William Jackson, to a property in Kent, which, 

 had it remained in the family, would have been the source of considerable 

 wealth. Visiting London, he made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks 

 who introduced him into its scientific society. At his suggestion, he visited 

 Iceland, and narrowly escaped death by the burning of the ship on which he 

 was returning. Other prospects of travel in the tropics were frustrated. 



* A fairly complete record of the life of Sir Joseph Hooker could be compiled from 

 the five admirable volumes devoted to the life and correspondence of his father by 

 Dr. Francis Darwin. They have been freely drawn upon. The following abbreviations 

 are used : L.L., ' Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,' 3 vols., 1887 ; M.L., ' More Letters 

 of Charles Darwin,' 2 vols., 1903 ; H.L.L., ' Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley,' 

 2 vols., 1900, which is also quoted. 



VOL. LXXXV. — B. b 



