Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 



XXV11 



privately and almost single-handed in about a fortnight. He would tell the 

 story of how, having got £1,000 from his old Glasgow friend, James Young, 

 who had made a fortune from the Torbane Hill mineral, he communicated the 

 fact and his object to the common friend of both, Sir Joseph Whitworth, and 

 received the reply, " Not to be done by Jimmy," and a cheque for £2,000. 



The address being in a sense valedictory, Hooker devoted it to a luminous 

 summary of the striking achievements of science during the period of his 

 Presidency. In dwelling more particularly on botanical advance, he could 

 urge with truth "the excuse that there is, perhaps, no branch of research 

 with the early progress of which this Society is more intimately connected," 

 and he could point to the fact that vegetable histology began with Hooke 

 and Grew, and cytology with Eobert Brown. 



This was in other ways a period of intense activity. In 1874 Hooker 

 presided over the Department of Zoology and Botany of the British 

 Association at Belfast. He chose, as the subject of his address, " The 

 Carnivorous Habits of some of our Brother Organisms— Plants." This was a 

 notable performance, as it was his one incursion into physiology. He 

 reviewed all the known instances, and demonstrated from his own observa- 

 tions the occurrence of proteid digestion- in pitcher-plants {Nepenthes), of 

 which he had been the monographer. He concluded : " Though the processes 

 of plant-nutrition are in general extremely different from those of animal- 

 nutrition, and involve very simple compounds, yet . . . the protoplasm of 

 plants is not absolutely prohibited from availing itself of food, such as that 

 by which the protoplasm of animals is nourished, under which point of view 

 these phenomena of carnivorous plants will find their place as one more link 

 in the continuity of nature." The subject is of great theoretical interest, for 

 it points to the fact that chlorophyllian assimilation from inorganic compounds, 

 on which plants mainly depend, is a habit acquired since the primary stem of 

 plant-life diverged from the primordial stock. 



In 1877, at the close of the session of the Eoyal Society, Hooker obtained 

 an extended leave of absence, to accept an invitation from Dr. Hayden, 

 United States Geologist-in-charge of the United States Geological and 

 Geographical Survey of the Territories, " to visit under his conduct the 

 Pocky Mountains of Colorado and Utah, with the object of contributing to the 

 record of the survey a report on the botany of those States." Prof. Asa Gray 

 and Sir Eichard Strachey were also members of the party. The Anniversary 

 Address for 1877 was mainly devoted to a general account of the survey, 

 with an indication of the particular problem which his own share in its work 

 might throw light upon. This problem had been raised by Gray in 1858, 

 when he first pointed out that the Asiatic affinities of the North American 

 flora were to be found, not, as might be expected, on the Pacific, but on the 

 Atlantic side of the Continent. Hooker's solution was first given in a 

 lecture at the Eoyal Institution on April 12, 1878. The whole problem is 

 too intricate to allow of more than the barest summary of its data. 

 Comparing North America with Europe, it is obvious that in the one the 



