HIS CAEEEE JEOPARDISED 351 
career was jeopardised for a time by this same lack of pros- 
pects. If he would exchange botany for mineralogy there was a 
vacancy at the British Museum to apply for, with salary and 
house : a firm estabhshment and tempting at such a juncture. 
Friends urged him to this prudential course. ' Shall I give 
up Botany and stand for Koenig's ^ place at B.Mus.? ' he asks 
Bentham (September 3, 1851), adding ironically: 
To be sure I know nothing of Crystallography, Mineralogy, 
Chemistry, &c., but the Trustees are above such prejudice 
against a man who could wear a white neckcloth with ease, 
and take his fair share of their abuses with equanimity, 
which would be an all-powerful testimonial. I hate the 
idea of giving up Botany, but I am advised to try for it by 
Gray particularly and my Father proposes it. 
The wiser counsel of waiting was, as has been seen, rewarded. 
Nevertheless in 1854, as the period of the departmental grant 
for arranging the Indian collections was drawing to an end, 
the same perplexities revived. Writing to Asa Gray ^ on 
March 24, 1854, he says, ' I sometimes think seriously of 
giving up Kew and living in London and writing for the press.' 
His family was increasing (his first child was born Jan. 1853, 
the second June 1854) ; his special work engrossing and 
costly ; his only advantages, his father's Herbarium and 
Library, * which are private and for which I am in no way 
indebted to the Crown.' Still : 
Pray don't think I am grumbling. I have had a long 
spell of pleasure as a purely scientific botanist, and it is time 
I felt some of the ills of my position. It does make me 
* Charles Dietrich Eberhard Koeuig (1774-1851) came to England in 
1800 to arrange the collections of Queen Charlotte, afterwards becoming 
assistant to Banks' librarian, Dryander. In 1807 he became Assistant Keeper, 
and six years later, Keeper of the Natural History Department in the British 
Museum, finally taking charge of the Mineralogical D3pa,rtment. This was 
the post left vacant by his sudden death. 
^ Asa Gray (1810-88), relinquishing medicine for botany, became Professor 
of Natural History at Harvard 1842-73, and succeeded Agassiz as Kegent of the 
Smithsonian Institution 1874. He was the first in America, in conjunction 
with Dr. John Torrey, Professor of Botany at Princeton, to arrange species on 
a system of natural affinity, whence he became a strong supporter of evolution 
as set forth by Darwin. His association v/ith Hooker was not only that of 
scientific affinity, but of close and enduring friendship. 
