Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 



xvii 



present — phenomena which under the hypothesis of intermediate continents 

 are harren facts " (p. 33). Darwin thought the arguments for occasional 

 transport were given with perfect fairness and would receive a fair show of 

 attention as coming from a professed botanist (L.L., vol. 3, p. 48). 



In the essay on the flora of Australia, Hooker pointed out that " there 

 is a strict analogy . . . between the floras of islands and those of lofty 

 mountain ranges " (p. xv). He then thought that the " species and genera 

 common to . . . distant localities " could only be explained by " conditions 

 which no longer exist." The subject long continued to interest him. In 

 papers in the Mourn. Linn. Soc.' he discussed (1862) the plants of 

 Clarence Park, 10,000 feet, and of the Cameroons (1864), 13,000 feet. In 

 the appendix to ' Morocco and the Great Atlas ' (1874) he summarised the 

 results. This was the first study of the vegetation of any African mountains 

 outside Abyssinia. He ascertained the remarkable fact of " the preponder- 

 ance of Abyssinian genera and species " ; this was " proved by almost all of 

 the genera and half the species being natives of Abyssinia," 2000 miles 

 distant. Darwin thought this a " wonderful case," and confirmation of his 

 belief "that the whole world was cooler during the Glacial Period" 

 (M.L., vol. 1, p. 477). In 1874 he similarly discussed the first collection 

 made on Kilimanjaro. This was found to be mainly South African in 

 affinity, but with species common to the Cameroons on the one hand and 

 Abyssinia on the other. Thus was again established a connection at high 

 levels across the tropics, but in the reverse direction to that of the 

 Scandinavian, of the great Southern and Xorthern temperate floras. It is 

 noteworthy that in 1847 Hooker had been sceptical as to the existence 

 of mountains in Central Africa at all ('Ant. Fl.,' p. 210). It was to 

 Eobert Brown that the first detection of a South African element in Abyssinia 

 was due {he. tit.). 



Hooker had now played his part, and felt that he had played it, in the 

 great campaign. He wrote to Darwin in October, 1859, to say that he now 

 intended " sticking to humdrum science." The intention was deliberate, 

 though Darwin ridiculed it as impossible. Hooker had been appointed 

 Assistant Director at Kew as a lieutenant to his father, to whom he was 

 deeply attached. He would certainly stand at his right hand during his 

 lifetime, and there was probability amounting to certainty that he would be 

 called upon to succeed him. His lot was therefore cast in with Kew, and 

 this he saw clearly involved scientific duties and responsibilities which Darwin 

 imperfectly apprehended. Kew had been organised both as the national 

 headquarters of botanical investigation and as a consultative department of 

 the Government in colonial enterprise. If the two functions are correlative, 

 the latter may sometimes handicap severely the former. 



The central feature of the Kew organisation is the vast herbarium, of 

 which the foundations were the unsurpassed collections accumulated by 

 Sir William Hooker, and purchased by the Government after his death. 

 The elder Hooker had always held consistently that a herbarium was 



VOL. lxxxv. — B. c 



