FATHER AND SON 161 
He had wished to send a present to his brother, but it was 
too late ; or to other relations, if his mother were still obsti- 
nate about making use of what he did not want ; and to her 
he writes (December 6, 1842) : 
I wish you would not lay aside the few pounds I sent 
home for me, for I shall not want it ; if I can only get enough 
to keep me respectably I shall be content to live from hand 
to mouth, and I would not give a penny for a fortune which 
is sure to prove a curse to most men and a breeder of idle- 
ness ; however, it is all very well to talk so when there is 
no chance of getting one, — but I should much prefer that 
the bills were used, — indeed had I not thought they would 
be, I should have put them into a V.D.L. bank, or invested 
it there in land and sheep ; however, it is all the same to me. 
The years of service in one of His Majesty's ships gave 
Hooker, as it gave both Darwin and Huxley ,i an invaluable 
acquaintance with the realities of things, and there was * a 
masonic bond ' between these friends * in being well salted in 
early life.' But the voyage did not alter his career as it altered 
the career of the other two. He was already a naturalist 
enlisted in the ranks of pure science ; a rising botanist when 
he set out, a botanist of higher repute when he returned. 
From Sir William's point of view, the only serious danger was 
that he might desert botany for zoology. Hence, as has been 
said, his delight to receive early assurance that Joseph cared 
most for botany and intended to devote himself to it when he 
came home. Here he could best help on his son, with the 
added satisfaction of knowing that his collections and library 
1 Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) studied at Charing Cross Hospital and 
entered the Navy as Assistant Surgeon. Through Sir John Richardson at 
Haslar, who had noticed his scientific ability, he was appointed to the expedition 
under Captain Owen Stanley in the Eattlesnake frigate, which was to survey 
the east coast of Australia and the islands as far as New Guinea (1846-50). His 
work on the Oceanic Hydrozoa won him the F.R.S. at the age of twenty-seven, 
and the Royal Medal the following year. In 1854 he obtained a professorship 
at the Royal School of Mines, whence sprang the Royal College of Science at 
S. Kensington, where he was Professor of Biology and afterwards Dean. 
President of the British Association 1870 ; of the Royal Society 1883-5 ; Privy 
Councillor 1892. As Darwin's most vigorous upholder and expositor, as an 
educational reformer and a brilliant and forceful essayist and speaker, he was 
one of the chief factors in breaking the shackles imposed on thought and opinion. 
