Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 



xxi 



been subjected ; 38,649 panes were smashed into 18 tons of broken glass, and 

 the damage required for its repair a supplementary estimate in Parliament. 

 In 1876 the introduction of the Para rubber tree into our Eastern Colonies 

 was successfully accomplished, though not without considerable difficulty. 

 A quarter of a century elapsed before it was seen to contain the " potentiality 

 of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." 



Hooker's personal hobby was the development and extension of the 

 Arboretum, or collection of ligneous plants grown in the open air. This 

 had been commenced by his father, and he spared no pains in enlisting the 

 aid of correspondents at home and abroad in enriching it. ISTor was he less 

 anxious to have them correctly named, and the often deplorable confusion in 

 their nomenclature cleared up. Elwes and Henry, in their great work, 

 ' The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland,' have reaped a rich harvest from 

 Hooker's labours. He finished planting the Pinetum in 1870 ; there was no 

 part of the establishment which he revisited with more pleasure after his 

 retirement. The Arboretum contains between 4,000 and 5,000 species ; with 

 all the disadvantages of an infertile soil and of London fog, it is probably 

 without a rival in any other country. 



Hooker carried on two periodicals illustrative of Kew work. The 

 'Botanical Magazine,' founded in 1787, had been edited by the elder 

 Hooker from 1824. It consists of figures of new and interesting cultivated 

 plants, and, after the association of the magazine with Kew, its collections 

 chiefly supplied the materials. Hooker conducted it till 1904, writing mostly 

 the descriptions himself. The " Icones Plantarum " had been started by the 

 elder Hooker, and afterwards passed into Bentham's hands. It consists of 

 figures of interesting and novel plants drawn from the Herbarium. Hooker 

 edited the third series. 



These were not the only burdens which a Kew position placed on Hooker's 

 shoulders. The Government had given early encouragement (and some 

 pecuniary aid) to the Hookers in the publication of Floras of British 

 Possessions. The first of these was the elder Hooker's ' Flora Boreali- 

 Americana ' (1829-40). But this, like those included in the botany of the 

 Antarctic voyage by the younger, were " on too expensive a scale to be 

 generally useful." This led to Sir William Hooker suggesting in 1857 that 

 the series should be continued in 8vo volumes in the English language, 

 " scientific, yet intelligible to any man of ordinary education." The plan 

 was adopted and sanctioned by the Duke of Newcastle in 1860. The scheme 

 necessarily required the co-operation of many hands. Hooker co-operated 

 actively. He assisted Thwaites in his ' Enumeratio Flora? Zeylanise ' 

 (1864), produced a ' Handbook of the New Zealand Flora ' (1864-7), based 

 on his own previous work, and edited a second edition of Harvey's ' Genera 

 of South African Plants' (1868). In 1870 he published 'The Student's 

 Flora of the British Islands ' (3rd Edition, 1883) much on the same lines. 

 This would have been the first British Flora to give the external geographical 

 distribution if the ' Compendium ' of H. C. Watson had not been published 



