Life and letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker

.F.

THE

THE LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

DAVIS

LIFE AND LETTERS OP
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, O.M., G.C.S.I.

VOLUME I.

Vol. i. Frontispiece']

J. D. HOOKER.
From the Portrait by George Richmond (1855).

LIFE AND LETTEES

OF

SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER

O.M., G.C.S.I.

BASED ON MATERIALS COLLECTED AND
AEKANGED BY LADY HOOKER

PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

BY LEONARD HUXLEY

AUTHOR Off 'LIFE AKD LETTERS OF T. H. HUXLEY,' KTO.

VOLUME I

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1918

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

MORRISON MEMORIAL LIBRARY

DEDICATED

TO

THE MEMORY OF MANY FRIENDSHIPS

PREFACE

THERE seems to be, if I may be allowed to say so, a touch of
personal appropriateness in the fact that the writing of Sir
Joseph Hooker's Life has fallen to the son of his close friend.
The work has thus been doubly a labour of love and re-
membrance, and by good fortune it traverses a biographical
field some part of which hag already been worked over by me.
If, however, I cannot claim to be a professed student of botany,
something of my defect has been remedied by the kindness
of others. The proofs have been most carefully read through
by Sir David Prain, the present Director of Kew, and Miss
Matilda Smith, Kew's botanical artist, who moreover has
verified many references at Kew and supplied material for
biographical notes not easily accessible elsewhere.

Sir Joseph Hooker, for all that he accused himself on
occasion of being a bad correspondent, was in reality an
indefatigable letter writer. Indeed, he declares somewhere
that the busier he was, the longer and fuller his letters were
likely to be — and he was always busy. Apart from a vast
official correspondence and regular weekly letters to various
members of his family, there are extant over 700 sheets copied
from his letters to Charles Darwin, whose own share of the
correspondence, typed out, fills more than 800 pages. No other
single correspondence compares with this ; but it is easily
balanced by the total of letters to the next half dozen or
so among his multitudinous correspondents, to name only
Bentham and Harvey, Anderson and La Touche, Mr. Duthie
and my father. Add to this his journals of travel, his various
books, his scientific essays — the first written at nineteen, the

vii

viii PBEFACE

last at ninety-four — the material to draw upon has been
superabundant. Nor must the ' Life and Letters of Charles
Darwin' (briefly cited as C.D.) and the 'More Letters of
Charles Darwin ' (M.L.) be forgotten. They are a mine of
information about the scientific interests of the period and the
personal relations between the two friends, and my grateful
acknowledgments to Sir Francis Darwin are repeated here.

One more name must be mentioned in this place, a name
which also appears on the title-page. In gathering materials,
in collating letters, in furnishing personal information, the task
undertaken with such thoroughness by Lady Hooker has been
no light one. But if her careful ' spade-work ' has meant much
for the book, to the writer her active sympathy has meant
even more.

L. H.
October 1917.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIKST VOLUME

CHAPTER pAGB

I. EARLY DAYS 1

II. THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE : PRELIMINARIES . . .37

III. THE SOUTHERN JOURNEY AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE . 54

IV. THE VOYAGE or THE EREBUS AND TERROR: PASSING

IMPRESSIONS ....... 86

V. TASMANIA AND THE ANTARCTIC . . . • . .105

VI. SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE . .124

VII. THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE : PERSONAL . . . .152

VIII. RETURN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PARIS . .168

IX. EDINBURGH 191

X. THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 206

XI. THE VOYAGE TO INDIA 223

XII. JOURNEY TO THE KYMORE HILLS . . . .237

XIII. To DARJILING : THE FIRST HIMALAYAN JOURNEY . . 247

XIV. THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY . . . .285
XV. CAPTIVITY AND RELEASE 306

XVI. LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM 320

XVII. To THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS 332

XVIII. THE RETURN FROM INDIA 343

XIX BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PROSPECTS IN THE FIFTIES 366

ix

* CONTENTS OF THE PIEST VOLUME

CHAPTER PAGE

XX. SCIENCE TEACHING: EXAMINATIONS . . . .385

XXI. SCIENCE ORGANISATION: SOCIETIES, JOURNALS, AND

REWARDS ........ 405

XXII. MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860 421

XXIII. LETTERS TO DARWIN, 1843-1859 436

XXIV. ON SPECIES 465

XXV. THE MAKING or THE ' ORIGIN ' : SCIENCE AND FRIEND-

SHIP 486

XXVI. PUBLICATION OP THE ' ORIGIN ' AND THE ' INTRODUCTION

TO THE TASMANIAN FLORA' . , . 504

XXVII. THE JOURNEY TO PALESTINE AND THE WORK OF 1860 528

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO

THE FIKST VOLUME

J. D. HOOKER ....... Frontispiece

From the Portrait by George Richmond (1855).

AND THEE AT LAMTENQ To face p. 272

THE BOTANIST IN SIKKTM „ 233

From the Picture by William Tayler.

J. D. HOOKER AT THE AGE O-F 32 . . . . „ 340

From a Sketch by William Tayler, 1849,

LIFE OF
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER

CHAPTER I .

EARLY DAYS

A LIFE whose span is almost a century may well be witness

Errata.

P. 19, line 9. For Of Elizabeth's children, &c., read Elizabeth's
husband, Sir Francis Palgrave, became Keeper of the
Records. One of their sons, &c.

P. 67, line 21. For (II. 12.) read (p. 45).

Life of Sir J. Hooker. Vol. I.

UctiiitJib IJLLiJJUStJU Uy Hiin CDUCllLf.i.-l.o.LJ.CU. gu.-iu.VK> \jt. ujLLWigi-iu, »»j.j.vy

only permitted nature to be interpreted through the perspective
of creed.

Against those barriers the flood of natural knowledge had
been slowly piling itself up, only awaiting the hand that should
open a channel and a fresh impulse and a common direction
to these chained-up currents. Mechanical aids, such as the
magnifying lens, had opened the way to new investigations
of life since the seventeenth century. From the needs of

1

LIFE OF
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER

CHAPTEK I . . .

BAKLY DAYS

A LIFE whose span is almost a century may well be witness
of great changes : the ninety-four years of Sir Joseph Dalton
Hooker's life are the more intensely interesting because he
himself was one of the chief workers in bringing about such
changes. Indeed, the century almost covered by his life saw
a greater revolution than any of our era except, perhaps, that
of the Kenaissance. Once more the civilised world was born
anew : it was the century of the New Eenaissance. The
revolution in thought was paralleled by a revolution in the
means of civilised life. The two influences united in effecting
the most profound readjustments alike in social values and
in the outlook of the human mind. Power over nature
transformed the way of life : the insight into nature which
secured that power, equally freed inquiring minds from the
barriers imposed by the established guides of thought, who
only permitted nature to be interpreted through the perspective
of creed.

Against those barriers the flood of natural knowledge had
been slowly piling itself up, only awaiting the hand that should
open a channel and a fresh impulse and a common direction
to these chained -up currents. Mechanical aids, such as the
magnifying lens, had opened the way to new investigations
of life since the seventeenth century. From the needs of

1

2 EAELY DAYS

medicine sprang the organised knowledge both of botany and
of animal life : first the herbal and the history book of animals,
full of strange lore ; then the gradual searching out of living
framework and vital processes, which finally took rank and
order as the anatomy and physiology of animals and plants.
That these researches awakened doubts of the conventional
creeds as applied to nature is evidenced by the familiar sneer at
the dangerous folk who recognised the constancy of natural law
in the workings of the human frame — ubi ires medici, fbi duo
afhei. Chemistry began to emerge experimentally from the
mists of .JcHemy some half-century before Hooker's birth.
Ge'ology took operative shape yet later: with LyelTs * Principles '
in 1839 the frrst step was built of the stairway that actually led
to the theory of evolution. The succession of differing forms
of similar creatures in a fossil state provoked challenge of the,
doctrine of immutability of species ; indeed, as has been well
said, if the theory of evolution had not existed, Geology
would have had to invent it. By the fifties, also, botany,
in its search for a natural system of classification, was ripe
for the acceptance of an evolutionary explanation.

If the interest awakened by scientific men is proportioned
to the degree in which their researches and discoveries come
home to ' men's business and bosoms,' giving new colour or
shape to the eternal questions of the making of the heavens
and the earth, the nature of matter, the play of subtle forces,
the laws of life and disease, man's place in the universe, his
origin and his destiny, then in every province of physics and
astronomy, in medicine and its fellow sciences, the nineteenth
century saw great and memorable figures stand out : but most
memorable the central group, who, touching most nearly upon
life and its place in the universe, awoke the loudest opposition
and achieved the greatest triumph.

Charles Lyell pointed the way to Darwin : after the appear-
ance of the ' Origin of Species,' Thomas Henry Huxley was
chief champion in the support and spread of evolution on the
one hand, and, on the other, of freedom of scientific thought
and speech. It was Hooker's privilege to be Darwin's sole
confidant for near fifteen years, his generous friend, his unstint-

' A BOEN MUSCOLOGIST ' 3

ing helper, his keen critic, and ultimate convert in the light of
his own work and the material he could so abundantly furnish.

The story of Joseph Hooker's life-work is, in one aspect,
the history of the share taken by botany in establishing the
theory of evolution and the effect produced upon it by accept-
ance of that theory. He began with unrivalled opportunities,
and made unrivalled use of them. As a botanist, he was
born in the purple, for in the realm of botany his father, Sir
William Hooker, was one of the chief princes, and he had at hand
his father's splendid herbarium and the botanic garden which he
had made one of the scientific glories of Glasgow University.

Joseph Hooker's earliest recollections are preserved in an
autobiographical fragment, set down late in his life. Note-
worthy among the events that emerge from childish forgetful-
ness, like hill-tops above a sea of mist, is the early love of nature
and especially of plants, inborn in him and indeed inherited
from both lines of his parentage. His father and his mother's
father were both botanists, and singularly enough they both
began their studies as such with the mosses, quite independently
of one another ; so that, being confessedly ' a born Muscologist,'
he playfully dubs himself ' the puppet of Natural Selection.' 1

I was born [he writes] June 80, 1817, at Halesworth,
Suffolk, being the second child and son of William Jackson
Hooker and Maria, nee Turner, of Great Yarmouth. My
brother was older than myself and my parents had sub-
sequently three daughters. I was named Joseph after my
Grandfather Hooker, and Dalton after my godfather, the
Kev. James Dalton, M.A., F.L.S., Eector of Croft, York-
shire, a student of carices and mosses and discoverer of
Scheuchzeria in England.

My memory reverts to a very early age — when only three
years old to my father's house at Halesworth, and inci-
dents connected therewith, amongst others the gardener, in
mowing a damp meadow behind the house, slicing the frogs
with his scythe, and my brother running along the top of
the garden wall to my mother's alarm. He died in 1840.
Curiously enough I have no recollection of a magnificent dog,

1 Anniversary dinner of the Royal Society, Nov. 30, 1887.

EARLY DAYS

a Newfoundland I believe, that my father kept, and which
was notorious for its thefts from the butchers' shops of the
town.

My Grandfather Hooker's house in Magdalen Street,
Norwich, I remember even better, where my grandmother
used to show me the glazed drawers of his insect cabinet.
On leaving Halesworth for Glasgow, my father sold his insects
to Mr. Spar shall of that city, a well-known collector. The
collection is now in the Norwich Museum. Also I well re-
member his little garden and greenhouse of succulent plants,
and on seeing a Coccinella on a post, repeating to it the stave :

Bishop Bishop Barnabee
When will your marriage be ?
If it be to-morrow's day,
Take your wings and fly away.

Of my Grandfather Turner's house' in Yarmouth, I
remember being carried there in my nurse's arms early in
1821, on the eve of my mother taking myself, brother and
sisters to Glasgow, where my father, who had taken up
his Professorship in the previous summer, was awaiting us.
My grandfather occupied the house of Gurney's Bank, of
which he was a resident Director. I remember distinctly
the railings before the Bank, its drawing-room, and my
aunts' seizing me from my nurse, dancing with me round the
room, and striking the harp to amuse me. Also I remember
the walls of the room being covered with pictures of which
my grandfather had a small but very choice collection. This
collection was sold after my grandfather's death in 1858.
Some of the pictures, notably the Titian, a Hobbema and, I
think, a Greuze and one or more Cotmans are in the Wallace
Collection.

Of the journey from Yarmouth to Glasgow by post
horses I have a distinct recollection, during which my
mother caught ague in crossing the Fens, with which she was
troubled for many years. Of incidents I can only remember
my brother running to eat a cake of white soap, mistaking it
for an apple. I also distinctly remember the picturesque
place, Inn of Beattock Bridge, in Dumfriesshire, but why
I cannot tell.

My next memory is the arrival in Glasgow by night, and
going into lodgings (No. 1, Bath Street) which my father had

EABLY BOTANICAL INSTINCT 5

taken pending his obtaining possession of a new house which
he had purchased in West Bath Street (No. 17), in which
lodgings I found my Grandfather and Grandmother Hooker,
who had accompanied or followed my father to Glasgow
with a mass of furniture from the Halesworth and Norwich
houses, on some bedding from which I slept, for the first
night, on the floor.

Of the following years I have little of note to record
beyond having an excellent governess, a Miss Turnbull, of
whom I was very fond, and a mild attack of scarlet fever
when I was six. No doubt I had other illnesses of childhood,
as I had the credit of being the leader in contracting them.

At the age of five or six, my early leaning towards botany
was shown by a love of mosses, and my mother used to tell an
anecdote of me, that, when I was still in petticoats, I was
found grubbing in a wall in the dirty suburbs of the dirty
city of Glasgow, and that, when she asked me what I was
about, I cried out that I had found Bryum argenteum (which
it was not), a very pretty little moss I had seen in my
father's collection, and to which I had taken a great fancy.1

At a later period, when still in my early teens, I took up
the study of these beautiful objects, and formed a good
collection of the Scottish species in the Highlands and
elsewhere ; and my first effort as an author was the descrip-
tion of three new mosses from the Himalaya.2

Of this early love of botany and kindred eagerness for travel,
he continues in the Koyal Society speech already quoted :

A little older, and when still a child, my father used to
take me excursions in the Highlands, where I fished a good
deal, but also botanised ; and well I remember on one
occasion, that, after returning home, I built up by a heap of
stones a representation of one of the mountains I had ascended,
and stuck upon it specimens of the mosses I had collected
on it, at heights relative to those at which I had gathered
them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany.

Another little circumstance connected with a moss had
also its influence on my future career. You may remember

1 This is the better version of the tale, as given in the Royal Society speech
above mentioned.
8 See p. 22.

VOL. I. B

6 EAELY DAYS

a passage in Mungo Park's ' Travels ' in search of the source
of the Niger, when he describes himself so faint with hunger
and fatigue, that he laid himself down to die ; but being
attracted by the brilliant green of a little moss on the bank
hard by, said to himself: If God cares for the life of that
little moss, He surely will not let me perish in the desert.
Park put a piece of it in his pocket-book, and, fortified by
the thought, went on his way. He soon, arrived at a hut
occupied by poor black women, who fed him, and sang
him to sleep with impromptu words, pitying the poor white
man far away from his home and friends.1 A scrap of that
moss was given to my father by Mungo Park, or a friend
of his, and was shown to me. It excited in me a desire to
read African travels, and I indulged in the childish dream
of entering Africa by Morocco, crossing the greater Atlas
(that had never been ascended) and so penetrating to Tim-
buctoo. That childish dream I never lost ; I nursed it
till, half a century afterwards, when, as your President has
told you to-day, I did (with my friend Mr. Ball, who is
here by me, and another friend, G. Maw, F.L.S.), ascend
to the summit of the previously unconquered Atlas.
iv When still a child, I was very fond of Voyages and
Travels ; and my great delight was to sit on my grand-
father's knee and look at the pictures in Cook's * Voyages.'
The one that took my fancy most was the plate of Christmas
Harbour, Kerguelen Land, with the arched rock standing
out to sea, and the sailors killing penguins ; and I thought
I should be the happiest boy alive if ever I would see that
wonderful arched rock, and knock penguins on the head.
By a singular coincidence, Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen
Land, was one of the very first places of interest visited by
me, in the Antarctic Expedition under Sir James Boss.

' The spirit of a youth that means to be of note, begins
betimes/ and heredity and early training are strong among
the directing factors for such a spirit. As has been said,
Hooker's father, William Jackson Hooker, was one of the first
botanists of his age ; his grandfather, Joseph Hooker, spent
much of his leisure in the cultivation of rare plants ; his

1 The incident of the moss occurs in chapter xix of Park's Travels, after
he had been robbed by a party of Foulahs ; the negro women's compassion
is an earlier incident of chapter *v.

THE HOOKEE ANCESTEY 7

maternal grandfather, Dawson Turner, of Yarmouth, banker,
botanist, and antiquarian, was especially interested in the cryp-
togams, made collections, and published sumptuous volumes.

The Hookers, who claimed lineal descent from John Hooker,
alias Vowell, the historian, and uncle of Eichard, the * Judicious/
author of the ' Ecclesiastical Polity/ were a Devonshire family
settled in Exeter, who dropped their original name of Vowell
in the sixteenth century.

