S!H WILLIAM JACKSON 1IOOKKH. 



909 



rare birds, shooting, stuffing, and drawing them, besides learning their 

 habits and songs. Sixty years later he knew the birds in Kew (lardens 

 by the eye and the ear, and in a manner which surprised nie. Though a 

 keen ornithologist and as keen an entomologist, lie was almost morbidly 

 Averse from taking life ; he never shot for sport or for the pot ; and many 

 years afterwards, when instructing me in entomology, he was ever urging 

 me to kill with the least suffering, and never to take more specimens than 

 were necessary. His was one of those temperaments that later in life 

 could not look on blood without a feeling of faintness, or on a wax model 

 of the human face with equanimity." 



Sir William was born a student of natural history, and botany may 

 not have been his first love. Wo read : " That his entomological pursuits 

 were, when still in his teens, appreciated by the vetoran Kii by is evidenced 

 by the latter having in 1H05 dedicated to him and his brother a species of 



Apion with these words: 4 I am indebted to an excellent naturalist, Mr. 



W. J. Hooker, of Norwich, who first discovered it, for this species. Many 

 other nondescripts have been taken by him and his brother, Mr. J. I looker, 

 and I name this insect after them, as a memorial of my sense of their 

 ability and exertions in the service of my favourite department of natural 

 history. ' 



"I do not know the age at which my lather took up botany, The 



first evidence of his having done so is the fact that he was the discoverer 

 in Britain in 1805 of a very curious moss, Buxbamnda aphylla; but Lt 

 may be inferred from this and from his correspondence with Mr. Turner 

 (which J possess) that he had at the age of twenty-ono thoroughly studied 

 not only the flowering plants but the mosses, Ilepaticae, lichens, and 

 freshwater Algae of Norfolk. The Buxbawmia he took to his friend, I >r. 

 (afterwards Sir James) Smith, of Norwich, the possessor of the Linnean 

 herbarium, who advised him to send specimens to Mr. Dawson Turner 

 F.U.S., of Great Yarmouth, author of 'Muscologiae Hibernicae Spici 

 Legium,' and, with L. W. DiUwyn, F.L.S., of 'The Bo'tanist's Guide 

 through England and Wales.' This he did, and it was immediately 

 followed by an invitation from Mr. Turner to visit him, which led ^ the 

 colouring of his future; life. 



"In 1800, when only four months over his majority, my father was 

 elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society, probably the youngest individual 

 so honoured. In the same year he visited London, and was introduced 

 to Sir .Joseph Hanks, Konig, J>rown, and other naturalists. The years 

 180G-1) were passed between Norwich, Yarmouth, and London, with 

 intervals of travelling in Scotland and Iceland. . . . Jn 1807, when 

 botanising in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth, he was bitten by a viper. 

 Fancying he had been pricked by a thorn he paid no heed to tin; pain, 

 till giddiness came on, under which ho succumbed. After lying for 

 some time in a state of collapse; he was accidentally found by some 

 friends who carried him to Mr. Turner's, where violent fever super- 

 vened, followed by a tedious illness. On recovery he started with 

 Mr. and Mrs. Turner on a botanical tour in Scotland. ... In 1808 my 

 father undertook a much longer journey in Scotland, accompanied by his 

 friend Mr. JJorrer. On this occasion he reascended Ben Lawers, Ben 

 Lomond, lien Ouachan, and lien Nevis, and for the first time Schichallion, 



