SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 



929 



of knighthood from His Majesty William IV., together with the insignia 

 of the Order of the Guelphs of Hanover, then an appanage of the British 

 Crown. 



"In evidence of the estimation in which my father was held by his 

 botanical contemporaries, I think I cannot better conclude this sketch of 

 his life and labours than by giving the following extracts from the 

 obituaries of him drawn up by the two most eminent then living 

 botanists, one in America, the other in Europe. Of these, Professor Asa 

 Gray thus writes in the ' American Journal of Arts and Sciences,' Second 

 Series, xli. 1 (1866) : ' Our survey of what Sir William Hooker did for 

 science would be incomplete indeed if it were confined to his published 

 works — numerous and important as they are — and the wise and efficient 

 administration through which, in a space of twenty-four years, a Queen's 

 flower and kitchen garden and pleasure grounds have been transformed 

 into an imperial botanical establishment of unrivalled interest and value. 

 Account should be taken of the spirit in which he worked, of the 

 researches and explorations he promoted, of tho aid and encouragement 

 he extended to his fellow-labourers, especially to young and rising 

 botanists, and of the means and appliances he gathered for their use no 

 less than for his own. 



" ' The single-mindedness with which he gave himself to his scientific 

 work, and the conscientiousness with which he lived for science while he 

 lived by it, were above all praise. Eminently fitted to shine in society, 

 romarkably good-looking, and of the most pleasing address, frank, cordial, 

 and withal of a very genial disposition, he never dissipated his time and 

 energies in the round of fashionable life, but ever avoided the social 

 prominence and worldly distinctions which some sedulously seek. So 

 that, however it may or ought to be regarded in a country where Court 

 honours and Government rewards have a fictitious importance, we count 

 it a high compliment to his sense and modesty that no such distinctions 

 were ever conferred upon him in recognition of all that he accomplished 

 at Kew. 



" ' Nor was there in him, while standing in a position like that occupied 

 by Banks and Smith in his early days, the least manifestation of a ten- 

 dency to overshadow the science with his own importance, or of indifference 

 to its general advancement. Far from monopolising even the choicest 

 botanical materials which large expenditure of time and toil brought into 

 his hands, he delighted in setting other botanists to work on whatever 

 portion they wished to elaborate ; not only imparting freely, even to young 

 and untried men of promise, the multitude of specimens he could dis 

 tribute, and giving to all comers full access to his whole herbarium, but 

 sending portions of it to distant investigators, so long as this could be 

 done without too great detriment or inconvenience. He not only watched 

 for opportunities for attaching botanists to Government expeditions and 

 voyages, and secured the publication of their results, but also largely 

 assisted many private collectors, whose fullest sets are among the 

 treasures of far the richest herbarium ever accumulated in one man's 

 lifetime, if not the amplest anywhere in existence.' 



" From Professor Alphonse de Candolle's long eloge (La vie et les 

 ecrits de Sir W. Hooker) published in the 1 Archives des Sciences de la 



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