THE LINNEAN JOUENAL 411 
others, these are promises which they do not see the moral 
obhgation of keeping, or at any rate act as if they did 
not. None can so well help me out of the difficulty as you, 
for you could without trouble give us both Zoological and 
Botanical scraps ; and it is scraps we want as much as 
papers. 
Another undated appeal (probably in 1861) reiterates his' 
own responsibility for the progress of the Journal. 
Dear Huxley, — I find that we are really hard up for 
zoological matter for our Linnean Journal, which is now 
arrived at its critical period ; so my dear fellow do not 
desert us and give us a yarn on the Crab's inwards without 
fail — it is almost a sin to press you to write, but I must be 
whipper in. We have plenty of good botanical matter and 
Lindley has rallied round us, but if zoological matter is not 
forthcoming, the present flan of the Linnean Journal will 
fall through and my shoulders will have to ache for it, as the 
onus of the undertaking rests so much with me. 
I like your Museum thing ^ extremely, it is the only really 
sound elementary introduction to understanding Geological evi- 
dence that I have seen. I shall bring it with me on Tuesday, 
Ever yours, 
J. D. HOOKEB. 
Thus the Linnean Journal came to fulfil its function as a 
record of the natural history sciences for workers in science, 
so far as focussed by the Society. As he wrote later, ' It is 
a gallant Society that struggles on amongst proverbially poor 
naturalists, spending its whole income on publications and 
Library and giving all its publications to its members.' ^ 
The Journal was the more needed on the botanical side, as the 
Kew Journal of Botany had for some time been going downhill. 
The best botanists had become chary of contributing, for Sir 
WilHam Hooker, though unremittingly busy in his old age, had 
grown careless and uncritical in his editing, and his son had no 
^ ' Preliminary Essay upon the Systematic Arrangement of the Fishes of 
the'Devonian Epoch,' Mem. Geol. Surv. of U.K., 1861. 
2 To Mr. Bolus, Feb. 4, 1873, who sought election to the Linnean (see 
ii. 4). 
