66 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 
exceeded my expectations and do jou credit. . . . And 
Brown is charmed with what you have done.' 
The long stay at Kerguelen's Land, Tasmania, Hermite 
Island, and the Falklands, the travel through New Zealand, 
the short stay at the Cape and Sydney, and flying raids on 
Lord Auckland Island and Campbell Island, provided sugges- 
tive material for his works on the Floras of the Southern lands 
and the Antarctic regions : works which afforded not merely 
a thorough hst and account of the plants and the conditions 
under which he saw them existing, but discussed the com- 
parison of South and North, the questions of distribution, 
the problem of the oceanic islands and the former connection 
of the Southern continents, leading slowly but inevitably on 
to the evolutionary theory in which he was to be Darwin's 
confidant, critic, and supporter. Dar^dn's o^ti ' Voyage of 
the Beagle/ indeed, was the most recent of the various travel 
books that inspired liim. It was in the press while he was 
approaching his M.D. examinations, and the old friend of his 
family, and of Darwin himself, Mr. Lyell of Kinnordy, sent 
him a set of proofs that had come from Darwin. Time was 
short : Hooker slept with the proofs under his pillow, and 
devoured them eagerly the moment he woke in the mornings. 
Before he sailed Mr. Lyell sent him a copy of the book, a gift 
most gratefully and enthusiastically acknowledged. As the 
voyage continues he tells Mr. Lyell, ' Your kind present is indeed 
now a well-thumbed book, for all the officers send to me for it.' ^ 
If Darwin's was the last of the travel books that inspired 
him. Cook's voyage was the first. As has been noted akeady, 
it fired him at a far earher age than Darwin himself was stirred 
by Humboldt's ' Personal Narrative,' a fact on which he dwells 
again when writing to James Hamilton, his old college friend, 
after he had sat on the very spot in Kerguelen's Land from 
which the view of the Arch Rock was taken, and the picture 
of the men killing penguins. 
1 Thus J, E. Davis, second master of the Terror, later thanking Hooker 
for the ' young library ' sent to him, writes : ' I like Darwin's Journal much : 
he has accomplished what Old Johnson said of Goldsmith when he heard he was 
going to write a Natural History : "he an ill make it as interesting as a Persian 
tale." ' (See also the letter to Lady Hooker, p. 136;) 