There is a very old parchment genealogical tree taken from
the Heralds' College in 1597, continued since and completed
from other sources, which traces the Hooker ancestry for
five centuries. The first name of the series, Seraph Vowell,
hailing from Pembroke, suggests a Welsh origin in Ap-Howell.
The second in descent, Jago Vowell, marries Alice Hooker,
daughter and heiress of Eichard Hooker of Hurst Castle,
Hampshire, whose family name is adopted with his own.
Hence the constant repetition in the genealogy of ' Vowell
alias Hooker.'

Though offshoots of the Hookers, especially after the
Civil War, are found as successful traders at Crediton or as
far afield as London, where one became Lord Mayor, the Hooker
family is most closely associated with Exeter, where it is
still represented. Thus a John Hooker was M.P. for Exeter
in 1470 ; Eobert Hooker, youngest born and sole survivor of
twenty brothers and sisters, in 1529, and his son, another John,
in 1571. This latter John was the first Chamberlain of Exeter,
and wrote a book on the antiquities of Exeter, still preserved
in the city archives. He exemplified the active business
capacity of many of his name by founding the first ' Guild of
Merchant Adventurers ' under a charter from Queen Mary.
It was not long before the Devon Merchant Adventurers were
typified by his kinsman, John Oxenham, Drake's comrade,
and the first Englishman to sail on the Pacific. Adventure
also took John Hooker with Sir Peter Carew to Ireland, where
he became a member of the Irish Parliament in 1568.

But the world owes him a greater debt. He supplied the
means for educating his nephew Eichard, the ' Judicious '
Hooker. Next after the Chamberlain comes the Vicar of

8 EAKLY DAYS

Caerhayes in Cornwall, from whose son Valentine the modern
Hooker family traces its descent. Post-Keformation Hookers
tended to Puritanism. In the Laudian persecutions the Eev.
Thomas Hooker escaped to America, and there founded a
family which has won its own meed of distinction in Church
and State. ' Fighting Joe Hooker,' for instance, gained his
by-name in the War of North and South.

Another Hooker is recorded as fighting under Fairfax
and Essex in our own Civil War, afterwards settling down at
Crediton.

Among the 2000 clergy who were driven from their livings
after the Act of Uniformity were several Hookers. One is
mentioned as minister of the Presbyterian chapel at Crediton,
another at Chumleigh. The chapel registers show that many
of the name became Nonconformists. Zeal for the Protestant
cause led some to join in Monmouth's ill-starred rebellion ;
those who escaped the scaffold at Exeter ended their lives
as slaves in Barbados.1

The Joseph Hooker already mentioned, seventh in descent
from John, migrated from Exeter and set up in business at
Norwich, where his son William Jackson was born in 1785.
Lydia Vincent, Joseph Hooker's wife, claims special notice for
her artistic heritage. George Vincent,2 her cousin, studied under
' Old Crome ' with Cotman3 and J. B. Crome, and during his short
career, was one of the lights of the Norwich School. Lydia's
sister had married William Jackson of Canterbury — indeed
Jacksons and Vincents intermarried for several generations —
and their only son was godfather to his cousin William Jackson
Hooker, to whom he afterwards left the Jackson property.

1 Based on Devon Worthies, by the late Robert H. Hooker of Weston-super-
Mare, who erected the beautiful statue of the Judicious Hooker in the Cathedral
Close at Exeter.

a George Vincent (1796-1836 ?), the landscape painter, was born and edu-
cated in Norwich. A pupil of John Crome, he exhibited, chiefly Norfolk views,
at Norwich between 1811 and 1831, and in London 1814-31, where he lived
from 1818. His etchings date between 1821 and 1827.

3 John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was a landscape and portrait painter,
chiefly in water-colours. He studied in London in 1798 and exhibited there
1800-6 and again 1825-39. He was Drawing Master in Norwich 1807-34,
and in King's Coll., London, 1834-42 ; etched plates of Norfolk buildings and
antiquities 1811-39, and published etchings of ' Architectural Antiquities of
Normandy ' made in 1817-20 (see vol. ii. p. 197).

WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKEK 9

The Vincent strain is responsible for Joseph Hooker's
great feeling for art. The power of draughtsmanship came
also from the Cotmans through his mother, Maria Turner, for
her grandmother (Dawson Turner's mother) was Elizabeth
Cotman, but the faculty thus transmitted was that of the
copyist rather than the art-lover.

William Jackson Hooker, inheriting love of the garden
and books from his father, of art from his mother, was one of
those who came into the world with the true spirit of the
naturalist, a characteristic he transmitted in full measure to
his son. Like all such, his love for the outdoor world took
him into field and wood and intimacy with the life of nature ;
in his school-days he collected insects and flowers and read
books on natural history, and early got to know the flowers
and mosses, the liverworts and lichens and freshwater algae
round his home in the heart of that county which possesses
two-thirds of the species of British plants. No sordid cares,
such as often overshadow a young man's future, prevented
him from indulging his bent ; for at the age of four he
inherited a competency from his cousin -godfather, William
Jackson of Canterbury, and as he grew up, he resolved to
devote himself to travel and natural history. A keen sports-
man, he made a fine collection of the birds of Norfolk ; close
relations with Kir by and Spence x and Alexander Macleay 2
spurred his pursuit of entomology.

His science and his scientific drawing both won early notice.
When he was twenty he discovered, near Norwich, a species
of moss (Buxbaumia aphylld) previously unknown in Britain ;
and three years later Sir J. E. Smith, in dedicating to him the
genus Hookeria, made special mention of his illustrations of
Dawson Turner's Fuci and of the difficult genus Jungermannia.
The latter genus, be it noted, was an especial favourite of his.
He published a monograph on the British Jungermannise

1 William Kirby (1759-1850), entomologist, nephew of J. J. Kirby : edu-
cated at Caius Coll., Cambridge, was an original Fellow of the Linnean Society
1788. He published a famous Introduction to Entomology (1815-26) with
William Spence (1783-1860), F.R.S. 1818, Hon. President of the Entomological
Society, to which he bequeathed his collection of insects.

1 Alexander Macleay (1767-1848), F.R.S. 1809, entomologist and Colonial
Statesman ; was Colonial Secretary foi New South Wales 1825-37.

10 EAELY DAYS

in 1816, and, as will be seen hereafter, his son, finding any on
his travels, never fails to mention the fact in his letters home.

In his earlier days, William Hooker travelled afield botanis-
ing in Scotland and the Isles, no slight undertaking in 1807
and 1808 ; and in 1809 made his celebrated voyage to Iceland,
where he witnessed a bloodless revolution (see p. 108), and on
his homeward way lost his collections and all but lost his life
by the burning of his ship. But he was unable to carry out
his wider plans of visiting Ceylon and Java, S. Africa and Brazil,
though he visited France, where he made acquaintance with the
great botanists in Paris and Switzerland, a centre of botanical
and geological interest.

In 1815 he married Maria, the eldest daughter of his friend
Dawson Turner, and at his father-in-law's advice, embarked
his remaining fortune in a brewery, in which the Turners and
Fagets were interested. This promised to recoup the loss of
large sums which he had sunk in the bottomless depths of the
Spanish Funds. It was an enterprise, however, for which his
aptitudes were little suited, and the business went steadily
down. But this loss of fortune was the beginning of his greater
career. Had the friendly alliance of Hooker, Turner, and Paget
prospered, he would have remained an amateur — if a distin-
guished amateur — in science, and would never have achieved
the special eminence which was to shape his son's career and
be continued in it. A growing family and diminishing revenue
made him look out for some botanical post that should both give
scope to his special powers and bring in an income. Through
the influence of his friend Sir Joseph Banks,1 botanist, explorer,

1 Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), President of the Royal Society, became
a botanist in a burst of schoolboy enthusiasm. His ample inheritance enabled
him to travel and to become a munificent patron of science. His most famous
expedition was that with Captain Cook in the Endeavour, when he took with
him, at his own expense, Dr. Solander, the pupil of Linnaeus, two draughtsmen,
and two attendants. In 1778 he was elected P.R.S., and held the office till
his death, exercising a generous but rather autocratic sway over the scientific
world, for whom his great collections and library were always open, and his
house in Soho Square a gathering point. He left his library and herbarium
to Robert Brown, his librarian, for life, with reversion to the British Museum,
not only leaving him £200 a year, but providing for the famous draughtsman,
Franjis Bauer, during his life, that he might continue his drawings from new
plants at Kew. As scientific adviser to George III, he also arranged for
collectors to gather plants for Kew from abroad.

SIB W. J. HOOKER AT GLASGOW 11

and chief power in the official world of English science, he was
appointed by the Crown in 1820 to the newly founded Chair of
Botany in Glasgow, in succession to Dr. Graham,1 who, after
occupying it a couple of years from its foundation, had been
appointed to Edinburgh.

Here Sir William met with immediate and striking success.
He established a flourishing school of botany ; raised the infant
botanical garden to the front rank, supplying it, and his her-
barium with the products of every country with which the
trading community of Glasgow was in touch. The experience
gathered in Glasgow prepared his signal success in after .years
at Kew. Here, therefore, his sons grew up in an atmosphere
of natural science, whether class- work or field-work, of long-
drawn and unceasing industry, of contact with distinguished
workers in natural history in general and botany in particular.

The Professor [writes Prof. F. 0. Bower in his Com-
memorative Oration] had established himself in Woodside
Crescent, conveniently near to the garden, and doubtless
his little son was familiar with it and its contents from
childhood. He grew up in an atmosphere surcharged with
the very science he was to do so much to advance.
His father's home was the scene of manifold activities.
It housed a rapidly growing private herbarium and
museum. It was there that the drawings were made to illus-
trate the amazing stream of descriptive works which Sir
William was then producing. New species must have been
almost daily under examination, often as living specimens.
Between the garden and the house the boy must have
witnessed constantly, during the most receptive years of
childhood, the working of an establishment that was at
that time without its equal in this country, or probably in
any other. The eye and memory will have been trained
almost unconsciously. A knowledge of plants would be

1 Robert Graham (1786-1845), M.D. He practised some years in Glasgow,
and in 1818, when a separate chair of botany was established at the University,
was appointed the first professor. In 1820 he became regius professor at
Edinburgh, being succeeded at Glasgow by Sir William Hooker, with whom
he had a scientific and personal friendship. Joseph Hooker, in turn, was within
a little of succeeding him at Edinburgh, for he remained a close friend of the
Hookers, often joining in Sir William's botanical excursions, and when he fell
ill in 1846, he secured Joseph Hooker as his substitute and prospective successor.

12 EAELY DAYS

acquired as a natural consequence of the surroundings,
and without effort entailed by study in later years. Sir
Joseph once said to me : ' You young men do not know
your plants.' Certainly we did not in the way that he
knew them. Few have ever known, few ever will know
them in that way. Such knowledge comes only from
growing up with them from earliest childhood, as he did.

The influence of Sir William's teaching, with its personal
stimulus, its wealth of illustration by specimens and diagrams,
its fostering of accurate observation and its botanising excur-
sions, is well described in his son's own words taken from the
address delivered at the opening of the Botanical Laboratory
in Glasgow 1901. We see the boy sharing in these excursions
long before he was a regular student at his father's lectures.

It was a bold venture for my Father to undertake so re-
sponsible an office, for he had never lectured, or even attended
a course of lectures. But he had resources that enabled him
to overcome all obstacles — familiarity with his subject,
devotion to its study, energy, eloquence, a commanding
presence with urbanity of manners, and, above all, the
art of making the student love the science he taught. But
his energies were not confined to lecturing. Feeling the
want of a manual on the Scottish Flora to put into the
students' hands, he published, in time for use in his second
course, the * Flora Scotica,' in two volumes, the outcome
mainly of his earlier Scottish expeditions ; and in readiness
for his third course he produced, at his own cost, and from
drawings made by himself, an oblong folio of twenty-one
lithographed plates, with descriptions of the organs, etc.,
of upwards of three hundred plants. A copy of this work
was placed before every two students in the class during
that portion of the day's lecture which was devoted to the
analysis of plants, obtained from the garden and placed
in the students' hands for this purpose. I should mention
that every student was expected to provide himself with
a pocket lens, knife, and pair of forceps, aided with which
he followed the demonstrations of the professor. I think
it may fairly be said that these early lectures heralded the
dawn of scientific botanical teaching in Glasgow University.

Another claim upon the professor's energies was due

HIS BOTANICAL TEACHING 18

to the fact that the botanical class was in a great measure
ancillary to that of Materia Medica, a practical know-
ledge of which latter subject was at that time required
of candidates for a medical degree, diploma, or licence
by, I believe, all the examining bodies in the United
Kingdom.

Now the Glasgow students of botany were, with a few
exceptions, preparing themselves for the medical profession,
and a considerable proportion of them at that time looked
forward to service in the army, navy, India, and the colonies,
where they would be thrown on their own resources for
ascertaining the quality of their drugs, which had either under-
gone a long voyage from England or had to be replaced by
such substitutes as the practitioner's knowledge of botany
might enable him to discover. The professor hence devoted
much time to teaching the botanical characters of the
principal medical and economic plants. To this end he made
large coloured drawings of them in flower, fruit, etc., which
were hung in the class-room when the natural orders to which
they belonged were being demonstrated, and he passed round
dried specimens of them taken from his herbarium, or living
ones from the garden when they were to be had, together
with samples of the drugs or other products which they
yielded.

It remains to allude to the class excursions, which have
always been, and still happily are, a prominent feature of the
botanical teaching in the Scottish Universities. Of these
there were three : two, on Saturdays, were habitually to
Campsie Glen and Bowling Bay respectively. The third,
which was eagerly looked forward to by the most ardent of
the students, took place at the end of June. It was to some
good botanising ground in the Western Highlands. As many
as thirty students have taken part in these larger excursions,
each provided with as small a kit as possible, a vasculum, and
apparatus for drying plants. They were often accompanied
by students from Edinburgh, and sometimes by eminent
botanists, British and foreign. In those days there were few
inns in the Western Highlands, and fewer coaches, and the
roads were bad. On one of my father's first excursions he
provided a marquee to hold the party, which was transported
in a Dutch wagon drawn by a Highland pony ; and for
supplies the party depended on the flocks and fowls of the

14 EABLY DAYS

cottagers. On the first excursion on which I was taken,
when a boy, to Loch Lomond, there was no inn at Tarbet,
and we all slept there in our clothes, on heather spread on the
floor of a cottage ; on another occasion when I was allowed
to join the party (more for fishing than for botanising) on an
excursion to Killin, we walked the whole way from the head
of Loch Lomond along the old military road made in the
previous century by General Wade, eulogised in the well-
known distich :

If you'd seen these roads before they were made,

You'd have lift up your hands and blessed General Wade.

If I were asked what I regarded as of most importance to
the student in the manner of my father's teaching as sketched
above, I would answer that it taught the art of exact observa-
tion and reasoning therefrom, a schooling of inestimable
value for the medical man, and one that is given in no other
profession, but which ought to come, in this country, as it
does in Germany, early in the education of every child.
I have met many of my father's pupils abroad, in India, and
the colonies, who have told me that these botanical lectures
gave them the first ideas they had ever entertained of there
being a natural classification of the members of the vegetable
kingdom. Then with regard to the results, in a botanical
point of view, the magnetism of the lecturer and the interest
of the subject imbued many of his pupils with a love of science
that proved permanent and fruitful. They made observa-
tions and collections for their quondam professor in the tem-
perate or tropical climates of both hemispheres, some of
them throughout their lives, which have very largely con-
tributed to a knowledge of the flora and vegetable resources
of the globe.

Not only was Sir William Hooker a great teacher and
administrator, but a most prolific writer. His writings were
unequalled in the number and accuracy of the plates with
which they were illustrated. The number of these his son
estimated at 8000, of which 1800 were from his own drawings.
His systematic work covered a wide range, and, apart from
its intrinsic value, has a peculiar interest here in its relation
to the systematic work of his son. His publications on the

WOKK OF THE ELDEE HOOKEK 15

plants of Parry's and Sabine's l Arctic voyages and on the
botany of Beechey's voyage to Behring Strait, the Pacific,
and China, compare with his son's Antarctic and Australian
work. His ' Flora Boreali- Americana,' his ' British Flora,' his
'Niger Flora ' are paralleled by work in the same fields. His ten
books on ferns — for he was the leading pteridologist of his
time — prelude Joseph Hooker's interest in the cryptogams,
while the great series of the * Icones Plantarum,' begun in
1837 to illustrate new and rare plants selected from the
author's herbarium, which later became the nucleus of the
great Kew Herbarium, was continued under his son and suc-
cessor at Kew, thanks to the bequest left for this purpose
by Bentham.

For the most part this work of his was a labour of love, often
involving financial responsibility as well. Generous to others,
and enthusiastic for his work, he thought little of his own
interests in comparison with the scientific privileges offered
by the position at Kew. He drew upon his private means, not
only for his books, but for the ceaseless succession of botanical
magazines of which he undertook the editorship, in order to
secure a channel for recording the immense variety of new
facts that came before him as director of large and expanding
botanical gardens, facts needing to be set on record, though
too scattered and disconnected for publication in anything
but a ' miscellany.'

