JOURNAL OE THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



SIH WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 



A Biographical Abstract compiled by R. [rwin Lynch prom a 

 Life-Sketch sent to the " Annals of Botany " by his Son, 

 Sin Josepb Dai/ion Booker, F.R.S., V.M.H., G.C.S.I., C.B., &o. 



There is a strikingly interesting biographical sketch in vol. xvi. of the 

 "Annals of Botany" dealing with the life of a very eminent man of 

 great individuality, whose history is one with that of the progress of 

 botany in the most important period of the last century, to whose force 

 of character, indeed, we owe an entirely new development which gave to 

 this country a pre-eminence which it still enjoys — very largely increased 

 and augmented by the author himself. The names of men who did good 

 work can easily be recalled, but the modern developments of systematic 

 and economic botany were to centre at Kew, and Sir William Hooker it 

 was who laid the foundations and earlier courses of the present world- 

 famed edifice. He founded the Herbarium, the Library, the Museums, and 

 the Gardens, practically as they are to-day. The three chapters of this 

 sketch cover three periods : Norwich and Halesworth, 1785-1820 ; Glasgow, 

 1820 1840 ; West Pa rk and Kew, 1841-18G5 ; and after them are extensive 

 appendices, to be enumerated at the end of these abstracts. The following 

 selection must be taken as omitting as much or more of equal interest. 



I. Norwich and Halesworth, L785 1820. 



"William Jackson Booker was born in St. Saviour's parish, Norwich. 

 Oil July (>, 1785. He was the Younger of two sons, the only children of 

 Joseph and Lydia Hooker, of that city. His father was a native of 

 Exeter, the home of many generations of the Devonshire Hookers, where 

 he had been a confidential clerk in the house of Baring Brothers, wool- 

 staplers, with whose family his was distantly connected. From Exeter 

 he went to Norwich, and into business there, where he had a collection of 

 'Succulents, 1 the cultivation of which class of plants was a favourite 

 pursuit of many of his fellow-citizens. He was mainly a self-educated 

 man, and a fair German scholar. My father's mother was a daughter of 

 .lames Vincent, Esq., of Norwich, a worsted manufacturer, grandfather of 

 (ieorge Vincent, one of the best of the Norwich School of artists, and 

 whose works are now much sought for. Thus my father presumably 

 derived his love of plants from his father's side, and his artistic powers 

 from his mother's. . . . When only four years old he inherited the 

 reversion to a fair competency in landed and personal property in Kent, 

 through the death of his cousin and godfather, William .Jackson, Esq., of 

 Canterbury, a young man of great promise. After leaving school he was 

 sent to reside with a Mr. Paul, of Starston (a village on the borders of 

 Ruffolk), a gentleman farmer, who instructed sons of the landed gentry in 

 the management of estates. Early in life he devoted himself to ornitho- 

 logy, \isiting the Broads and sea-coasts of Norfolk, which abounded in 



