EAELY COLLECTIONS 65 
he should visit some of the high mountains, ' which everywhere 
afford what I consider by far the most interesting plants.' 
The Algae in the high south latitudes are particularly worth 
collecting, and indeed should be collected everywhere if no 
phaenogamic plants be available, even if they be known species, 
in order to determine their distribution. 
Throughout, it may be noted. Sir WilHam is the systematist, 
the collector, and describer, urging his son to look for more 
plants and especially those missed by the latest travellers, 
such as Wright ^ in the Falklands, and to get his friends to 
collect specimens ' in quantities not in driblets ' at all stages, 
so as to have ample material for Floras of all the places he 
visits, and the mistakes he corrects in his letters are those of 
identification tested by extant accounts. On the same prin- 
ciple, just as Robert Brown bade him ' collect everything,' 
so Hooker sagely acknowledges, ' such scraps as are useless 
for other purposes may yet, so long as they exhibit the Natural 
Order to which they belong, prove of service in illustrating 
the geography of plants.' 
But later collections were more satisfactory. No extenua- 
ting circumstances needed to be invoked when, at last, in 
June 1842, there arrived the plants and notes from Kerguelen's 
Land, the Aucklands, and Tasmania, which rumour had sent 
to the bottom along with the ship that carried them. Among 
these notes Lady Hooker reports 150 drawings, * with highly 
magnified dissections, some almost worthy, my husband 
says, of Bauer's pencil.' Sir WilHam, after looking through 
the collection with Robert Brown, writes enthusiastically : 
* BeHeve me, dear Boy, they have given me infinite pleasure, 
for they prove that you must have been diligent, and conse- 
quently successful.' And again (July 7, 1842) of the drawings 
and notes : * I expected much of you ; but these have far 
1 William Wright (1735-1819), a naval surgeon who, being unemployed, 
took up private practice in Jamaica (176-1-77), finally becoming honorary 
surgeon-general of the island. He corresponded with Banks and others, 
discovering especially a native species of cinchona in Jamaica. After botanical 
study in England and military adventures abroad, he finally settled in 
Edinburgh in 1798. Among his friends was Sir W. Hooker, to whom he 
presented a collection made in Iceland to replace Sir William's that had been 
burned. 