Joseph Hooker's mother, Maria Turner, brought another
strongly marked strain of character and capacity into his

1 Sir Edward Sabine, K.C.B. (1788-1883), saw active service in the American
war of 1812, but after 1816 devoted nearly all his life to science, especially
astronomy and terrestrial magnetism. For his researches on these subjects
when in the Arctic with Ross and Parry he received the Copley medal in 1821,
and subsequently extended his researches half across the world. He, assisted
by Ross and others, made the first systematic magnetic survey of the British
Isles, and, paying a visit to Berlin, prompted Humboldt to urge the establish-
ment of magnetic observatories throughout the British Empire in connection
with those already established elsewhere by other Governments, a proposal
which led to Ross's Antarctic expedition. Sabine was President of the Royal
Society from 1861-71 ; he had been general secretary of the British Associa-
tion 1839-59, except in 1852, when he was President. His magnum opus,
which included a complete statement of the magnetic survey of the globe,
extended over thirty-six years from 1840, in his series of ' Contributions to
Terrestrial Magnetism ' in the Philosophical Transactions of the Eoyal Society.

16 EAELY DAYS

inheritance. She was an accomplished woman, who not only
shared her husband's tastes, but by her well-cultivated gifts
was able to enter into his pursuits. Their outlook on life was
similar, for both had been bred in the evangelical tradition,
which she perhaps preserved the more rigidly. Like him,
she had a love for music and art, and a keen interest in the
sciences affected by her father, especially botany. She was
widely read, and wrote with a facile pen • steeped in all the
copious rotundity of the Johnsonian school. From the Turner
side, no doubt, she transmitted something of the business
faculty that was to stand her son in good stead when he came*
to deal with men and affairs.

Similarity of tastes and interests had first drawn
together Dawson Turner and W. J. Hooker. The younger
man .was speedily impressed by the great vigour and strong
character of the elder, admiring his practicality the more for
being himself careless of selfish interests in the enthusiasm
of his pursuits. For the rest of his life Dawson Turner became
his scientific friend, his intimate correspondent, his business
mentor. Dawson Turner, indeed, won well-deserved success
alike as banker, author, botanist, and archaeologist. His mother,
Elizabeth Cotman, brought him an artistic heritage. On his
father's side, business and scholarship had been grafted upon
a solid yeoman stock of Norfolk. For nearly two and a half
centuries since the first Turner bought his modest acres at
Kennington in 1570, these passed from father to son.

At the end of the seventeenth century, a younger son,
Francis (1681-1719), was bred to the law, and settled in Yar-
mouth, where he married the daughter of the Town Clerk,
Thomas Godfrey, and with obvious propriety succeeded to
his office in 1710.

His only son was another Francis, who took Orders, married
Sarah Dawson, and had four sons : (1) Francis, an eminent
surgeon ; (2) Joseph, who was Senior Wrangler in 1768, then
Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and ultimately Dean
of Norwich ; (3) Eichard, who, through the influence of his
brother the Dean, became incumbent of Great Yarmouth.; and
(4) James, who became the resident partner in the firm of

THE TURNER FAMILY 17

Gurney & Co. when they opened a branch of their Norwich'
bank at Great Yarmouth.

This James Turner married, as has been mentioned, Eliza-
beth Cotman, and gave his mother's family name to his son
Dawson (6. 1775).

Dawson Turner, as might be expected, went to Pembroke
College, where his uncle was Master ; but in his second year his
father died, and he had to leave the University and take his
place at the bank. But business did not exclude letters. As
banker and author he was a forerunner of Grote and Bagehot
and Lubbock. His library, his collection of autographs, his
small but choice gallery of pictures, were all notable.

As early as 1797 he became a Fellow of the Linnean
Society, and later, of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal
Society.1

* Through the Turner connexion the Hookers gained several
interesting cousinships — notably with the Palgrave family.
Dawson Turner married Mary Palgrave (1774-1850), second
daughter of William Palgrave, of Coltishall, and Elizabeth
Thirkettle. Her younger sister, Anne Palgrave (1777-1872),
married Edward Rigby, M.D., of Coltishall. Three of the
Rigby daughters were married in Esthonia : Anne (1804-69)
to George de Wahl, Maria Justina (1808-89) to Baron Robert
de Rosen, Gertrude (1813-59) to Theophile de Rosen ;
Gertrude's daughter, again, in 1860 married General Mander-
stjerna, and the rest of her children married and remained in
Russia. These second cousins of his welcomed Joseph Hooker
on his visit to St. Petersburg in 1869.

Another Rigby daughter, Elizabeth (1809-93), married
Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A. She was a close and life-
long friend of her cousin Joseph. Matilda, the eighth child
and youngest of the Rigbys, married James Smith. Their

1 Dawson Turner publishe.d important illustrated works on the British
Fuci, the Mosses of Ireland, and especially the Natural History of Fuci,
1808-19, and, with L. W. Dillwyn, The Botanist's Guide through England and
Wales, 1805. Later he devoted himself especially to art and antiquities.
He wrote largely on the archaeology of Norfolk and Suffolk, inter alia ' Granger-
ising ' Blomefield's History of Norfolk with 2000 drawings. His chief archseo-
logical work was his Account of a Tour in Normandy, with fifty etchings by his
wife and daughters and John Cotman,

18

TUENEKS AND PALGEAVES 19

daughter, Matilda, is the skilful botanical artist who succeeded
Walter Fitch as illustrator at Kew.

Dawson Turner's eldest daughter, as we have seen, married
W. J. Hooker. His second daughter, Elizabeth, married that
Francis Cohen who on his marriage assumed the name of
Palgrave with the consent of her uncles, the two surviving
sons of William Palgrave, and last male representatives of
the family.

Of Elizabeth's children Sir Francis Palgrave became Keeper
of the Eecords. One of his sons, Francis Turner Palgrave,
is in perpetual memory as editor of the Golden Treasury ;
another was William Gifford Palgrave, the famous traveller
in the East ; another, Sir E. H. Inglis Palgrave, banker and
writer on financial subjects ; and the fourth, Sir Eeginald
Palgrave, Clerk to the House of Commons. To all these first
cousins Joseph Hooker was warmly attached, and with Inglis
Palgrave especially, who constantly advised him on business
matters, he kept up a lifelong correspondence, albeit a
correspondence which seldom lends itself to quotation for
general purposes.

Of the rest of the Turner family Harriett (1806-69) was
the author of ' Letters from Holland.' She married, 1830,
Eev. John Gunn, President of the Geological Society,
Norwich.

Hannah Sarah (1808-82) made sixty portraits from
drawings on stone, and fifty-one drawings for the ' Outlines
in Lithography ' for private circulation. She married, 1839,
Thomas Brightwen of Great Yarmouth.

Eleanor Jane (1811-95) was an accomplished classical
scholar. She married, 1836, Eev. Wm. Jacobson, D.D., Bishop
of Chester.

Gurney (1813-48) married, 1844, Mary Anne Hamilton.

Dawson William (1815-85) Headmaster of the Eoyal
Institution, Liverpool, married Ophelia Dixon.

The atmosphere in which the young Hookers grew up was
one not only of strenuous work, but also of a certain austerity
in moral and religious training, recalling the Puritan trend
of J)heir forbears. In daily example they saw that their

20 EAELY DAYS

father rose early, worked late, and seldom went out to enter-
tainments. Like his "wife, he was, as has been said, a strong
Evangelical, seeing the hand of an overruling Providence in
every turn of events, and accepting bereavements, or the
prospect of them, with a pious resignation coloured by the
warm conviction of future reunion. In the letters of both
husband and wife, hopes for the future are regularly ex-
pressed with the pious qualification ' if God wills,' and
present sorrows borne as * the will of God.' Speculative
thought beyond evangelical limits had no part in this house-
hold ; they and theirs should uphold their own observances
boldly before ' the scoffer and the sceptic.' The children
were brought up simply, strictly, without indulgence — it
seems, indeed, with some measure of rigidity — to be 'God-
fearing, honourable, hardworking members of their society.
If the outlook was in some respects narrow, compensation lay
in the intellectual activities that found scope in varied scientific
pursuits, in drawing and some music, and intercourse with men
distinguished in science and travel. There is an obvious danger
of young folk becoming priggish and didactic under such
conditions, which tend to isolate them from the ordinary
boys and girls of their world and to make them despise the
thoughtless amusements and unfruitful occupations of their
fellows ; the saving salt for the young Hookers lay in their
real enthusiasm for living pursuits and the freshness of their
interests.

The family was five in number : William Dawson, Joseph's
senior by fifteen months (b. April 4, 1816, d. January 1, 1840) ;
Joseph Dalton, b. June 30, 1817; Maria, b. May 8, 1819;
Elizabeth, b. November 15, 1820 ; and Mary Harriette, b.
October 2, 1825, who died of consumption on June 19, 1841.

Keferences to these early days are scattered and fragmentary.
It is very clear that a strain of delicacy ran through the family,
which showed itself in susceptibility to consumption. Joseph
as an infant was * croaky Joe,' with a tendency to cough and
croupy hoarseness ; William, shortly after his early marriage,
was threatened with the disease, and was therefore sent to make
a home and a medical career in Jamaica, where he was carried

HOME LIFE 21

off by yellow fever, January 1, 1840. Then came nearly two
years' painful anxiety over the two youngest sisters, who
were at school in London under Mrs. Teed, at Little Campden
House. A few weeks after Joseph set sail in the Erebus,
in the autumn of 1839, Elizabeth fell ill, and had to winter at
Hastings under the care of a great-aunt, Mrs. Walford Taylor,
and to undergo a course of treatment in the next summer under
Dr. Jephson at Leamington, where she was joined by Mary
Harriette at the beginning of the holidays in July. Worse
followed. On reaching Glasgow, Elizabeth fell back ; Mary
was found to be very ill. With some difficulty they were taken
to Jersey at the end of September. Lady Hooker nursed
them with the help of her capable and devoted eldest daughter ;
after much suffering, Elizabeth recovered, Mary Harriette
slowly faded away.

Brothers and sisters were warmly attached to one another.
Joseph's affections were not spread afield ; they were the more
intense for being concentrated upon his family circle — ' the
seven persons I really love ' — and a few other friends. Writing
home from the Antarctic after receiving the news of his brother's
and sister's death, he accuses himself of the fault of selfishness.
More justly, perhaps, he would have used the word self-centred ;
he always has the full sympathy of his correspondents, and his
own letters show abundant care for those dear to him.

The home regime was sufficiently firm. Sir William, courtly,
handsome, attractive, perhaps laid weight mainly on the duty
of pure motive and honourable conduct ; Lady Hooker was
also a strict disciplinarian and a stickler for the forms of
reverence which the manners of her young days demanded of
children for their parents. When Joseph, for instance, came
in from school after a long and tiring walk home, he must
present himself to his mother, but was not allowed to sit down
in her presence without permission, and was kept standing
until it was clear that discipline had conquered inclination.

In their boyish days, William, the firstborn, was clearly
the mother's favourite. He was the more clever, lively, and
forthcoming. In Lady Hooker's letters to her father, Dawson
Turner, Joseph as a rule appears rather as the plodder without

VOL. I n

22 EAKLY DAYS

his brother's brilliancy. William, however, with all his
quickness and cleverness, had a vein of instability. The contrast
between the brothers in the matter of perseverance shows
itself from the first, and Joseph's determination to master
whatever he undertook calls forth his mother's just praise.
Later, William made a large collection of birds, while Joseph
collected insects and plants. William won his literary spurs
at one-and -twenty by printing for private circulation his ' Notes
on Norway,' the account of a trip to Scandinavia ; while
Joseph, in the same year, first appeared in print with the de-
scription of three new mosses from the Himalaya in the
'Icones Plantarum ' (ii. 194).

The boys went to Glasgow High School, where they received
the old-fashioned, liberal, Scottish education — an education
that culminates in the Arts' degree for proficiency in Latin
and Greek, mathematics, logic and English literature, and
moral philosophy. In after life Hooker thought the moral
philosophy course had been of little value to him ; his classical
studies, however, were not lost even from an utilitarian point
of view, and he remained always able to write Latin easily.

* Sir William and Lady Hooker's letters to Dawson Turner
afford a few glimpses into the boys' school-days. Thus Lady
Hooker writes on June 9, 1824, after a description of Willy's
lessons — to our great astonishment that little boys of seven
and eight should attend a college lecture on botany :

He and Joseph accompany their father, with Frank and
Kobert,1 'to the lecture every morning. It is fine exercise
for them, and they return to breakfast at half-past nine
o'clock, as hungry almost as my sisters and brothers used
to be. I think that Joseph would be the child to please
you in his learning. He is extremely industrious, though
not very clever. Willy can learn the faster if he chooses,
but while his elder brother sets his very heart against his
lessons, Joseph bends all his soul and spirit to the task
before him.

1 Frank Garden and Robert Monteith lived with the Hookers for some
four years, studying at Glasgow before proceeding to Cambridge (in 1827).
' Our two eldest boys,' Sir William calls them : they were eight or nine years
older than his own boys.

EAELY EDUCATION 28

And on December 21, 1824, she hopes that the grand-
father's note accompanying a present will have a stimu-
lating effect on the grandson who so little inherits his
disposition ; for :

Willy is sadly negligent with regard to his lessons,
especially his Latin ones. If we could but inspire him with
a little emulation he would make great progress, for when
any sufficient inducement occurs, he learns remarkably
quickly and far outstrips his brother ; but generally he is
content to let Joseph get before him ; and though we caress
the latter and slight Willy [the modern mother, we hope,
does not adopt this method of arousing emulation], yet
William is not in the least jealous, but loves his brother
as dearly as if he were not his superior.

Education, indeed, wore a stern face in those days. Poor
Willy !

I wish that I could tell you that your eldest grandson
had inherited from his grandsire a little taste for learning
languages. But ever since we returned from Yarmouth,
the lessons, especially those in Latin, have been a per-
petual source of sorrow both to the teacher and to the
teachee (I wish I could say to the learner). Writing and
arithmetic are the only departments of his education in
which Willy has made any progress. But during the last
ten days, a new light has seemed to dawn upon the child's
mind. [He has made many good resolutions, couched in
picturesque scriptural phrases.] We shall see how long
they will last, but you may be sure that we bestow all
manner of caresses and encouragement upon him. Indeed,
we are ourselves happy in an opportunity to show a little
kindness towards the poor child, who has lately received
from us nothing but reproof and punishment.

Again, in 1828, Joseph being just eleven, his father writes :

I wish you could bring the dear boy Gurney with you,
and let him go to Killin in June with me and see Launden
Cameron and climb the Breadalbane mountains. . . . Last
year I took Willy the same route, and this year I think

24 EAELY DAYS

of taking both him and Joseph. [Gurney and Dawson,
by the way, Dawson Turner's sons, were almost of an age
with William Hooker, being but three years and one year
older respectively, and so more like cousins than uncles to
the boys.]

In 1829 : They make very fair progress with their
tutor (who coached them in Latin) and are much more
inclined to like lessons than they used to be.

1829 : The boys beg to thank you for your kind present
of ' The Boys' Own Book ' ; it is seldom out of their hands
during playtime.

In after life Sir Joseph often talked of how he loved this
book, and read it and consulted it.

In 1831 comes the first mention of their repeated stay at
Helensburgh so that the children may have country air and
liberty. Burnside was a delightful memory ; but even more
beloved was Invereck, and it became their country home in
1837. Indeed, when it came into the market in the late
seventies, Hooker would have bought it had it not been so
far from Kew.

As at thirteen, ' Joseph is becoming a zealous botanist/ so
at fifteen, 'Joseph is contented and happy at home, and studying
Orchideaa most zealously.'

In 1832, when the boys were sixteen and fifteen respectively,
they entered Glasgow University, with four sets of lectures
each, all in Latin and Greek for Joseph.

Joseph has paid a good deal of attention to collecting
and drawing insects, though he has not nearly so much
natural ability for sketching as his brother has. Mrs.
Lyell sent Joseph a very nice specimen box, stored with
four or five dozen of the rarer insects found near Kinnordy.

The Lyells of Kinnordy were to play a large part in Hooker's
life. Charles Lyell, the elder,1 was a botanist of distinction and

1 Charles Lyell (1767-1849), eldest son of Charles Lyell of Kinoordy, was
distinguished both as a Dante scholar and a botanist. Living at Bartley
in the New Forest from 1798 to 1825, he devoted himself especially to the study
of the mosses, several species of which bear his name, aa well as the genus
Lyellia of Robert Brown.

AT GLASGOW UNIVEESITY 25

an old friend of Sir William's ; and his son was that greatest
of geologists who was to be the early inspirer of Darwin and his
lifelong friend together with Hooker.
Later in the same year, 1832 :

Joseph is in the senior Latin and senior Greek, and next
year will take logic and mathematics along with his brother.
William continues ardently devoted to ornithology, and
Joseph to botany and entomology. The latter is already
a fair British botanist and has a tolerable herbarium, very
much of his own collecting. But the orchideae are his
great favourites, and he has an eye for them, and a memory
too for their names, which often surprises me. Had he time
for it he would already be more useful to me than Mr.
Klotzsch [his assistant].1

The removal to a new house in Glasgow, at Woodside
Crescent, * spirited up ' the family to an access of tidying,
and * Joseph has taken in hand to arrange all his father's
duplicate plants, selecting among them for his own collection,
and he has been pursuing this occupation with much diligence
for some weeks.'

