22 EAELY DAYS 
his brother's brilHancy. WilHam, however, with all his 
quickness and cleverness, had a vein of instability. The contrast 
between the brothers in the matter of perseverance shows 
itself from the first, and Joseph's determination to master 
whatever he undertook calls forth his mother's just praise. 
Later, William made a large collection of birds, while Joseph 
collected insects and plants. Wilham won his Hterary spurs 
at one-and-twenty by printing for private circulation his ' Notes 
on Norway,' the account of a trip to Scandinavia ; while 
Joseph, in the same year, first appeared in print with the de- 
scription of three new mosses from the Himalaya in the 
'Icones Plantarum ' (ii. 194). 
The boys went to Glasgow High School, where they received 
the old-fashioned, liberal, Scottish education — an education 
that culminates in the Arts' degree for proficiency in Latin 
and Greek, mathematics, logic and Enghsh hterature, and 
moral philosophy. Li after life Hooker thought the moral 
philosophy course had been of little value to him ; his classical 
studies, however, were not lost even from an utilitarian point 
of view, and he remained always able to write Latin easily. 
Sir William and Lady Hooker's letters to Dawson Tm^ner 
afford a few ghmpses into the boys' school-days. Thus Lady 
Hooker writes on June 9, 1824, after a description of Willy's 
lessons — to our great astonishment that little boys of seven 
and eight should attend a college lecture on botany : 
He and Joseph accompany their father, with Frank and 
Kobert,^ to the lectm^e every morning. It is fine exercise 
for them, and they return to breakfast at half- past nine 
o'clock, as hungry almost as my sisters and brothers used 
to be. I think that Joseph would be the child to please 
you in his learning. He is extremely industrious, though 
not very clever. Willy can learn the faster if he chooses, 
but while his elder brother sets his very heart against his 
lessons, Joseph bends all his soul and spirit to the task 
before him. 
1 Frank Garden and Robert Monteith lived with the Hookers for some 
four years, studj'ing at GlasgOAv before proceeding to Cambridge (in 1827). 
' Our two eldest boys,' Sir William calls them : they were eight or nine years 
older than his o^^n boys. 
