SIE W. J. HOOKEE AT GLASGOW 11 
and chief power in the official world of English science, he was 
appointed by the Crown in 1820 to the newly founded Chair of 
Botany in Glasgow, in succession to Dr. Graham,^ who, after 
occupying it a couple of years from its foundation, had been 
appointed to Edinburgh. 
Here Sir William met with immediate and striking success. 
He established a flourishing school of botany ; raised the infant 
botanical garden to the front rank, supplying it and his her- 
barium with the products of every country with which the 
trading community of Glasgow was in touch. The experience 
gathered in Glasgow prepared his signal success in after years 
at Kew. Here, therefore, his sons grew up in an atmosphere 
of natural science, whether class-work or field-work, of long- 
drawn and unceasing industry, of contact with distinguished 
workers in natural history in general and botany in particular. 
The Professor [writes Prof. F. 0. Bower in his Com- 
memorative Oration] had estabhshed himself in Woodside 
Crescent, conveniently near to the garden, and doubtless 
his little son was familiar with it and its contents from 
childhood. He grew up in an atmosphere surcharged with 
the very science he was to do so much to advance. 
His father's home was the scene of manifold activities. 
It housed a rapidly growing private herbarium and 
museum. It was there that the drawings were made to illus- 
trate the amazing stream of descriptive works which Sir 
Wilham was then producing. New species must have been 
almost daily under examination, often as living specimens. 
Between the garden and the house the boy must have 
witnessed constantly, during the most receptive years of 
childhood, the working of an establishment that was at 
that time without its equal in this country, or probably in 
any other. The eye and memory will have been trained 
almost unconsciously. A knowledge of plants would be 
1 Robert Graham (1786-1845), M.D. He practised some years in Glasgow, 
and in 1818, when a separate chair of botany was established at the University, 
was appointed the first professor. In 1820 he became regius professor at 
Edinburgh, being succeeded at Glasgow by Sir William Hooker, with whom 
he had a scientific and personal friendship. Joseph Hooker, in turn, was within 
a little of succeeding him at Edinburgh, for he remained a close friend of the 
Hookers, often joining in Sir William's botanical excursions, and when he fell 
ill in 1845, he secured Joseph Hooker as his substitute and prospective successor. 