Next year, Joseph being sixteen, his father declines an
invitation for him to go to the Dawson Turners' at Yarmouth,
saying, ' the expense is very considerable for a lad who is
scarcely old enough to derive permanent advantage from
such a journey ; and both he and his brother have now entered
upon studies which can scarcely with propriety be interrupted.'
The permanent advantage of studying his grandfather's col-
lections would doubtless come later, when he should be further
advanced in his regular botanical work.

A little later Sir William sends his father-in-law a parcel,
in which is enclosed a small box of insects which Joseph is
* very desirous of transmitting to Mr. Paget.' 2

The same entomological enthusiasm inspires two early

1 S. J. Klotzsch spent some years as Sir William's curator at Glasgow, and
was the founder of the mycological portion of the herbarium. Subsequently
he became keeper of the Royal Herbarium at Berlin. Hooker gives an amusing
description of his oddities in the Memoirs of his father, p. xxxiii.

2 No . doubt Charles, brother of (Sir) James Paget, the famous surgeon
(1814-99), and one of the seventeen children of Samuel Paget, brewer and ship-

26 EAELY DAYS

letters to Dr. Harvey,1 who had sent him the first part o*
Stephens' ' Entomology ' with some specimens. As his own
collection is not yet very well supplied — Scotland not being
a country where insects abound — he sends, in default of a
better return; some German plants given him by Mr. Klotzsch
(December 3, 1833).

And again on December 11, 1835, when Dr. Harvey had
promised to collect insects for him at the Cape, he sends
instructions as to a new method of preserving specimens in
hot climates, and continues :

Your account of the country fills me with an ardent desire
to go there ; however, I suppose I must be content to live
on that unnourishing diet hope for some years to come. I
should give a great deal to be present at the opening of the
boxes of insects the travellers from the interior bring down,
they must bring some splendid things ; pray, what becomes
of them ?

William is particularly obliged for your anxiety about
procuring birds, and, believe me, I am more eaten up with
entomological zeal than ever ; who knows but I may, ere I
die, publish an Entomologia Capensis ? That poor unfortu-
nate Stephens is determined to go on to the end with his
invaluable work ; he cannot now, I hear, afford to keep his

owner, who was Mayor of Great Yarmouth in 1817. The Pagets, the Dawson
Turners, and the Hookers were closely allied in a friendship of long standing.

Between 1830 and 1834 James was apprenticed to Dr. Costerton, and, with
his brother Charles, wrote a book on the natural history of Great Yarmouth.

1 William Henry Harvey (1811-66), of Irish Quaker stock, began his
lifelong friendship with Sir W. J. Hooker through his discovery at Killarney of
the moss Hookeria Icetevirens (1831). After holding various posts at Dublin he
went in 1835 to South Africa with his brother, on whose death he succeeded
in the post of Colonial Treasurer. In 1842 he broke down in body and
mind from overwork. Returning home, he became Keeper of the University
Herbarium at Dublin, and in 1848 Professor of Botany under the Royal Dublin
Society. He visited America in 1849-70 ; the Indian Ocean and Australasia
in 1853-6, and on his return succeeded to the botanical chair at Trinity College,
Dublin.

His work included a Flora Capensis, but he is best known as an authority
on Algae, publishing a Manual of British Algae (Laylor, 1841), the Phycologia
Britannica, Nereis Australia, The Seaside Book (1849), Nereis Boreali- Ameri-
cana, Phycologia Australica, as well as on the Antarctic Algae ofBeechey's Voyage,
and to him J. D. H. refers his collection of Southern Algae. His work lay
in ' discrimination, description, and illustration ' ; he had no share in the
Darwinian movement, though ready to admit natural selection as a vera
causa of much change, he would not go so far as to admit it as a vera causa
of species.

COLLEGE SUCCESSES 27

wife, a salutary lesson to all not to marry, who want to
devote their time to Nat. Hist.

Of Joseph's University work Sir William writes :

William and Joseph have entered upon their College duties
of the present session apparently with much satisfaction.
They both take Mathematics and Moral Philosophy. Joseph
in addition attends the private Greek class, and William,
Surgery.

The following letter from Lady Hooker may be quoted at
length for the light it throws on the family's work and successes.
Lady Hooker, it will be observed, cultivated a sub-Johnsonian
style ; or perhaps more truly reflected that of the Swan of
Lichfield, itself a reflection from the authentic Johnson.

' Your son ' is an affectionate trope for son-in-law, and
his ' honors ' mean that he is now created Sir William, Knight
of Hanover, an order which became extinct with the separation
of Hanover from the British Crown.

Saturday, May 7, 1836.

Many thanks for your affectionate congratulations on
your son's honors and your grandsons' prizes, on the industry
of the latter, I should rather say. The hope of pleasing their
relations and gaining their good opinion, goes so far with
both William and Joseph (especially the former), and they
value so highly (as they ought to do) your favor and com-
mendation, that I feel particularly gratified at your having
taken the trouble of writing to them upon this occasion.
Your present to them is quite too munificent, as perhaps
they felt, — for Joseph immediately remarked he hoped his
grandfather was very rich, or he should not like to take so
much money from him. They would, I am sure, gladly add
a few lines to thank you, in their own hand- writing, but their
father and I have just left them at Helensburgh, where they
will spend the Sunday with their grandpapa and sisters,
returning home early on Monday morning. A fortnight ago,
Joseph walked 24 miles — from Helensburgh to Glasgow —
rather than wait for the steamer next morning, by which
delay he would have missed a lecture. Willie has gone to-day
to fish in Loch Lomond, — he started at 3 o'clock this morning :
Joseph has been equally earnestly employed in turning over

28 EAELY DAYS

stones and hunting in the rejectament of the sea for beetles.
His collection of insects is becoming considerable, he devotes
every spare minute to it, and has opened a correspondence
with several entomologists, both British and foreign. We
sent you a Glasgow newspaper last Tuesday, which men-
tioned the prizes : in the Natural Philosophy Class, where
Joseph gained one prize and worked for three, he was the
youngest student of all, and much younger than the majority
of those who attend the Anatomical Lectures, where he carried
off the single prize which alone is given, among a class often
consisting of more than a hundred individuals. These
circumstances, which cannot be publicly known, ought yet
to be thankfully taken into account by us, when calculating
the amount of his labour and of the success which has crowned
that labour. I could not help hoping that the dear boy
had caught a shred of his grandfather's mantle (far be it
from me, by this awkward and tattered simile, however, to
imply that the garment is either worn out or cast aside by the
honored wearer) when I saw him, earnestly and unprompted
during his papa's absence, undertake the task of cataloguing
every book in the house. All the names were written down
and arranged alphabetically, and part of the fair index was
made before his father returned.

Of his tastes and education, Joseph himself wrote later,
towards the end of the Antarctic voyage, to his aunt, Mary
Turner. The letter, a copy probably touched up by his mother,
is dated April 18, 1843.

You remind me of the times when we used to sit in the
study (where probably you now are and where this note may
reach you some two months hence) reading Tacitus : at least
you and my grandfather reading it and I looking on.

Alas ! I never had much taste for Latin and Greek, or
any of the dead languages ; and (except that I should have
the satisfaction of knowing that my father's money was not
so much thrown away) I greatly doubt if my having been a
good scholar would give me now so much pleasure as you
might imagine. What I do really regret is the little attention
I paid to Ancient and especially to Modern History. If half
the time spent on the Classics had been devoted to those
subjects, the knowledge of them would prove a far more

TASTES AND ACQUIREMENTS 29

agreeable companion than Horace, Virgil or even Homer.
Do not think I underrate those attainments, which alone
make a man the perfect gentleman ; but I had no taste for
them, though ample time and opportunity for all. As it is,
I sometimes attempt to rub them up, but I enjoy nothing so
much as Hume and Smollett,1 This mainly arises from the
writers' bringing associations, connected with different parts of
my native land, and of scenes, though perhaps only scampered
through in a Mail Coach, which my memory, very retentive
of localities, enables me to .revisit, along with the heroes of
my Author. A love of poetry is also a sad deficiency in me,
for you cannot suppose that I should learn to appreciate it by
being crammed with stanzas of Marmion, not amid Castles
and Groves, but in a school of 100 boys. Crabbe's Poems are
my favorites (laugh at me if you will), because I can go with
him everywhere. As for Thomson, ' void of rhyme as well
as reason,' he is quite too lackadaisical for me. To the
Southward, in bad weather, I used to spend a great deal of
time in reading, chiefly books on Scientific subjects, which
are of most importance to me now that I have to work for
my bread.

Of French he early acquired a working knowledge, im-
proving it greatly in the winter of 1844-5, before his journey
to Paris, by dint of lessons and conversation with M. Planchon,
his father's assistant at Kew. With German, also, he was con-
versant enough to tackle German books on botany ; but it
was a labour to him. Hence the zest of his repartee to Darwin,
of whom it is told (' Life,' i. 126) : ' When he began German
long ago, he boasted of the fact (as he used to tell) to Sir
J. Hooker, who replied : " Ah, my dear fellow, that's nothing ;
I've begun it many times."

Among his contemporaries he neither courted popularity
nor was constitutionally fitted to practise the arts of popu-
larity. Indeed, he suffered from a nervous irritability of the
heart which from his school- days brought on palpitation when
he stood up to construe in class. And although he tried to
overcome this by joining his college debating society and getting
up speeches carefully beforehand, success was denied him.

1 The continuator of Hume's History of England.

30 EAELY BAYS

Even in later life the delivery of an address meant a strain
which brought on physical nausea and severe nervous reaction.

As he grew up, he went far afield on his botanical expedi-
tions. On September 2, 1836, Sir William, sending a belated
acceptance of an invitation for Joseph to visit his grandfather,
writes : ' I only returned from a Highland tour with Dr. Graham,
Mr. Wilson 1 and Joseph last Saturday. The latter had been
away some weeks with Mr. Wilson amongst the Aberdeenshire
mountains, and I could not communicate with him but by
ferreting him out in person, which I did, and found him and
Wilson at the old hovel at the foot of Ben Lomond, where they
were nearly a week.'

On his way to Yarmouth, he stays at Liverpool with Mr.
Melly, a collector of beetles, among whose specimens he sees the
Goliathi, which he afterwards collected himself in India ; and
at Manchester with Mr. Glover,2 possessor of a less valuable
collection ; at each city visiting the Museum and Botanical
Gardens. The Manchester Gardens are ' the finest I ever saw ;
finer, I think, than Edinburgh, though not, certainly, so good
a collection of plants.'

Then at Hull he stays with William Spence, joint author
with William Kirby (a Norwich man) of the famous ' Introduc-
tion to Entomology,' examining his rich collection and twice
going out entomologising with him.

At Yarmouth he works keenly an his grandfather's and
Miss Hutchins' herbaria; and as a result asks his father to
re-examine his own specimens of a certain moss (Bryum
triguetrum) in order to correct what he feels sure is a wrong
ascription of a specimen of his grandfather's. So, too, the latter
has just received five specimens of the narrow-leaved lungwort

1 William Wilson (1799-1871) was a botanist who had been attracted to
the study during the open-air life necessitated by an early breakdown from
overwork. In 1827 he was introduced by Henslow to Sir W. Hooker, and
joined him in his annual students' botanical excursion. Through Hooker he
devoted himself to the mosses, and described the mosses collected on Boss's
Voyage. His great work, the Bryologia Britannica (1855), though intended
to be a third edition of W. J. Hooker's Muscologia, was substantially a new
work of the highest merit. Among the new species added to the British
Flora by Wilson, his name is preserved in the rose named after him by Borrer,
and the Killarney filmy fern (Hymenophyllum Wilsoni) by Sir W. Hooker.

2 Perhaps Stephen Glover (d. 1869), known for his Peak Guide, 1830, and
History of the County of Derby, 1831-3.

SCIENTIFIC INTEEESTS 31

(Pulmonaria angustifolia). Joseph, examining these, concludes
that it is one and the same with our common lungwort
(P. officinalis) , but that Linnaeus' P. officinalis is not a British
plant.

From his visit to Yarmouth he returned on November 8,
and on the 10th his father writes :

I need hardly tell you that the boy has enjoyed his visit
much and seems really grateful for the privileges he has
enjoyed, especially under your roof. He is quite disposed
to work at the classes, and set out yesterday morning before
breakfast to enter them. He takes Surgery, Chemistry,
Materia Medica, Anatomical demonstrations, and occasion-
ally the dissecting-room. He is gone to-day to endeavour to
arrange with Mr. Arnott 1 to give him two hours a day at
Latin, as you kindly suggested. Thus you see his time will
be fully occupied, and he can only reckon on a holiday now
and then to allow him to devote some attention to naturalist
pursuits.

Next summer we find him geologising, in Arran, with his
friend Thomas Thomson.2 And to go forward a year, on
January 9, 1839, Sir William tells Dawson Turner :

1 George Arnott Walker Arnott (1799-1868), who had given up the law
for botany, was a close friend of Sir W. Hooker, with whom he collaborated
from 1830-40 in describing the plants of Beechey's voyage, and in 1850 in the
sixth edition of the British Flora. In 1839 he acted as Sir William's substitute,
and from 1845 till his death held the Glasgow chair of Botany.

2 This Thomas Thomson (1817-78), naturalist and traveller, was the
eldest son of Thomas Thomson, Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow from 1817.
A schoolfellow of the Hooker boys, he was equally devoted to science, and at
the age of seventeen did some remarkable original work in geology, and later,
no less original chemical work under Liebig. He graduated M.D. in 1839 with
the Hookers, and entered the service of the East India Company as assistant
surgeon. He had a perilous adventure during the invasion of Afghanistan,
ill-famed for the massacre of the Khoord Kabul, for he was captured by the
Afghans at Ghazni, and narrowly escaped being sold into slavery in Bokhara,
1842. Meantime, as later during the Sutlej campaign and his subsequent stay
in the Punjaub, he studied Indian and Himalayan botany. As one of the com-
missioners for marking the boundary between Kashmir and Chinese Tibet in
1847, he travelled into little known regions, embodying his geological and
botanical observations in his book, Travels in the Western Himalayas and Tibet,
in 1852. At the end of 1849 he joined Hooker at Darjeeling, and travelled with
him for fifteen months on his later expeditions, especially to the Khasia Moun-
tains. Returning to England in broken health, he spent several years at Kew,
working at his collections, and bringing out, in collaboration with Hooker, the
first and only volume of the Flora Indica. From 1854 to 1861, he was again
in India as superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens in succession to
Dr. Falconer, Professor of Botany. Later he lived again for a time at Kew.

32 EAKLY DAYS

When I went to bed at a late hour last night I left him
writing an answer to you, and indeed he may, with a clear
conscience, give a good account of himself for the last three
or four weeks, especially as relates to his botanical pursuits.
He has worked at plants with a degree of steadiness and
ardour that has been most gratifying, and it appears that
his industry is likely to meet with its reward . . . [i.e. in
selection for the Antarctic Expedition].

Three letters of August and September 1838, from the
young Hooker to his father, tell how he went with Dr. Graham
on a botanising trip in Ireland (August 2-18) ; to the British
Association Meeting at Newcastle (21-30) ; and then proceeded
to visit Dr. Eichardson 1 at Haslar (September 1-4), when the
latter was to take stock of him, so to say, before recommending
him for the Antarctic Expedition.

Details of travelling in those days have a curious interest
in comparison with to-day. Thus, leaving Dublin

at 4 P.M., started in a track-boat for Ballinasloe, where we
were met by a Biancini car, which took us to Galway by
8 P.M. on Friday night ; the car and track-boat were of
the same company, and we went the whole excursion, 140
miles, for 18s. each, including a dinner and a breakfast ;
this, however, was the only cheap travelling experienced.

To get from Newcastle to Portsmouth he was advised

to take the coach from Newcastle to London at 9 A.M. on
Thursday, which I did for £2. I went the whole distance,
including coachmen and eating, for £3. I travelled all
night, and arrived in London on Friday night, at 8 P.M.
A coach was then starting for Portsmouth, in which I took
a place, 14s., and arrived here on Saturday at 8 A.M.

1 Sir John Richardson (1787-1865, and knighted 1846) saw much active
service as naval surgeon, 1807-15, then returned to Edinburgh and took his
M.D., at the same time studying botany and mineralogy. He was Naturalist
to Sir John Franklin on two Arctic expeditions, 1819-22 and 1825-27.
For ten years he was head of the Melville Hospital at Chatham, and from
1838 was physician to the Royal Hospital at Haslar, where young naval
surgeons awaiting their gazetting to ships were under him. Again, in 1848-9 he
led the expedition in search of Franklin. His second wife, m. 1833, d. 1845,
was a niece of Franklin's. In addition to his works on Polar Zoology and
Travel, his special subject was Fishes,

AN IBISH EXCUKSION 33

A few more passages may be quoted.

Galway is a horrible town with 30,000 inhabitants,
filthy in the extreme, without a single good building in it ;
the whole neighbourhood is limestone, and the fields are
all covered with large stones which are turned into walls
of the worst description.

