SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 



917 



British botanists, then resident in Edinburgh, requested permission to 

 accompany the students of the botanical courses on an excursion to the 

 Breadalbane Mountains, for the purpose of ascertaining the altitudes 

 affected by their plants. Thus commenced a very active and interesting 

 correspondence between my father and this acute botanist, which led to 

 the publication of many papers in the journals conducted by the former, 

 to the botanical expedition of the latter to the Azores, and indirectly to 

 his valuable account of the flora of that interesting archipelago in 

 Godman's ' Natural History of the Azores ' (London, 1870). In 1831 

 Mr. W. H. Harvey, of Limerick (afterwards Professor of Botany 

 in the Koyal Dublin Society, and Keeper of the Herbarium, and 

 eventually Professor of Botany in Trinity College, Dublin), introduced 

 himself by letter, with specimens from two new localities of a West 

 Indian moss (Hookeria laete-virens), found nowhere in the eastern 

 hemisphere but the south and west of Ireland. It was answered by an 

 invitation to Glasgow, which resulted in an intimacy that amounted to 

 his being regarded as a member of the family. 



" I must not close this brief notice of my father's activity in encouraging 

 others without an allusion to the solicitude with which he fostered my 

 own aspirations to become a traveller and botanist ; the interest he took 

 in my ambitious projects ; the energy with which he aided me in over- 

 coming every obstacle thrown in my way, and prevailed on the higher 

 powers to grant me facilities and the necessary funds ; and last, but not 

 least, the liberality with which he helped me whenever other resources 

 were exhausted. In this connection I refer especially to four crises in 

 my scientific career : my appointment to accompany Sir James Ross in 

 the Antarctic Expedition in 1839 (for which he supplied all my scientific 

 outfit) ; my (unsuccessful) candidature for the Professorship of Botany 

 in Edinburgh University in 1845 ; my mission to India in 1847 ; and my 

 appointment as Assistant Director of Kew in 1855. Add to these benefits 

 the legacy of his herbarium and library, and the truth of the saying 

 1 One soweth, another reapeth,' forcibly applies. 



" The works published by my father when in Glasgow are very 

 numerous. A complete list of them, with details regarding the more 

 important, will be given at the end of the sketch. They may be grouped 

 under four headings : British Botany, American Botany, Miscellaneous 

 Works, and Serials. 



" In the British Botany there was the 'Flora Scotica,' the new edition 

 of Curtis' s ' Flora Londinensis,' four editions of the i British Flora,' 

 and many contributions to a knowledge of British plants in the volumes 

 of his botanical journals." Numerous other works under the classificatory 

 headings mentioned above are then enumerated. 



" In the same year (1827), finding that his extensive correspondence 

 with botanists and travellers abroad provided him with information of 

 great value that might otherwise never see the light, and that his 

 herbarium was at the same time teeming with plants unknown to science, 

 my father formed the plan of himself editing a periodical for the diffusion 

 amongst botanists of the information obtained from these sources. As a 



