192 EDINBUKGH 
for a Botanist to obtain a situation altogether agreeable to him, 
and that will afford him means of support.' Sir William 
might have said this with equal truth of any branch of science, 
and not at that time only. 
At the same time Hooker fully realised the importance of 
completing his magnum opus. The arrangements for its pub- 
lication in parts, month after month, rendered it impossible 
to carry out the scheme anywhere but at Kew. ' The value 
of my library and Herbarium,' writes. Sir William, ' was never 
more fully evinced than in his preparation for his work. The 
British Museum, though invaluable in some respects, does not 
afford him a tythe of the information that my collections 
do.' With his usual generosity. Sir William hoped to make 
over the Herbarium to his son once he was established in 
Edinburgh, when it could be kept either at the Garden or in 
the College. 
As it soon appeared, there was no question of payment for 
this course of lectures. Professor Graham had just suffered 
severe money losses, and was fatally ill. Indeed his increasing 
weakness prevented him from helping at all in the lectming 
as he fii'st hoped ; and although he offered rooms at his own 
house, the good prospect of the succession to the professorship 
was regarded by the Hookers as sufficient material reward. To 
undertake the temporary com'se was both to make a trial of 
lecturing and to do his old friend a service, * and I think,' writes 
his father, * that alone will go a great way with Joseph.' 
After Professor Graham's death, however, when his affairs 
had been wound up, Mrs. Graham wTote begging him to accept 
£100 for his great services. Hooker writes to Dawson Turner 
(April 25, 1846) : 
She says it was only a portion of what her husband would 
have done, and entreats me to accept it if only to gratify 
her and all the rest of it, in such a strain as you can well 
understand without my repeating. I beheve that no one 
could be more grateful for real services on my part than Mrs. 
Graham is for supposed ones. But if she would not add 
these testimonies of the sincerity of her regard, I should be 
much better pleased. To have felt as I did, that I had the 