Thursday, botanised about Cliffden, rained tremendously
all day ; went to Mr. D'Arley's at Cliffden Castle. Mr. D.
is a very nice gentleman, hospitable in the extreme, who
regretted his inability to take in our party of 12. He is
tremendously in debt, but no creditor can go to the expense
of arresting him, for the Connemara boys, with whom he
is a great favorite, will allow no such intruder near Cliffden
Castle. The last person who tried was an Innkeeper here,
but the inhabitants, guessing his intention, would not let
his servant enter the village, but beat him unmercifully
and sent him off. The police force were collected, who took
them, and the malefactors are now lying in Galway jail for
the next assizes.

True to his careful upbringing, he is ever punctilious in
recording his Sunday observances.

[At Galway] we went to Church twice, and I once to
the Koman Catholic chapel besides, with which I was much
disgusted ; the gallery was well filled with respectable
persons, but the body of the Church was crammed with
inattentive hearers covered with rags or nearly naked.
The English services were good, but the congregations
wretched. [Next week, at Killery] for some reason or
other no service was performed, nor was there a Church
nearer than 20 miles.

It was not a very profitable excursion in its results, albeit
he is most careful in his expenditure.

I have regretted the expense, just £10, extremely, as
except getting a good stock of the above-mentioned plants,
nothing has been done but making as many sketches as I
could by waiting behind the party ; these I have had no
time to finish at all. Of plants I have about 3000 specimens,
as far as I can count, all dried as well as I could ; this I say

34 EAELY DAYS

with conscience, and as I changed the papers every night,
when possible, I am sure you will be pleased. . . . Mosses
are extremely scarce here ; I think one is, however, the
Hymenostoma rutilans, as far as I can judge without a
microscope ; if so it be, a good discovery and the only one ;
it was very sparing in a wood near Galway, at the foot of a tree
on the ground ; it is very minute and there are only three or
four capsules ; the other Mosses you will see are some of them
very common and only gathered for my own examination.

Now, my dear papa, such is the outline of the excursion
which you were kind enough to allow me to join, solely, as
it has turned out, for my own gratification. I have enjoyed
it extremely, and feel twice as strong as when I left Glasgow ;
I hope the remainder of it, and especially the interview with
, Dr. Richardson, will be more profitable to myself. . . .

Excuse this hasty letter, it is now 3 A.M., and we start
to-morrow morning. I am very sleepy, the fleas in Con-
nemara keeping me awake the whole night sometimes.

As to the British Association, the Newcastle meeting of
1838 was his first. It was said to outshine in splendour
any former meeting ; and he confessed to his grandfather
that with all its obvious utility as a common meeting-ground,
and its encouragement to the non-scientific who were tem-
porarily proud to be seen with a hammer or vasculum,
' the scientific department fell far behind the amusement and
eating.' One notes the number of scientific men he either
knew already or was introduced to ; the quaint appearance
of Dr. Kichardson in the Natural History section, as he sat on
the left of the Chair, and read the report of the previous day's
proceedings, —

being fully attired in a Dumfries Tartan of broad check and
a shooting coat of the same. . . . There were not above
50 people in the room, and almost no ladies ; those few
who were there had come in by accident, and I was after-
wards much surprised to hear that ladies were precluded
from attending this section of Botany and Zoology on
account of the nature of some of the papers belonging to
the latter division, [for which, in his judgment, there was
not the least occasion].

THE NEWCASTLE MEETING 85

[On the 24th.] The Medical section was wretched ; when
I went in Dr. Bowring1 was reading a violently radical
paper condemning Quarantine laws and the Government
which allows them.

On the 27th, at the Anniversary dinner of the Literary
and Philosophical Society of Newcastle,

the Bishop of Carlisle was in the Chair and proposed several
toasts, among others the Universities of Great Britain, with
a long speech, which Buckland 2 answered to ; but neither of
them seemed to remember that there was such a place as
Glasgow, or Edinburgh either, which much offended me and
T. Thomson ; I thought it an especial bad compliment to
Dr. Graham, who was sitting at the same table as the
speakers.

The botanist in him was also up in arms next day at a
public meeting, when it was resolved that a Botanical Garden
be established in Newcastle, provided that it be united to a
Zoological one ; whereupon ' proposed that it should be called
a Zoological and Botanical Garden, and agreed to ; I wondered
why it should not be called the Botanical and Zoological
Gardens.'

The minor agrtmens of the meeting included the usual
dinners and fetes ; the botanical excursion headed by Dr.

1 Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), merchant, linguist, traveller, diplomatist,
financial reformer, and man of letters. Among his varied activities he was
editor of the Westminster Review on its foundation by Jeremy Bentham ; M.P.
for the Clyde Burghs 1835-7, and for Bolton 1841 ; an original founder of the
Anti-Corn Law League with Cobden, and plenipotentiary in China during the
troubled times from 1854. Having newly returned in 1838 from a Govern-
ment commercial mission through Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, he was fresh from
the exasperating methods of quarantine in the East, which took shape in the
Observations on Oriental Plague and Quarantines which startled the youthful
Hooker.

2 William Buckland (1784-1856), wit, geologist, and divine, who was
Professor of Mineralogy, 1813, and Reader in Geology, 1819, at Oxford, Presi-
dent of the Geological Society, 1824, and Dean of Westminster, 1845. His
work, which was valuable and suggestive, included the proof that the * dressed
rocks ' of this country were the result of planing by glacial ice-sheet ; never-
theless orthodoxy, alarmed at the claims of other geologists, smiled upon him,
for in his inaugural address he calmed these fears, and in his 'Reliquiae
Diluvianae ' (1823) he employed his great knowledge and intuition to correlate
the cave remains with the deluge. His famous Bridge water Treatise of 1836
was another buttress of science as applied to contemporary theology. His
drollery and quaint stories were famous.

36 EAELY DAYS

Graham ; the descent of a coal-mine, with its breed of horses
remarkable for their short and glossy hair like that of a mouse ;
and visits to a rope- walk, alkali works, and Eichardson's Crown
Glass factory, which calls forth a reference to one of his encyclo-
paedic sources of general knowledge :

The most interesting process was the converting the globe
of glass into a flat sheet by merely twisting quickly the iron
rod to which it was attached ; if you remember, the process
is well described in one of the late numbers of the Penny
Magazine.

CHAPTEE II

THE ANTAKCTIC VOYAGE : PRELIMINARIES

JOSEPH HOOKER had received a unique bringing up in his
father's house. He did not so much learn botany as grow
up in it. At one-and-twenty he was probably the best-equipped
botanist of his years, and he was just finishing his medical
course. From his father's position he also received unique
opportunity. Sir William enjoyed the friendship of many
influential men, scientific and official, who kept him in touch
with any scientific projects that were taken up by Government.
Two such were afoot in 1838-9 : one, Eoss's expedition to the
Antarctic ; the other, Captain H. D. Trotter's 1 to the Niger.
Each would require a naturalist. Had Joseph Hooker failed
to secure a place with Eoss, he would almost certainly have
joined the other ill-fated expedition, most of the Europeans
on which died of fever.

James Clark Eoss, the distinguished Arctic explorer, was
already known to Sir William through their common friend,
Dr. Eichardson of Haslar. He had told Sir William his prospect
of leading the Antarctic expedition which only awaited the
Government's definite authorisation. Now in the early autumn
of 1838 he was paying a visit to the Hookers' close friends
and neighbours, the Smiths of Jordan Hill, whose names in

1 Captain, afterwards Rear- Admiral Henry Dundas Trotter (1802-59),
who had already distinguished himself in the suppression of piracy, headed an
expedition in 1841 to the west coast of Africa and especially to the Niger
to conclude treaties of commerce with the negro kings. Tropical fevers broke
up the expedition; two of the three ships were forced to return after three
weeks ; Trotter himself continued another four weeks before returning, so
shattered in health that he was unable to undertake active service for the space
of fourteen years.

VOL. i 37 D

38 THE ANTAKCTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAKIES

successive generations will often recur in these pages. James
Smith1 himself was keenly alive to all scientific interests.
Knowing what was afoot, he invited Sir William and Joseph
to breakfast that the young man might be presented to Boss.
It was an unforgettable morning. Sixty years later, writing
to Sabina Smith (Mrs. Paisley), Hooker recalled how he had
longed to be at the second table, where Boss sat with the young
daughters of the house and kept the party lively. His own
turn came later. Boss received him very kindly and promised
to take him if he would prepare himself for such a duty. One
point was that he should first qualify as surgeon. This meant
much hard work : as he wrote to Dawson Turner, October 8,
1835:

Papa has I know told you of the distant prospect there is
of my going on expedition to the Antarctic Ocean : I can
hardly conceive my being prepared both as a Medical Man
and Naturalist ; to pass my necessary examinations will be
a great push, while again if I do not devote a good part of
this winter to Natural History, I had better not go at all.
If the expedition does start and I do not go, I shall be dread-
fully disappointed, though I am sure I had better not go
at all than go ill prepared : the matter will, I hope, stimulate
me to exertion.

From a letter of Sir William's to Dawson Turner, dated
January 9, 1839, we catch a glimpse of the difficulties to be
overcome and the influences set moving to overcome them.

To-day's post brought me along with your letter one from
Dr. Bichardson telling me that their Antarctic Expedition
had on Saturday received Lord Melbourne's 2 sanction and
would sail on the 1st of May. Dr. Bichardson fears that
Joseph may not be qualified in time, and indeed strictly
speaking he cannot be until the 5th of May : but I have

1 ' Smith of Jordan Hill ' (1782-1867) was a lover of literature and the fine
arts as well as a considerable geologist, studying especially the changes of
level on the coasts of West Scotland and of the Mediterranean, in relation to a
glacial period. In another direction his Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul
became a standard authority, thanks to his experience as a practical yachts-
man. His son Archibald, the mathematician, and his daughter Sabina (Mrs.
Paisley) were contemporaries and friends of Hooker's.

8 Lord Melbourne was Prime. Minister from 1835-41.

AT HASLAK 39

written to Edinburgh to endeavour to have that difficulty
obviated, and I have asked the Duke of Bedford x for a letter
to Sir Wm. Burnett 2 (the head of the Medical Navy Board),
and I have written to Sir John Barrow 3 and Capt. Boss :
and I trust there will be no difficulties in the way. The
poor boy is delighted, and I trust it may be in every way for
his good.

Joseph joined him in London ; on the 18th he reports
that the various friends whose aid he had invoked had duly
exerted their influence, and Sir W. Burnett

promised to take Joseph into the Navy as soon as he had
completed his curriculum [the end of April] and, if I wished,
to give him an appointment at Haslar Hospital and a charge
in the Museum there with £120 a year. Then he would be
employed until the Antarctic Expedition was determined
upon, for there are some difficulties in the way of it, and
it is doubtful if it will sail before next year.

Joseph has quite won Brown's 4 heart by bringing him

1 John, sixth Duke of Bedford, 1766-1839, was an enthusiastic naturalist,
devoting himself to botany, agriculture, and the fine arts after his retirement
from politics in 1807.

* Sir William Burnett (1779-1861). After studying medicine at Edinburgh,
and seeing much active service as naval surgeon, he had a brilliant career as
Inspector of Naval Hospitals. In 1822, Lord Melville appointed him to the
Victualling Board, as colleague to Dr. Weir, the chief medical officer of the
navy. Then becoming Physician General of the Navy, he introduced valuable
reforms, among other things improving the position of assistant surgeons.

8 Sir John Barrow (1764-1848, Bart. 1835), born of peasant stock in Cumber-
land, was distinguished from boyhood by his mathematical gift and his
adventurous spirit. Thanks to the appreciation of Sir George Staunton, he
accompanied Lord Macartney both to China and the Cape, and from 1804-45
was second Secretary to the Admiralty. He was specially interested in
Arctic discovery, having had stern experience of the ice as a youngster in a
Greenland whaler. A link with the Hookers was his friendship with Dr.
Richardson, and the fact that he had studied botany at Kew Gardens before
going to the Cape in order to appreciate the natural history of South Africa.

* Robert Brown (1773-1858) was called by Humboldt ' facile Botani-
corum princeps, Britanniae gloria et ornamentum.' Beginning as surgeon-
mate to the Fifeshire regiment of Fencibles, he made a large collection of
plants in Ireland where his regiment was quartered, and through his discovery
of a rare moss, first made acquaintance with Sir Joseph Banks, by whom he
was afterwards offered the post of Naturalist to the Investigator under Captain
Flinders, 1801-5. The resulting Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae was a
valuable piece of systematic work, and his researches into the reproduction
of plants, and especially in the morphology and interrelation of the higher
plants, were marked by important discoveries, which carried him as far as
the conditions of the time allowed. With these, and the discovery of the
nucleus of the vegetable cell, he took a long step towards the development of

40 THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE.: PRELIMINARIES

some Van Diemen's Land plants which the boy had been
studying with considerable attention. We dined yesterday
at the Royal Soc. Club and attended the meeting in the
evening.

Thus he can add :

My journey has been fully answered in respect to Joseph.
. . . Humanly speaking, his way is clear before him for an
honourable scientific career.

And on June 18 :

Should it please God that Joseph returns safe from his
present expedition, and if I have the same friends I have
now, it may be in my power to keep this appointment [the
Glasgow professorship] in the family by applying to have it
made over to Joseph.

As it turned out the preparations took nearly five months
longer ; part of this time Hooker spent at Haslar, ' a most
improving situation under Dr. Richardson's eye,' just as his
future friend, Huxley, was to do seven years later, while waiting
for his appointment, so long delayed because the discerning
Richardson kept him back till a scientific post offered in the
Rattlesnake. The remainder of the time from the middle
of June, Hooker spent as Assistant Surgeon attached to the
Erebus at Chatham, where the ships were fitting out — Assist-
ant Surgeon and Botanist — for it was in this capacity that
he went after all, not Naturalist to the expedition, as he had
confidently hoped. For that responsible post Ross finally
determined to take a man of longer standing and some estab-
lished repute, albeit the young Hooker pressed him very
shrewdly, as appears from the following descriptions of some
official interviews.

physiological as well as systematic botany. In 1810, on the death of Dr.
Dryander, he succeeded to his post as librarian to Banks, who, dying in 1820,
left Brown his library and herbarium, with reversion to the British Museum,
and £200 per annum, with his house in Soho Square. In 1827 he arranged
for the library and herbarium to pass immediately to the British Museum,
while he was appoii-ted Curator. In this position he had an official influence
comparable to the influence of his strong character and intellectual powers
among his friends.

INTEEVIEW WITH BOSS 41

Golden Cross, Charing Cross : April 27, 1839.

MY DEAR FATHER, —You will be surprised to hear from
me so soon again, and I assure you the unfortunate cause has
given me much vexation.

In my last letter I told you that I had not seen Captain
Eoss ; I have since, after much hunting, and the result of
the interview has been most unfortunate. The following is
a correct statement.

One of the first questions I asked him was in what
capacity he was to take me ; he told me ' as Asst. Surgeon
and Botanist,' adding ' that he had appointed the Surgeon,
Dr. or Mr. McCormick,1 to be Zoologist/ I saw at once that
this would completely interfere with all my duties, but I
said nothing, desiring first to know whether he would take
me in any other capacity ; so I asked ' whether he would
take a Naturalist with him and give him accommodation,
provided Government would sanction or send him.' He put
off my question twice, evidently seeing my drift, which I
did not wish to conceal ; telling me that such a person as a
Naturalist must be perfectly well acquainted with every
branch of Nat. Hist., and must be well known in the world
beforehand, such a person as Mr. Darwin ; 2 here I interrupted
him with ' what was Mr. D. before he went out ? he, I dare-
say, knew his subject better than I now do, but did the world
know him ? the voyage with FitzKoy was the making of
him (as I had hoped this exped. would me).' Captain Koss

1 Robert McCormiek (1800-90) was a Yarmouth man, though of Ulster
descent. He studied medicine at Guy's and St. Thomas', and became a naval
surgeon in 1823. He had special qualifications for the post of surgeon and
naturalist on the Erebus, for he had seen Arctic service under Parry in 1827,
and when on half pay for four years after thrice invaliding home from his special
detestation, the W. Indian station, he had worked at geology and natural
history in the study and in the field. Though afterwards he distinguished
himself by conducting a boat expedition in search of Franklin (1852), he came
to loggerheads with the Admiralty on the question of the promotion he con-
sidered due after his exceptional service in the Antarctic, and the end of his
career was clouded over with a sense of grievance.

Readers of recent Antarctic, exploration will recall his name in the appella-
tion of * McCormick's Skua.' the Antarctic gull first described by him.

8 Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82) was the son of Dr. Robert Waring
Darwin of Shrewsbury, and grandson of Erasmus Darwin, physician, botanist,
and man of letters. His mother was Susannah Wedgwood, daughter of the
potter. Hooker took his Voyage of the Beagle as a model of what his own
Journals of travel should be. The story of their intimate friendship, both
before and after the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, is fully told
hereafter.

