APPENDIX C. 
List of some of Sir W. J. Hooker’s Chief 
Correspondents (1808-65). 
The following selection of the names of Botanists, and of others who 
in various ways materially aided my father in his life-long labours 
(with the number of letters from each), is made from the volumes of 
letters from his correspondents, which are deposited in the Herbarium 
of the Royal Gardens of Kew. It has been drawn up at the request 
of the Editors of the Annals, as a contribution to the history of 
Botany during the first half of the nineteenth century. 
The letters, of which there are about 29,000 from 4,420 individuals, 
are bound up in seventy-eight quarto volumes. They date from 1808 to 
1865, and almost exclusively refer, directly or indirectly, to the recipient’s 
work as a botanist, as founder of the Herbarium, Library and Museum, 
Kew, and as reformer of the Royal Botanic Garden, or to his author- 
ship. Unfortunately, few of them date from the years between 1808 
and 1820, a period during which, as his works and collections abun- 
dantly prove, he was in active correspondence with British, Continental, 
and American botanists. It appears to me to be probable, that many 
such letters contributed to swell the bulk of his father-in-law’s Mr. 
Dawson Turner’s monumental collection of Autographs, which was 
dispersed by sale 1 in 1859. 
In selecting the 1,612 names here given, from the 4,420 corre- 
spondents, I have been guided by the following considerations : — 
(1) Botanists, travellers, and collectors of eminence, whether of world- 
wide or more restricted reputation, the latter especially in connexion 
with British botany, many of whom will be found, with particulars 
of their lives and labours, in Britten and Boulger’s valuable 1 Bio- 
1 See 1 Catalogue of the Manuscript Library of the late Dawson Turner, Esq., 
M.A., F.R.S., &c., formerly of Yarmouth, comprising the matchless collection of 
upwards of 40,000 autograph letters, &c., which will be sold by auction by 
Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, No. 47 Leicester Square, on June 6, 1859, and four 
following days.’ One vol., 8vo, pp. xix and 308, lots 719. (The sale realized 
^6,558 8j.) 
