THE PATKONAGE OF KEW 215 
Flora were for the moment visionary. Indeed, it did not appear 
until 1859. 
Dming the autumn of 1846 Sir William made another effort 
to secure his son's future. The Woods and Forests Depart- 
ment being unwilling to take over the cost of housing and 
increasing the Herbarium, the notable addition brought to 
Kew by the elder Hooker, on the ground that his plants could 
not be marked, as were his books in the Library, to keep them 
distinct from later additions. Sir William offered to present 
the Herbarium to the nation, on condition that Joseph should 
be appointed his assistant and successor at £800 a year. Lord 
Morpeth was friendly, but would not guarantee the succes- 
sion with the salary proposed. Future arrangements were 
uncertain. 
Kew was still too much a mere object of aristocratic patron- 
age. Joseph Hooker was too proud to press his claims on 
any but scientific grounds. He was revolted by the sugges- 
tion that he should make friends with the Mammon of Society, 
by helping his father to pay the required attentions to aristo- 
cratic sight-seers. It was all very well to meet old friends or 
officials or scientific persons, high or low ; but when his father 
would introduce him to these others, he knew himself to be 
in a false position, to which he could not submit, officiously 
thrust forward and wasting his valuable time to boot. His 
father was used to making use of patronage in the days when 
patronage was the road to progress ; but even so, Hooker 
writes bitterly to his grandfather (July 25, 1847) : 
My Mother and Sister will tell you that of the hundreds 
of aristocrats who detain my father at the Garden for hours 
waiting their arrival, and then drag him through every 
house and acre, there are not half a dozen whom he could 
ask to back even an application for himself or for me, or 
who have shown him the smallest politeness in return. 
Meantime Hooker himself was growing more and more 
eager for another Botanical journey, this time to the mountains 
of the tropics, either the Andes or the Himalayas. His father 
would have been content for him to stay in England, filling 
up the time till some satisfactory post offered with his botanical 
