Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 



in 



degree before volunteering to accompany Sir James Eoss in the Antarctic 

 Expedition, which had just been determined on by the Admiralty ; and so 

 pressed for time was I, that I used to sleep with the sheets of the ' Journal ' 

 under my pillow, that I might read them between waking and rising. They 

 impressed me profoundly, I might say despairingly, with the variety of 

 acquirements, mental and physical, required in a naturalist who should 

 follow in Darwin's footsteps, while they stimulated me to enthusiasm in the 

 desire to travel and observe." It is important to add that he " received a 

 copy of the ' Journal ' complete — a gift from Mr. Lyell — a few days before 

 leaving England." 



The Erebus and Terror, 11 commissioned by Captain Sir James Clark 

 Eoss, sailed from Chatham on the 29th of September, 1839." Besides 

 magnetic survey, the collection of " various objects of Natural History " was 

 " enjoined to the officers." Hooker was on board the Erebus with Eoss, 

 and it was his good fortune to have a captain whose own tastes were in 

 sympathy with the work ; he, indeed, " himself gathered many of the plants " 

 which Hooker subsequently described, and his "private cabin and library 

 were unreservedly placed at his (Hooker's) disposal." The expedition finally 

 gained " the Cape of Good Hope on the 4th of April, 1843, within two days 

 of three years after they had first quitted that port for -the high southern 

 latitudes." 



On his return, Hooker lost no time in commencing the publication of the 

 botanical results of the expedition. The whole work extended to six quarto 

 volumes, with 2214 pages and 528 plates. The Treasury made a grant-in-aid 

 of £1000 to be expended on the plates ; Hooker, for his part, received no 

 remuneration, and abandoned " all share in the proceeds of the undertaking 

 to the publisher, who has thus been able to bring out the series at a much 

 more moderate price than any similar work." The first of the three sections 

 of the whole was devoted to the ' Flora Antarctica ' in two volumes (1844-7). 

 To it is prefixed a very matter-of-fact " Summary of the Voyage," which, 

 though it was perilous enough, with a seaman's modesty, lays little stress on 

 the fact. The words, " Both ships had a narrow escape of running foul of 

 an iceberg, over which the sea was breaking, eighty feet high," briefly describe 

 an incident which might have summarily closed Hooker's career. To con- 

 summate seamanship must be credited their extrication, and the fact that 

 during the four years of the expedition only two men were lost, one by being 

 washed overboard. There were three breaks in the voyage : one from 

 August 16 to November 12, 1840, in Tasmania; the second, in New Zealand, 

 from August 18 to November 15, 1841 ; and the third, in the Falkland 

 Islands, from April 6 (" not having seen land for 138 days ") to September 6, 

 1842. These afforded Hooker ample opportunities for making collections, 

 which he afterwards worked out. 



When Hooker had completed his ' Flora Antarctica,' he had only reached 

 the age of 30 ; but it placed him at once in the first rank of systematic 

 botanists. He not merely worked out his own material, but dealt with all 



