CHAPTEK VIII 
BETURN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PARIS 
The ships reached Woolwich on September 7 and were paid 
off on the 23rd, after a commission of four years and five months. 
Captain Koss had landed at Folkestone and hurried to London. 
For some days the Hookers had to be content with his news 
that all was well ; Joseph, as a junior ofiicer, could not get 
away from his ship, and it was not till the evening of the 9th 
that he reached home on a week's leave * in high health and 
spirits.' ' He is not stouter,' writes Sir William to Dawson 
Turner, 'than when he left us, and very unaltered — more 
manly— broader in the shoulder. He is badly off for clothes, 
and we had to assist him from my w^ardrobe to enable him to 
go to church yesterday.' 
Soon he settled down to a six months' spell of hard work, 
enjoying everything at home and about Kew, and working at 
his father's side on his plants, * when not impeded by frequent 
calls to London and numerous engagements ' ; working, as 
his mother puts it, ' like a dragon, like a grandson of my dear 
Father's, and always happy when so employed.' 
First came the Antarctic Flora. But though Ross had 
made formal application for a grant towards pubUcation, the 
official wheels moved with discouraging slowness. 
I have no heart [he exclaims to Bentham, February 10, 
1844] to do much at my Antarctic plants, having been 
five years more or less working at them, and my prospects 
of publishing in a nice form are waning very fast indeed. 
I most heartily wish that I had at first published a rough 
ir.s 