42 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAKIES

answered, ' Well, perhaps you are right, but at any rate it
would never be worth the while of any one to go, who was
really capable, as far as mental acquirements are concerned/
Being determined not to be put off, I asked him again ' would
he take a Government Naturalist ? * He said, * Certainly,
and give him every accommodation,' at the same time
adding, what was as much as to say, ' You would never be
fit.' I said nothing, but must have looked very sorry and
angry, which however he did not see, as he went on, speaking
as kindly and almost as affectionately as ever, offering to
write me letters of introduction to the surgeon and chief
officers of the ship at Chatham, charging them to give me
every opportunity of going ashore. I thanked him and left
him. Major Sabine was in the room at the same time, and
he must have felt for me, after having been so anxious that
I should be sent as Naturalist alone. I then went im-
mediately to Mr. Children,1 who was highly indignant, and
said I must not go if I am not to be the only Naturalist, or at
least the head Naturalist, for that it is utterly impossible
that we should agree, each having an equal claim on going
ashore, and he the better right. Mr. Brown and Mr. J. E.
Gray 2 both said the same thing, and Mr. Children then offered
to go to Sir William Burnett to put off my examination,
telling me to meet him afterwards.

This I did, and found Sir William had put off
my examination till when I choose, and had strongly
disadvised my going except as the only Naturalist in the
ship, the more especially as Dr. McCormick was to be my
superior. Mr. Brown has gone to Capt. Beaufort,3 Mr.

1 John George Children (1777-1852), mineralogist, entomologist, and
astronomer, held posts at the British Museum from 1816-40, and was one of
the secretaries of the Royal Society in 1826-7 and 1830-7. He was a friend
of Sir Humphry Davy, who made many experiments in his private laboratory.
His personal kindness to the young Hooker was typical of his character.

2 John Edward Gray (1800-75), began his scientific work as a botanist,
and was responsible for the greater part of his father's book, The Natural
Arrangement of British Plants, the first British Flora arranged on the natural
system. A quarrel over scientific personalities diverted him from botany to
zoology, and in 1824 he entered the British Museum as assistant to Dr. Children,
whom he succeeded as Keeper of the Zoological Department from 1840 till his
death. His great work lay in the improvement and organisation of collections,
and the scientific descriptions which he wrote.

3 Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857), rear-admiral and K.C.B., retired from
active service, severely wounded, in 1812, after a brilliant career of twenty- two
years. The excellence of his surveying work led to his appointment as Hydro-
grapher to the Navy in 1829, where he was eminently successful during his
twenty-six years' tenure of the post.

OTHER INTERVIEWS 4B

Lubbock,1 and Mr. Forster,2 to recommend my being sent as
Naturalist, but how can I go, when Capt. Ross would be obliged
to take me, and at the same time think me unfit ? There
therefore remain only two ways or situations under which
I can go, either as Naturalist to the expedition or as Asst.
Surgeon and Naturalist to the Erebus, a situation which
Sir William Burnett promised me if I liked it. You can, I
know, but have the same opinion as Mr. Children and Brown.
The more I think of it, the more perplexed do I feel. That
Capt. Ross did not intend to treat me thus two weeks ago I
am sure, from his asking me to tell the quantity of preserves
for animals required, and his great good nature to me now
precludes me from attributing to him any other motive
than that he is misguided, and that Dr. McCormick (who,
he told me, had been preparing for such an Exped. for
three years) has been palmed upon him by someone. Sup-
posing I were to go under these circumstances, all my notes
on Molluscs and sea animals will naturally revert, from the
Admiralty, to the Zoologist, besides which he will have
more time on shore than I can. The most painful part of
my duty remains to be done, viz., going to Capt. Ross and
respectfully declining his appointment and telling him that
I am still trying for the appointment of Naturalist to the
Expedition, which all strongly advise me to do. Mr. Children
and Brown have been most kind, the former especially ;
I can never thank him too much ; I have invariably made
a point of telling them everything without the smallest
concealment, and have been glad to find how their opinions
coincide with mine. On your account, after all the kindness,
trouble, and expense you have put yourself to for my comfort
and good, I feel this annoyance very deeply, but you may
rest assured that I shall conduct myself well and prudently
(doing nothing without the best advice) as far as lies in me.
I shall deeply regret it, if I lose the chance of going with

1 Sir John William Lubbock, Bart. (1803-65), banker by profession, was
a distinguished mathematician and astronomer. He was treasurer and vice-
president of the Royal Society, 1830-5 and 1838-17, and the first vice-chancellor
of the London University (1837-42). His eldest son, Sir John Lubbock, after-
wards Lord Avebury, was similarly distinguished in business, science, and
politics.

2 Edward Forster (1765-1849), botanist; vice-president of the Linnean
Society, 1828, who used to snatch the early hours of the day for his study, mainly
of British plants, before going to work in a city bank. His herbarium was
presented to the British Museum.

44 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAEIES

the Exped., but I should much more deeply regret going
against the advice of my friends and losing my time.

Matters straightened themselves out, however. ' I am
appointed from the Admiralty as Asst. Surgeon to the
Erebus, and Capt. Eoss considers me the Botanist to the
Expedition and promises me every opportunity of collecting
that he can grant/ McCormick, as will be seen, proved any-
thing but exacting during the voyage, and indeed made friends
with him at once when he reached Chatham, and looked after
him when he met with a slight accident.

A letter of July 13 to his father tells of another official
interview, the tone of which he resented and remembered
against the Society when it made claims on his work or the
disposal of his collection :

At the same time as your letter was brought off one
came from Capt. Eoss calling me up to town on Tuesday to
attend the Commission of the Eoyal Society for the purpose
of giving instructions to the Botanist. Mr. Eoyle,1 Dr.
Horsfall,2 Mr. Pereira3 and Capt. Eoss were there. They
gave me a long list of advices with little new in them or
worth reporting but an order to send seeds to the Bot.
Gardens in India ; you can guess who wanted this. Pereira

1 John Forbes Royle (1799-1858). His love of natural history made him
throw up his prospect of a commission in the Indian army and enter the
Company's medical service, so that he could study Indian botany. In 1823
he became superintendent of the Saharunpore Gardens. He studied and
identified many Indian drugs, and with the aid of collectors, gathered vast
collections, especially of Himalayan plants, which he brought back to England
in 1831. In 1837 he became F.R.S. and Professor of Materia Medica at King's
College, London, while at the East India House he organised a department
relating to vegetable productions, with a technical museum. In his Illiistra-
tions of the Botany, <&c., of the Himalayan Mountains, 1839, he recommended
the introduction of the cinchona plant into India. But it was not till 1853
that Royle, at the invitation of the Governor-General, drew up a report on
the subject, which in turn was only carried out in 1860, two years after his
death, by Sir Clements Markham.

2 Possibly meant for Thomas Horsfield (1773-1859), an American doctor
and botanist who took service in the Dutch East Indies, but finally joined the
English service when the Dutch Malayan colonies were temporarily taken
by us in 1811. In 1820 he was appointed Keeper of the E.I.C. Museum in
Leadenhall Street, publishing various botanical and zoological papers.

3 Jonathan Pereira (1804-53), the great authority and lecturer of his day
on Materia Medica. In 1839 he had begun to publish his great book, The
Elements of Materia Medica, and had been appointed examiner in the subject
at the London University.

OFFICIAL ATTITUDE TOWAEDS SCIENCE 45

talked a great deal and, without exaggerating, much non-
sense, confusing the genera of different localities in an
extraordinary manner. None of them seemed cordial to
me in the least degree. On leaving the room, no one even
wished me a pleasant or successful voyage, except Mr.
Eobertson,1 the Secretary, who has always been very kind
to me whenever I have occasion to attend at the K.S.
rooms.

A few more extracts :

The Gunroom officers are about to petition lloss that
I may mess with them ; it is extremely kind of them and
chiefly McCormick's doing, but I hope Koss will refuse, as
I cannot, if they offer, and it will put me to an additional
expense of no mean importance.

H.M.S. Erebus, Chatham, July 28, 1839.

Mr. McCormick returned last week from Devonshire,
and finds that the Government are very loth to make such
large grants for the Natural History department, and Sir
Wm. Parker 2 says he does not see what Nat. Hist, has
to do with the Expedition at all, which has annoyed
Capt. Eoss exceedingly. Anything that they won't
supply my Surgeon will make up from his own pocket ;
he is very zealous indeed in the cause and offers me every
encouragement. ... In the way of medical duty I have
ve"ry little to do as far as regards the Erebus, but the men
of the Terror are so much inferior in constitution and morals
that there are 5-1 of them ill, to what there are of our men.
There are besides a whole swarm of women and children
on the lower deck of the hulk, who are a perpetual
annoyance.

Sir William paid him a visit at Chatham ; and though
warmly welcomed by such of his future companions as were
there, writes on his return home (August 27, 1839) :

I could have wished you had some zealous Natural

1 Probably Archibald Robertson (1789-1864). Originally a naval surgeon,
after 1818 a successful practitioner in Northampton. He wrote on medical
subjects, and was elected F.R.S. in 1836.

2 Sir William Parker (1781-1866) was the famous admiral who was at
the Admiralty under Lord Auckland, 1835-41.

46 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAEIES

History companions to keep up the zest of the thing, and
though I think very favourably of most of your companions,
I could have wished to have witnessed their conversation
taking a more scientific and soberer turn. Above all I
should have liked to have seen them pay more respect to
the Sabbath. Do you do so, my dear Boy, and carry some-
thing of the Sabbath into the week and I am sure you will
be a happier man for it.

The days pass in preparation till well on into September.

Our Mess Eoom [he writes to his grandfather] is fitted
up with redwood and painted Birds-eye Maple ; it is
abundantly lighted from above and calculated to hold ten,
half that number is all that will at present occupy it. Each
has a small cabin of his own ; its dimensions are 6x4;
it is fitted with a bed-place, a book shelf, a seat, table, etc. ;
below the bed are very large drawers for our things ; it is
lighted by a large circular bull's eye on deck ; we fit them
up as we please ; mine is to be painted satinwood, with
brass rods and curtains before the door and bed, to be used
in hot climates when, with the door shut, they would be far
too close ; the bull's eye is then removed and a grating
replaces it, which ensures a current of air.

He expects his whole outfit, uniform, books, instruments,
private stores, to cost £150. His grandfather sends him a
travelling thermometer. He had economically waited to buy
a new watch until his first expenses were settled ; now he was
forestalled by his father, who gave him ' a beautiful Chronometer
watch, ' 1

It is the admiration of all the officers, so much so, that
I expect that it will be taken from me as soon as we get
to sea. Of books also I have a good store and some for
general reading, all Constable's ' Miscellany/ for instance.
The rest are chiefly Botanical with a few on Zoology and
Geology. . . . My messmates are all readers and careful of

[ l This watch he used to the end of his life on his travels and at home,
wearing it in preference to the watch which Robert Brown left to him. It
has been presented to the Royal Geographical Society by Hyacinth, Lady
Hooker.

EQUIPMENT 47

books : they are delighted we have lots of Cook's1 and
Weddell's.2

As botanist [he writes in his Journal] my outfit from
Government consisted of about twenty-five reams of paper,
of three kinds — blotting, cartridge, and brown ; also two
Botanising vascula and two of Mr. Ward's 3 invaluable cases
for bringing home plants alive, through latitudes of different
temperatures. I was further, through the kindness of my
friends [i.e., his father], equipped with Botanical books,
microscopes, etc., to the value of about £50, besides a few
volumes of Natural History and general literature.

Thus Natural History came off very badly in the matter
of public equipment. Of this and his own work as a volunteer
in the neglected department of marine zoology he writes seventy
years later to Dr. Bruce of the Scotia expedition :

It does not, I think, appear in the Narrative of the
Voyage that I was the sole worker of the tow-net, bringing
the captures daily to Eoss, and helping him with their
preservation, as well as drawing a great number of them
for him.

Except some drying paper for plants I had not a single
instrument or book supplied to me as a naturalist — all were
given to me by my father. I had, however, the use of Boss's
library, and you may hardly credit it, but it is a fact that
not a single glass bottle was supplied for collecting purposes,

1 James Cook (1728-79). His first great voyage in the Endeavour was
in 1768-71, when he was accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks ; the second, in
the Resolution and the Adventure, in 1772-5, when he was accompanied by
a staff of naturalists, etc., headed by the two Forsters ; the third, in the
Resolution and the Discovery.

* James Weddell (1787-1834) held the record for furthest south before
Ross. He was a common sailor of twenty-one when in a lucky hour his bullying
skipper handed him over to a man-of-war as a refractory subject. With
education he became a very competent officer, but being discharged at the
peace in 1816, took command of a Leith ship for a sealing voyage to the
newly discovered S. Shetlands. He did much exploration, surveyed the
S. Shetlands, and in February 1823, on his second voyage, reached 74° 15' S. lati-
tude in an ice-free sea.

8 Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868), medical man and botanist, was
the inventor, about 1827, of the Wardian case, in which growing plants can
be transported without watering through the extremes of heat or cold. By
its means the Chinese banana was taken from Chatsworth to the Pacific Islands ;
20,000 tea plants were taken by Robert Fortune from Shanghai to the Hima-
layas, and the cinchona introduced into India.

48 THE ANTAKCTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAEIES

empty pickle bottles were all we had, and rum as a pre-
servative from the ship's stores.

The epic days of scientific exploration began when Banks
and his men joined Cook on his first voyage. To this epoch
still belong the voyages of Darwin in the Beagle and of
Hooker in the Erebus. But the expedition to the Antarctic,
which was to give Hooker his first great opportunity, was not
intended simply to be a search for new lands nor a mere * dash
to the Pole.' Geographical discovery was subsidiary to its
main scientific purpose — that of filling up the wide blanks
in the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism in the Southern
hemisphere, especially in the higher latitudes.

Much had already been done in the Northern hemisphere
since Halley in 1701 drew up the first chart of the variations
of the compass, based upon the observations made during a
voyage of discovery sent out by the English Government.
Finally, thanks to Humboldt,1 a chain of magnetic obser-
vatories had been established in Germany and the Kussian
Empire in 1827, and extended by the famous physicist Gauss,2
in 1834, all over Europe, where simultaneous observations were
constantly made. It was needful to perfect the charts not only
of variation, but of dip and magnetic intensity, elements which
were already known to be in a constant state of fluctua-

1 Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the leading naturalist
and traveller of his day. His books inspired Darwin with the desire to
travel. He spent five years in Spanish America from 1799 to 1804 ; the
arrangement and publication of his collections and notes took twenty years,
which he spent in Paris, where he had the assistance of Cuvier, Gay-Lussac,
and others. Then in 1829 he undertook an expedition through Russian Asia
for the Emperor Nicholas, which lasted nine months.

His most famous work was Cosmos, a survey of the physical sciences and
their interrelation (1845-58). His great interest in geography and exploration
of the still unknown tracts of the world, the configuration of the country,
climate, the distribution of life, was an interest in which Hooker shared, and
which drew them together in Paris in 1845 ; for though he was then settled
at Berlin, he was frequently sent to Paris on political missions.

2 J. K. F. Gauss (1777-1855), Professor of Mathematics and Director of
the Observatory at Gottingen, was a mathematician of singular brilliance,
equally distinguished in astronomical research, geodesy, and the problems
arising out of the earth's magnetic properties, inventing, among other instru-
ments, the declination needle. He was responsible for the foundation of the
Magnetic Association, in connection with whose work Ross's expedition was
sent out.

OBJECT OF BOSS'S VOYAGE 49

tion, undergoing local and transitory as well as periodical
changes. Observations, moreover, must extend over a long
period.

The many explorers within the Arctic Circle had recorded
much information. Eoss himself had found the Northern
Magnetic Pole and seen the compass dip vertically to 90°, and
Gauss had calculated the Southern Magnetic Pole to lie in
72° 35' S., 152° 30' E. But as his materials were imperfect
and the position he had calculated for the Northern Pole was
3° wrong, he inferred the Southern Pole to be in 66° S. and
160° E. His inference required verification. Permanent sta-
tions should be established at suitable spots in the Southern
hemisphere, where simultaneous observations might be main-
tained in connection with the European stations, while the
Erebus and Terror acted as floating observatories on their
voyage. Besides the hourly records of the three variables
every day for three years, on the four * term days ' of the
European Magnetic Association simultaneous records were
to be kept at intervals of not more than five minutes during
the twenty-four hours : in fact, on the term day which fell
in Tasmania, Boss and his colleagues took these observations
at intervals of two and a half minutes.

These considerations took shape in a series of resolutions
passed by the British Association for the Advancement of
Science in 1838. They were pressed upon Lord Melbourne's
Government by an influential Committee and strongly supported
by the President and Council of the Boyal Society, to whom
they were referred as the acknowledged advisers of Government
in matters of science. But it was not till the foreign scientific
institutions, led by Humboldt himself at Sabine's suggestion,
threw their weight into the scale, pleading for national co-
operation in magnetic work where private enterprise was out
of the question, and urging the superiority of the British Navy
and the unequalled experience of its officers in polar work, that
the Government early in 1889 agreed to fit out the expedition
at a cost of £100,000.

