NOTICE OF BOOK 
Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker , O.M., G.C.S.I. By Leonard 
Huxley. London : John Murray. 
The appearance of 6 The Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker’, by 
Mr. Leonard Huxley, is an event which concerns the botanical world so nearly as to 
warrant a deviation from the policy, now for many years adopted by this Journal, of 
excluding notices of current literature from its pages. An even more intimate reason 
for exceptional procedure on the present occasion lies in the fact, perhaps not 
generally known, that Sir Joseph Hooker was one of those who contributed greatly to 
the right starting of the ‘ Annals of Botany V 
The life of Hooker is largely bound up with the great advance of biological 
science during the latter half of the last century, and his own scientific eminence, as 
well as his official position at Kew during a very critical period, invests with peculiar 
interest the full account of his life which is set forth in Mr. Huxley’s two volumes. 
Vivid pictures are drawn of the contests waged in those early days with official 
stupidity and meanness, and of efforts, often made in vain, to convince those respon- 
sible for guiding the destinies of this country, its Imperial and Colonial expansion no 
less than the development of its resources at home, of the importance of botany as 
a serious factor in material progress. The story of the yet more fundamental and 
world-wide struggle, culminating in new measures of intellectual freedom, as well as 
in that wider outlook on life which was opened up by the new conception of the 
origin of species, has more than once been told. For the philosophical historian 
the correspondence between Hooker and Darwin, which forms no inconsiderable part 
of the Letters, must always possess a special value and significance. Some of the 
familiar incidents in the great evolution campaign acquire new meaning, and others 
are here unfolded for the first time. Hooker’s great wealth of knowledge served 
continually to reinforce the position of tenacious criticism which he ever maintained 
towards unproved inferences and unsubstantiated hypotheses. It also provided 
a powerful instrument in forging the new weapons with which Darwin was to shatter 
the old dogmas concerning the constancy of species, and thence to bring about the 
greatest philosophical upheaval the modern world has ever known. 
This, however, is not the place to attempt to analyse Hooker’s contributions to 
the edifice of Science, however important they are, or indeed to dwell upon them in 
any detail. Others have already discussed these things in many journals and reviews. 
But it is the place to indicate emphatically that the ‘ Life and Letters ’ is a book that 
deserves to be read by all botanists, and especially perhaps by the younger genera- 
tion. Hooker’s was no life of ease. It is the story of strenuous effort and continuous 
1 The writer is indebted to Professor I. Bayley Balfour, to whose energy and foresight the 
original idea and ultimate realization of the Annals of Botany was mainly due, for access to 
Hooker’s letters during the pre-natal period of its development. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXXIV. No. CXXXIII. January, 1920.] 
