60 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 
will alone immortalise the Expedition. No person seems 
to have thought of collecting such things before for scientific 
purposes. 
Happily Hooker's short-sighted eyes stood the strain of 
the microscopic work fairly well, though he had to turn his 
unexpectedly good opportunity to account under constant 
difficulties. This, as the voyage drew towards its close, he 
describes as follows (March 7, 1843) : 
During our now homeward passage I shall have plenty 
to do with tropical plants and sea animals ; the latter I must 
keep up, for there never was such an opportunity as this ship 
affords for the study, being a slow sailer and my having 
such accommodation below for dra^ang and describing them ; 
not that I care for them at all ; somehow with all the time 
I have devoted to them they have not won my affections, 
because I feel sure that two studies in Nat. Hist, cannot 
be well prosecuted together, and though an easier study, 
marine animals require much more time than plants to in- 
vestigate fully ; the dra^angs will do me some credit if it be 
only for the time taken and the novelty of their being often 
done with the microscope lashed to the table. My eyes are 
as good as ever they were in strength, but my shortsighted- 
ness ' semper idem ' (always worse and worse). The spectacles 
you were so good as to send me were not half strong enough ; 
however, they are much nicer than are procm'able out of 
England, and I shall get new glasses at the Cape. Between 
examining mosses and the glare of the Ice and snowy spicules 
in the wind, my eyes smarted very much during the time the 
ships were in the pack and watered, but never inflamed. 
They are all right again now. Your spectacles (green) were 
a great comfort. 
So also with his botanical drawings, done at sea from 
specimens in his collections. He chooses the best model he 
can, and if art is deficient, at least he is accurate. Finding 
a sudden chance to send home his collections from New Zealand, 
the Aucklands, and Campbell Island, he says (June 6, 1841) : 
The notes were all finished in the Ice, where the smooth water 
enabled me to resume my old post in the Captain's cabin. 