As a result two exploring ships, each with a crew of sixty-
four men, were carefully fitted out under the experienced Arctic

50 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAEIES

navigator, James Clark Eoss, who had shared in no less than
seven Polar expeditions — namely, the Erebus, a bomb of
378 tons, ' of strong build and capacious hold,' especially
strengthened to bear the pressure and shocks of the ice, and
the Terror, 340 tons, which had been similarly strengthened
for Arctic service in the winter of 1836, when many whalers
were reported beset by the ice in Baffin's Bay, and which had
been employed the following summer by Sir George Back
in his attempt to reach Eepulse Bay. ' They possessed every
superiority,' writes Hooker, ' except that of sailing qualities
for manoeuvring amongst ice.' So well found were the ships
that they suffered no vital injury from storm or collision, or
from frenzied battering by the masses of pack ice in the long-
drawn fury of the Antarctic gales : nor, thanks to the precau-
tions taken, did the crews suffer from the dreaded scurvy
which cut short the rival cruise of the Astrolabe and Zelee
under D'Urville.1

Eoss was instructed to land the observers and instruments
for fixed magnetic observatories at St. Helena, the Cape, and
Van Diemen's Land, finally calling at Sydney, the centre of
reference for magnetic determinations. He carried with him
portable observatories, and with these he was to make special
observations at intermediate oceanic islands (Kerguelen's
Land being particularly recommended) simultaneously with
the fixed observatories and those in Europe.

Then, after refitting at Van Diemen's Land, he was to begin
his southward explorations, first to determine the Magnetic
Pole, and incidentally to extend geographical discovery, * while
seeking fresh places on which to plant your observatory in all
directions from the Pole.'

The Antarctic afforded more of ' those yet unvisited tracts
of geographical research ' than the Arctic. It had been visited

1 Dumont D'Urville (1790-1842), the French navigator and accomplished
man of science, whose first claim to fame was the identification and preserva-
tion of the Venus of Milo. His exploring voyage in search of La Perouse,
1826-9, took him to Australasia and the Pacific ; in 1837-40, again in the
Astrolabe, with the Z&lee as tender, he made two voyages to 'the Antarctic.
Compelled by scurvy to refit at Hobart, he started in January 1840, as Wilkes
six weeks before from Sydney, in the very direction in which it was known
that Ross was about to sail.

ANTAKCTIC EXPLORERS 51

by fewer navigators, and the conditions were less favourable.
Cook in 1774, then Bellinghausen the Russian, Weddell with
his furthest south of 74°, and Biscoe and Balleny, Messrs.
Enderby's sealing captains, all between 1820 and 1839 had
passed the Antarctic Circle. Balleny was the immediate
predecessor of the French, the American, and the British
expeditions in 1840 and the following years. After the lapse
of seventy-three years the soundness of his observations has
received striking confirmation. In the course of his voyage
he obviously saw the ice wall of C6te Clairee, ' discovered '
the following year by D'Urville. This, however, he took for
an enormous iceberg, and ultimately decided that what seemed
to be land behind it was probably a distant fog bank hanging
over the ice. Early in 1912 the Aurora, belonging to the
Mawson expedition, sailed over'the position of the supposed land.
This C6te Clairee was a sore point for the French and
American expeditions, for Lieutenant Wilkes1 of the United
States Navy ' discovered ' it independently a week after
D'Urville, and a great contention for priority ensued. With
all Ross's admiration for the courage and endurance of both,
the reader divines in his plain words a touch of national pride
as he records at full length Balleny's superior claim, if land
there was, to either : more than this, he must have dimly felt
a kind of poetic justice in the event. For although he had
been on a friendly footing with Wilkes, in the outfit of whose
expedition he had taken much interest, and who later sent him
privately a chart of his discoveries before the Erebus sailed South
from Tasmania, he was somewhat nettled on reaching that island
in 1840 to find that both the French and American expeditions,
knowing his plans, had endeavoured to forestall them ; and he
writes (' Voyage ' i. 116) that this ' certainly did greatly surprise
me. I should have expected their national pride would have
caused them rather to have chosen any other path in the wide
field before them than one thus pointed out, if no higher con-
siderations had power to prevent such an interference.'

1 Lieutenant Charles Wilkes commanded the Vincennes and its four con-
sorts on the Antarctic exploring expedition sent out by the United States
.Government in 1838-40.

52 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAKIES

Acknowledging, however, that they were within their rights
in so doing, whatever the results to him, he gave up his original
plan. His instructions left him a certain latitude, and, where
England had so constantly led, he did not choose to follow.
He therefore resolved to start his cruise in search of the Mag-
netic Pole farther to the east along the meridian of 170° E.
His chief reason for choosing this particular meridian ' was its
being that upon which Balleny had in the summer of 1839
attained to the latitude of 69° and there found an open sea.'
It was not, he adds, because he feared to fail where the American
and French had failed to do more than barely cross the Antarctic
Circle. Their ships, unlike the Erebus and Terror, were ill-
adapted to battle with the ice. Even in longitude 170°,
where Eoss met with a belt of pack ice 200 miles wide, they
could not have forced their way through. Thus in 1839-40,
though D'Urville added Louis Philippe Land to the South
Shetlands group — south of Cape Horn — and south of Tasmania
traced Adelie Land for about 150 miles before approaching the
supposititious C6te Clairee ; — though Wilkes followed the same
line with its hairier of pack ice another 20° westwards, the
ice, impenetrable by their ships, debarred them from so much
as reaching latitude 70° S. In signal contrast to their moderate
achievements, Eoss himself, thus diverted from his original
plan, was rewarded with superlative success in the discovery
of Victoria Land, with its great volcano Mount Erebus, 13,000
feet high, in 77 J° S., and its stupendous ice barrier, which he
traced for 250 miles, twice forcing his way beyond the 78th
parallel.

Unable to effect a landing so as to visit the southern Mag-
netic Pole, 150 miles inland, he was able to place it very
accurately from abundant observations.

Eoss made three expeditions to the South in the Erebus
and Terror — the first, 1840-1, from Tasmania and back to
Tasmania again, lasting five months, when he discovered
Victoria Land and the Great Ice Barrier ; the second, 1841-2,
from New Zealand and back to the Falkland Islands, east of
Cape Horn, lasting four and a half months, when he revisited
the Barrier ; the third, 1842-3, from the Falkland Islands

THE THEEE EXPEDITIONS 53

and back to the Cape, lasting three and a half months, when
he visited Louis Philippe Land and the South Shetlands.

Between the first and second came a stay of three months
in Tasmania, a visit to Sydney and a stay of three months in
New Zealand. Between the second and third came a stay of,
altogether, six months at the Falklands, broken by a seven
weeks' expedition to Hermite Island in Tierra del Fuego, and
west of Cape Horn.

The original voyage out to Tasmania, which lasted nearly
eleven months, followed an unusual course in order to touch
at various oceanic islands, to establish observatories there and
at the Cape, and to pass certain points of magnetic interest.
The journey home from the Cape, however, by way of St.
Helena, Ascension, and Eio, occupied only four months. Thus
four years had elapsed since leaving England on September 30,
1839, before Eoss and his men once more reached English
soil on September 4, 1843.

VOL. I

CHAPTEK III

THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

THE long preparations at last completed, at the end of
September 1839 they set sail on an adventurous voyage for
how long they knew not. Its exact scope and length depended
on the captain and his undivulged instructions. In the end,
as has been said, they reached home within four years ; but
there had been talk of a fifth year or more. In three successive
summers they entered the ice. The first voyage was the most
rewarding, the second the most perilous. Eoss indeed failed
to reach his formal objective. He found a continent instead
of open sea : the Magnetic Pole was 150 miles inland. The
icy sheet which barred nearer approach to the shore stretched
a full twenty miles further to the north than it does now :
and for sailing ships at the mercy of winds and tides it was
impossible to land here or winter with reasonable prospect of
safety.

Geographically, however, they achieved unlocked for
triumphs. The experiences of their predecessors offered
little or no prospect of new discoveries, but as Captain Scott
wrote of that ' wonderful voyage ' :

When the extent of our knowledge before and after it is
considered, all must concede that it deserves to rank among
the most brilliant and famous that have been made. After
all the preceding experiences and adventures in the Southern
Seas, few things could have looked more hopeless than an
attack upon that great ice-bound region which lay within
the Antarctic Circle ; yet out of this desolate prospect
Eoss wrested an open sea, a vast mountain region, a smoking

54

BOSS AS DISCOVEEEB 55

volcano, and a hundred problems of great interest to the
geographer ; in this unique region he carried out scientific
research in every possible department, and by unremitted
labour succeeded in collecting material which until quite
lately has constituted almost the exclusive source of our
knowledge of magnetic conditions in the higher southern
latitudes. It might be said that it was James Cook who
denned the Antarctic Kegion, and James Eoss who dis-
covered it.

For over half a century the expedition held the record for
* furthest South ' — and it was from the land Eoss discovered
that Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, and again Scott set forth
on their great Southern journeys. The regions beyond the
Antarctic Circle yielded next to nothing to the botanist :
they were barren far beyond the barrenness of the Arctic Zone.
A seaweed was only once found floating within the Antarctic
Circle. At Cockburn Island one sole lichen was found, painting
the exposed rocks with red and orange — a lichen, strangely
enough, abundant in the Arctic, and next seen by Hooker on
desolate summits of the Upper Himalayas, over against the
Tibetan Plateau.

The sea, however, had other harvests, and as elsewhere
Hooker, unable to botanise, or not wholly engrossed in working
at his collections, studied the floating creatures brought in by
the tow-net or dredge, establishing for the first time the occur-
rence of highly developed animal life at a depth of 400 fathoms,
so here he determined the presence of abundant infusoria in
the icy waters, which provided the ultimate means of sub-
sistence for higher forms. Multitudes of small shrimps fed
upon them, and supported abundance of whales : they were,
moreover, eaten by the fish ; while birds and seals lived upon
both and were themselves the prey of the killer- whales.

This zoological interest appears from the very outset of
the voyage and continues to the end, though of the third trip
to the South he is compelled to write : ' Amongst the animals
very little or nothing has been done. I lost all my gauze in
the pack from the water being so full of little pieces of ice, and in
the clear water it has alw£^s been blowing with heavy seas on.5

56 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

Dr. Eichardson warmly encouraged him in the work ; skill
with the pencil being a special qualification in dealing with
sea creatures which could not be preserved. To add to our
knowledge of the structure of animals, he insisted, is the most
certain way of attaining a scientific reputation ; to be the
'first to discover or name a new species is a very secondary
matter.

But, rich as the collections were that he brought back from
the voyage, they were never fully worked out, to the great loss
of marine zoology and the disappointment of their zealous
collector. The * might have been ' was sharply brought home
to him when, sixty years later, he read Dr. Bruce's report of
his Antarctic work, ' The Scientific Eesults of the Voyage
of the Scotia.1 l

There is [he wrote to Dr. Bruce, January 10, 1901]
always something painful to me when I come across the
scientific reports on Antarctic expeditions, due to the whole-
sale destruction of the great collections made by Koss and
myself of marine and submarine animals of all classes.
Eoss was an indefatigable collector, who never lost an
opportunity, whether on sea or ashore ; but except my
collection of Diatoms published by Ehrenberg,2 and dis-
cussed in my ' Flora Antarctica,' there is nothing to show
of the stores of the pelagic materials obtained with so much
zeal and care by Eoss and myself. Thereby hangs a tale
which, if we two have the pleasure of meeting again, I may
unfold to you.

But his enthusiasm was unabated when his forgotten harvest
was at last fully garnered. Eight years afterwards Dr. Bruce
sent him Vol. V. of the ' Invertebrates of the Scotia Expedi-
tion ' : he replied on February 14, 1909 :

I have again to thank you for a magnificent addition to
my Antarctic library. It is really a noble work, and I find

1 Cp. vol. ii. p. 441.

2 Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876), Professor of Medicine at
Berlin, was the founder and chief representative of the study of microscopic
organisms. He was one of Humboldt's companions on his journey to the Ural
and Altai mountains.

ZOOLOGICAL EESEAKCHES 57

in the several articles a great deal that interests me very
much, especially in the subject of the geographical distri-
bution of v the various orders and genera so graphically and
scientifically treated. . . .

I well remember the deep sea Pycnogon which we dredged
up in the Erebus, especially the Amnoihea communis, which
astonished the crew. It is much to be desired that zoologists
would follow the example of most botanists in giving the
geographical range of the species they deal with.

From the moment of starting down Channel the naturalist's
eye is alert, whether it be that a wren is observed seven miles
out at sea, or sea- water examined for the microscopic cause of
its luminosity at night, or the activity of the young of a small
crab from the Antilles, harbouring in their thousands on a
piece of driftwood, swimming with the last five abdominal
segments that in adults are turned in upon the thorax.

Even after Madeira and the Cape de Verdes had furnished
some botanical material to work upon, this did not fill up his
time, and botany took second place after general naturalist's
work.

To Us Father

March 17, 1840.

Since leaving St. Helena, my time has been employed
exactly as before ; the net is constantly overboard, and
catching enough to keep me three-quarters of the day
employed drawing ; the dissections of the little marine ani-
mals generally take some time, as they are almost universally
microscopic. Though I never intend to make anything but
Botany a study, I do not think I can do better than I am
doing ; it gives me a facility in drawing which I feel comes
much much easier to me ; it pleases the Captain beyond any-
thing to see me at work, and, further, it is a new field which
none but an artist can prosecute at sea ; the extent of this
branch of Natural History is quite astonishing, the number
of species of little winged and footed shells provided with
wings, sails, bladders or swimmers appears marvellous. The
causes of the luminousness of the sea I refer entirely to
animals (living). I never yet saw the water flash without

58 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

finding sufficient cause without electricity, phosphoric
water, dead animal matter, or anything further than living
animals (generally Entomostraca Crustacea if anybody
asks you). These little shrimps are particularly numerous,
especially two species of them, thousands of one kind being
caught in one night. The library of Natural History that
you fitted me out with is to me worth any money. Blainville's
Actinologie and Edwardes' Crustaceae are particularly useful,
as by them I can name many old species and detect the
wonderful new forms I meet with. My collection amounts
to about 200 drawings done from nature under the micro-
scope. ... As I am learning to use my left eye to the
microscope, I do not find my eyesight affected even by
candlelight.

His discovery of the Antarctic infusoria is recorded step
by step in his Journal. To begin with, he writes on February
15, 1841, inlat. 76° S.:

Much young ice was seen to-day of a light brown colour ;
when dissolved in water it deposited a very fine sediment,
composed of exceedingly minute, transparent, flat quad-
rangular flakes, each formed of numerous parallel prisms of
a perfectly regular form, giving each flake a fluted appear-
ance ; numerous circular discs, also transparent, were
scattered among them ; they were very minutely reticu-
lated, and had often opaque centres. All the young ice was
very full of it ; when lifted out of the water it did not appear
discoloured ; many acres were covered with it. I suppose
it to be some insoluble salt, whose appearance is probably
connected with the volcano.

This facile conclusion impressed itself on the other officers ;
Boss himself forgot to correct it by Hooker's fuller examination,
and (Voyage, I. 243, II. 146 ; cp. II. 332) records the general
belief that the colouring matter consisted of fine ashes from
Mount Erebus, eighty miles away, while ascribing the deter-
mination of its real nature to Ehrenberg, who examined speci-
mens after their return. But against this note in Hooker's
own copy are penned the words : * I recognised them as
diatoms, &c., at the time. J. D. Hooker.'

ANTAKCTIC INFUSOEIA 59

On the second voyage, the Journal records, December 21,
1841 : 'Much of this ice is discoloured, as was the case last
year and from the same cause. When melted it gives out a
strong animal smell.' And again, off Louis Philippe Land,
December .28, 1842 — a point repeated in the letter to his
father of March 7, 1843, describing the voyage :

All day the washed pieces of pack ice have been stained
with yellow, caused doubtless by the infusoriae in the
stomachs of the Salpae, which are washed up against the
ice and leave this stain (the same as last year). When the
wind was light and the fog thick in the morning, I recognised
the animal smell very strong from the pack, precisely similar
to that of brash ice, with the Salpoid remains, omitted last
year by me, in the cabin.

Letters to Eoss after their return (September 1 and 4,
1844) speak of two pamphlets on Antarctic Infusoria received
from Ehrenberg — ' in hard German,' one containing descrip-
tions, the other ' drawings of AsterompJialos Humboldtii,
Cuvierii, Rossii, Darwinii, and Hookerii. I think, Sir, that
we are in good company, though I can give you no more idea
of what the species are like further than that the magnified
figures resemble the objects at the far end of a kaleidoscope.'

Before this was sent on to Koss, Hooker ' commenced trying,
with the German dictionary, to spell out [the] descriptions of
our Infusoria.'

I find Ehrenberg has described 70 new species from the
contents of two pill-boxas and three small bottles, and has
not yet examined the whole of what I had. As far as I can
make out they seem to throw extraordinary light on the
subject, and to have been the most important collections
ever brought to this country. The amount of species in
what you have must be enormous, as my specimens were
mere scraps in pill-boxes from the dredge, and a portion of
a large bottle you have of condensed brown Ice.

The other packets I sent were of dirt from the roots
of Cockburn and other Island mosses, which also seem to
contain animals. . . . Ehrenberg finds animalculae in all
soundings, and I feel quite convinced that those you have

60 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

will alone immortalise the Expedition. No person seems
to have thought of collecting such things before for scientific
purposes.

