SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 



915 



of the science which both worshipped with single-minded zeal, that 

 Lindley and my father were regarded as meriting equal recognition as 

 scientific botanists and indefatigable labourers throughout forty-five 

 years of their active lives, and that they should have been fast friends 

 till death, within three months of one another." 



Referred to from the last sentence is the following interesting foot- 

 note, drawing attention as it does to the contemporary career of Lindley, 

 whose name must be of great interest to the Society. " The following 

 admirable summary of the life-works of my father and Lindley respectively 

 is extracted from the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, May 29, 1866 : ' The names of Hooker and Lindley, which 

 stood side by side in our botanical section, are naturally associated as 

 those of the two most eminent botanists in Great Britain ; also by the 

 parallel course and near coincidence in the close of their lives. Born in 

 the same neighbourhood, in youth receiving their education at the same 

 school, and early drawn together by similar predilections, they both 

 devoted themselves with singular energy and perseverance to their 

 chosen pursuit ; exerted for many years, although in somewhat different 

 ways, a paramount influence upon the advancement of botanical science ; 

 and died near together in place and time — the elder at Kew, on August 13 

 last, at the age of eighty years ; the younger at Turnham Green, on the 

 first of the ensuing November, at the age of sixty-seven years. For a 

 long time they were the two most distinguished teachers in Great 

 Britain, one at a northern, and the other at the Metropolitan University. 

 They severally conducted two of the principal serial works by which 

 botany contributes to floriculture ; and they developed into highest 

 usefulness the two great establishments, the Royal Gardens at Kew 

 and the Horticultural Society of London. Both wrote and published 

 largely — Hooker only upon descriptive botany, in which he greatly 

 excelled, while Lindley traversed a wider field, and grappled with 

 abstruser problems in every department of the science, always with 

 confidence and facility, but not with unvarying success.' " 



While Lindley is before us it may not be uninteresting to take 

 another footnote given in the first chapter. He, having shown great 

 zeal and ability as a local botanist, was invited to Halesworth with the 

 view of encouraging him, and that he might there occupy himself in the 

 translation of Richard's " Analyse des Fruits." He had been looking 

 forward to employment as a botanical collector abroad, and this is the 

 amusing incident r " The housekeeper at Halesworth finding that his bed 

 was never occupied, after a vain search for a reason, reported the fact. His 

 distressed host had to ask for an explanation, which was simply that his 

 guest was inuring himself to the hardships of a collector's calling by 

 sleeping on hard boards ! " 



We now return to the narrative. " As his own reputation advanced, 

 so did that of his herbarium and library, which, before he had been ten 

 years in Glasgow, were reckoned as amongst the richest private ones in 

 Europe. This was due to his active correspondence, judicious purchases, 

 the contributions of his former pupils, especially from abroad, to his 

 methodical habits, and to the welcome he gave to all botanists who 

 desired to consult his collections. For the operation of mounting 



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