Happily Hooker's short-sighted eyes stood the strain of
the microscopic work fairly well, though he had to turn his
unexpectedly good opportunity to account under constant
difficulties. This, as the voyage drew towards its close, he
describes as follows (March 7, 1843) :

During our now homeward passage I shall have plenty
to do with tropical plants and sea animals ; the latter I must
keep up, for there never was such an opportunity as this ship
affords for the study, being a slow sailer and my having
such accommodation below for drawing and describing them ;
not that I care for them at all ; somehow with all the time
I have devoted to them they have not won my affections,
because I feel sure that two studies in Nat. Hist, cannot
be well prosecuted together, and though an easier study,
marine animals require much more time than plants to in-
vestigate fully ; the drawings will do me some credit if it be
only for the time taken and the novelty of their being often
done with the microscope lashed to the table. My eyes are
as good as ever they were in strength, but my shortsighted-
ness ' semper idem ' (always worse and worse). The spectacles
you were so good as to send me were not half strong enough ;
however, they are much nicer than are procurable out of
England, and I shall get new glasses at the Cape. Between
examining mosses and the glare of the Ice and snowy spicules
in the wind, my eyes smarted very much during the time the
ships were in the pack and watered, but never inflamed.
They are all right again now. Your spectacles (green) were
a great comfort.

So also with his botanical drawings, done at sea from
specimens in his collections. He chooses the best model he
can, and if art is deficient, at least he is accurate. Finding
a sudden chance to send home his collections from New Zealand,
the Aucklands, and Campbell Island, he says (June 6, 1841) :

The notes were all finished in the Ice, where the smooth water
enabled me to resume my old post in the Captain's cabin.

DBA WING AT SEA 61

As far as I could I imitated Bauer's I style of drawing dis-
sections, but as the only sketches on board of that artist
are two in Parry's Voyage, I have not much to copy from
and I do not expect that they will please you much, and
further when the ship gets through a pack she at once meets
the troubled waters, and commences rolling about so that
I have to lash my portfolio and microscope and to prop
myself up. However I get on as well as I expected. Some
of the notes are in a very rude state, for the notice of the
opportunity was sudden. That they may prove correct is
all that I hope for, as I endeavoured to stick to facts. . . .
These are ... both as numerous and as well done as I
could.

He did not restrict himself to scientific drawing, however.
In the same letter he tells his father :

At present I am attempting a sketch of the ships off
the Barrier and burning mountain in 78° South for you,
and should I succeed you shall have it ; my talent for
sketching is, however, far below par, and without colours
it would be nothing. There is rather a nice print published
of Weddell's two ships bearing up in 74° 15', by Huggins,
which would be worth your buying ; a few shillings would
cover it, and the Icebergs in it give a very fair idea of those
floating masses, though they are not flat-topped like the
most of those we have seen, nor is the colour at all good,
as they should have a blue tinge.

Doubtless his artistic power was improving, for a year
earlier (February 3, 1840) he is much more severe upon his
general drawing. 'My sketches are characteristic of the
different places visited, but miserably done ; they are not
intended for any person but you to see.' Still, at the end of
the voyage, he feels that his execution is not equal to his aims,
though many of his sketches were utilised as the basis of

1 Francis Bauer (1758-1840), the superb botanical draughtsman employed
by Banks, who left him a pension that he might continue his work at Kew.
His name appears as illustrator on the title-page of Sir W. Hooker's Genera
Filicum (1838-40) ; but more than half the plates were drawn by the new
draughtsman, Walter Fitch, who was to serve Kew and the Hookers for half
a century.

62 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

illustration for Boss's * Account of the Voyage of Discovery
and Kesearch.' 1

To his Aunt (Mary Turner) he writes (April 18, 1843) :

In drawing I do not improve much, though I have made
several sketches of the different places we have visited.
There is now but one tolerable .artist in the Expedition,
Mr. Davis 2 of the Terror. Dayman 3 (Aunt Ellen's
acquaintance), who was the best, is left behind in Van
Diemen's Land. Your pencil would be invaluable here,
though you [would] have grown heartily tired of Bergs and
Ice. Capt. Boss used often to make me sketch coastlines
of hills and valleys of snow, which is most miserable
work. Could I have coloured, nothing would be so grand
as a view of the scenes we have visited, if in fine weather ;
but let the weather be what it will, an Iceberg is always a
treacherous thing at the best.

I am very anxious to know what Fitch 4 is about ; he
has sent me a very pretty fancy sketch of flowers, for which
I am extremely obliged to him ; it was very kind of him
to think of me ; in return I have been making a sketch of
a curious Iceberg with a hole in it for him. The berg is
fair enough, but the sea will not do. He could copy it and
with excellent effect ; it was blowing hard and there were
some black scudding clouds near the moon, which was
reflected on the tips of the waves, close to the edge of the
berg. The water should be of an intense cobalt blue, and
it should reflect a white glare on the sea. There are no
harsh lines on an Iceberg ; the shadows should be faint
and the lights bright.

This drawing, duly copied by Fitch, was doubtless among
those shown to Prince Albert, when Sir William was summoned
to Buckingham Palace in the spring of 1842 to give some
account of the progress of the Expedition.

1 See the list, p. 86, footnote.

2 J. E. Davis was second master of the Terror.

8 Joseph Dayman was mate on the Erebus, and afterwards lieutenant on
the Rattlesnake^ in which Huxley was naturalist. In 1840-1, while Koss
made his first cruise to the South, Dayman was one of the three officers who
remained in charge of the magnetic observatory in Tasmania.

4 Walter Fitch (1817-92) was originally a pattern-drawer in a calico
printing factory. He entered Sir W. Hooker's service in 1834, and for half a
century continued as the official draughtsman for the Kew botanical publications.

IMAGINAEY DISSIPATIONS 63

Landscape drawing was by no means one of the lighter
occupations banned by Sir William. Like his father-in-law,
Dawson Turner, the friend and connexion of Cotman, he cared
for art beyond his own botanical draughtsmanship. ' I rejoice
that you make drawings of scenery. They will be invaluable.'
And in the same strain his shipmate Dayman writes on
August 27, 1841, from Tasmania to Hooker in New Zealand :

I am particularly happy that you have found the drawings
you made on the passage out to be of more value than you
expected — if it be only as an encouragement to make more,
for upon my word without flattery (which you know by
this time I am incapable of) if you do not something of the
kind, I do not know who will. As far as poor McCformick]
is concerned, one of the main objects of the Expedition has
already failed.

Valuable as his zoological researches were, both in satis-
fying his restless intellectual interests and in giving him fuller
understanding of living Nature, his father — strict botanist of
the older school— mistrusted any swerving from the closest
allegiance to botany. He took alarm at the remark (Febru-
ary 3, 1840), * My time has been so completely occupied
with sea animals that I have little time for other drawing.'
When he showed his son's first collections to Eobert Brown
he diplomatically abstained from mentioning these zoological
dissipations, for ' Brown's idea is that without neglecting
such things, your time even at sea ought to be mainly devoted
to studying the plants you have collected,' a thing that proved
easier to do in the calm of the pack-ice than on the unquiet
expanse of the Southern Ocean.

Nor was this his only stricture. To try too much is to
become ineffectual. He urges his son to stick to botanical
work exclusively — to avoid wasting his time in unnecessary
entertainments ; counsel indeed scarcely needed for one who
cared so little for the ordinary attractions of society. But
Sir William's definition of frivolity is strangely wide.

The first halting- place of the expedition was the beautiful
island of Madeira, lovely with semi-tropical vegetation, and

64 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

twofold lovely as the first relief after a tedious sea voyage.
Several hospitable friends of the family lived here, and Hooker
rejoiced to explore the wonders and beauties of the island so
familiar to him from books. He and his fellow officers had
long planned an excursion to the valley of an ancient crater
in the mountainous heart of the island, and he sent home a
lively description of the jaunt. This gallop up to the Curral
is one of the ' unnecessary entertainments.' True, Joseph did
not fail to collect all the plants he could find both here and
in the Cape de Verde Islands and St. Helena, where also he
roamed afield ; but the season was too late — everything was
burnt up : not to add that he was unpractised in making a
large collection. Worse still, an old hand, Cuming,1 visited
St. Helena a week or two after he was there, and in one strenu-
ous day made a much more brilliant collection. Sir William
accordingly admits his excuses as to drought ashore, damp
and ill accommodation afloat, but confesses to considerable dis-
appointment. Robert Brown, his botanic idol, likes Joseph's
sketches and notes ; but as to the collection, merely sends
suggestions for better preservation of the specimens, such as
the use of brown paper in the tropics, instead of blotting-paper,
which ferments.

And Sir William, repeating that he ought in future to
secure, if possible, an assistant collector to leave him free for
the mental work of describing and drawing, adds, it is too
much for a man to collect well and to note well. Assuredly he
is well employed but is not specialising enough. Great oppor-
tunities lie before him. No botanist has been to Southern
New Zealand since Menzies 2 and Vancouver.3 In Tasmania

1 Hugh Cuming (1791-1865), conchologist and botanist, who was long
settled at Valparaiso. He spent 1835-9 in exploring the Philippines. It was
on his way back to England via the Cape that he visited St. Helena.

2 Archibald Menzies (1754-1842) began his botanical career as a gardener
in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden ; was encouraged by Hope, the Professor,
to qualify as a surgeon, and completed his reputation as naturalist and surgeon
on Vancouver's voyage in the Discovery, 1790-5. He was elected to the
Linnean Society in 1790.

3 George Vancouver (1758-98) sailed as a seaman in Cook's second voyage,
and rose to be a captain in the navy. After the Nootka Sound dispute with
Spain, he was sent to take over the district again and explore the coast from
lat. 30° northwards. On the way out (1791-5) he explored much of Australia,
New Zealand, and Tahiti, returning by Cape Horn.

EAELY COLLECTIONS 6S

he should visit some of the high mountains, ' which everywhere
afford what I consider by far the most interesting plants.'
The Algae in the high south latitudes are particularly worth
collecting, and indeed should be collected everywhere if no
phaenogamic plants be available, even if they be known species,
in order to determine their distribution.

Throughout, it may be noted, Sir William is the systematist,
the collector, and describer, urging his son to look for more
plants and especially those missed by the latest travellers,
such as Wright 1 in the Falklands, and to get his friends to
collect specimens ' in quantities not in driblets ' at all stages,
so as to have ample material for Floras of all the places he
visits, and the mistakes he corrects in his letters are those of
identification tested by extant accounts. On the same prin-
ciple, just as Eobert Brown bade him * collect everything,'
so Hooker sagely acknowledges, ' such scraps as are useless
for other purposes may yet, so long as they exhibit the Natural
Order to which they belong, prove of service in illustrating
the geography of plants.'

But later collections were more satisfactory. No extenua-
ting circumstances needed to be invoked when, at last, in
June 1842, there arrived the plants and notes from Kerguelen's
Land, the Aucklands, and Tasmania, which rumour had sent
to the bottom along with the ship that carried them. Among
these notes Lady Hooker reports 150 drawings, * with highly
magnified dissections, some almost worthy, my husband
says, of Bauer's pencil.' Sir William, after looking through
the collection with Eobert Brown, writes enthusiastically :
' Believe me, dear Boy, they have given me infinite pleasure,
for they prove that you must have been diligent, and conse-
quently successful.' And again (July 7, 1842) of the drawings
and notes : * I expected much of you ; but these have far

1 William Wright (1735-1819), a naval surgeon who, being unemployed,
took up private practice in Jamaica (1764-77), finally becoming honorary
surgeon -general of the island. He corresponded with Banks and others,
discovering especially a native species of cinchona in Jamaica. After botanical
study in England and military adventures abroad, he finally settled in
Edinburgh in 1798. Among his friends was Sir W. Hooker, to whom he
presented a collection made in Iceland to replace Sir William's that had been
burned.

66 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

exceeded my expectations and do you credit. . . . And
Brown is charmed with what you have done.'

The long stay at Kerguelen's Land, Tasmania, Hermite
Island, and the Falklands, the travel through New Zealand,
the short stay at the Cape and Sydney, and flying raids on
Lord Auckland Island and Campbell Island, provided sugges-
tive material for his works on the Floras of the Southern lands
and the Antarctic regions : works which afforded not merely
a thorough list and account of the plants and the conditions
under which he saw them existing, but discussed the com-
parison of South and North, the questions of distribution,
the problem of the oceanic islands and the former connection
of the Southern continents, leading slowly but inevitably on
to the evolutionary theory in which he was to be Darwin's
confidant, critic, and supporter. Darwin's own ' Voyage of
the Beagle,' indeed, was the most recent of the various travel
books that inspired him. It was in the press while he was
approaching his M.D. examinations, and the old friend of his
family, and of Darwin himself, Mr. Lyell of Kinnordy, sent
him a set of proofs that had come from Darwin. Time was
short : Hooker slept with the proofs under his pillow, and
devoured them eagerly the moment he woke in the mornings.
Before he sailed Mr. Lyell sent him a copy of the book, a gift
most gratefully and enthusiastically acknowledged. As the
voyage continues he tells Mr. Lyell, ' Your kind present is indeed
now a well-thumbed book, for all the officers send to me for it.' *

If Darwin's was the last of the travel books that inspired
him, Cook's voyage was the first. As has been noted already,
it fired him at a far earlier age than Darwin himself was stirred
by Humboldt's ' Personal Narrative,' a fact on which he dwells
again when writing to James Hamilton, his old college friend,
after he had sat on the very spot in Kerguelen's Land from
which the view of. the Arch Eock was taken, and the picture
of the men killing penguins.

Ff 1 Thus J. E. Davis, second master of the Terror, later thanking Hooker
for the ' young library ' sent to him, writes : ' I like Darwin's Journal much :
he has accomplished what Old Johnson said of Goldsmith when he heard he was
going to write a Natural History : " he will make it as interesting as a Persian
tale." ' (See also the letter to Lady Hooker, p. 136;)

DUTIES AND COMPANIONS 67

Such pictures once visualised were ineffaceable. It was the
same elsewhere. In his letters he repeatedly brings a view
home to his father by recalling an illustration or description
in some familiar book of travels — as in Madeira and at Teneriffe,
Webb and Berthelot, or at the Cape, Burchell's Travels. In
describing a plant fresh from its native ground, his strong
visual memory is ready to prompt some detailed comparison
with a dried specimen once studied in his father's herbarium.

As to his duties on the Erebus, he gives a detailed descrip-
tion in his letters to his grandfather. There was little sickness
on board : on his professional visits each morning to the sick
bay, he seldom found much to do : indeed, as has been noted
already, during his stay at Chatham before the ship sailed he
remarked the superiority in conduct and health on the Erebus' s
crew over the Tenor's, albeit during the voyage the Terror's
officers prided themselves on keeping the stricter discipline
on board.

He was fortunate in his captain and fellow officers. Eoss
was a friend of his father, and respected by him both for his
religious feeling and for his scientific aptitudes. Sir William,
it will be remembered (II. 12), coming down to visit his son
at Chatham, found the junior officers, in the r61e of Jack ashore,
lacking in scientific seriousness of conversation, and — what
was worse in his eyes — respect for the Sabbath. Neverthe-
less, they were good fellows ; and interested in science when
not, like the surgeon and those trained in magnetic work,
professionally concerned. The Erebus was, and they were
proud of it, a discovery ship, not a surveying vessel ; and
they had been chosen as suitable for a voyage of this kind,
although it came to be generally recognised that Eoss chose
for his executive officers men who were never likely to rival
the brilliancy of his own career. They were not, like the
lieutenants of the Eattlesnake, hostile to use of the tow-net as
* messing the decks ' : on the contrary, scientific observations
went on' every day ; and every day if possible soundings were
taken to test the ocean temperature at various depths, and the
tow-net used.

Hooker was uncertain at first with regard to McCormick,

68 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

the surgeon and nominal naturalist to the Erebus, under whom
he was to serve, for technically his collections, other than
botanical, were liable to be merged in his senior's ; but on the
high seas, where botany gave insufficient occupation, Hooker
slipped into the position he had first desired, of Naturalist de
facto to the Expedition. As he writes (February 3, 1840) :

McCormick has collected nothing but geological speci-
mens, and pays no attention to the sea animals brought
up in the towing nets, and they are therefore brought to me
at once. . . .

(March 17, 1840, at the Cape.) McCormick and I are
exceedingly good friends, and no jealousy exists between
us regarding my taking most of his department ; indeed he
seems to care too little about Natural History altogether to
dream of anything of the kind ; for my part I am rather
glad to have an opportunity of doing more than is expected
from my department. . . . He takes no interest but in
bird shooting and rock collecting ; as of the former he
has hitherto made no collection, I am, nolens volens, the
Naturalist, for which I enjoy no other advantage than the
Captain's cabin, and I think myself amply repaid.

Most of his work, however, was done under Eoss's wing,
whose special branch of science lay in terrestrial magnetism ;
but he was keenly interested in Natural History and, adds
Hooker to his father (February 3, 1840), ' he knows a good deal
of the lower orders of Animals, and between him and the in-
valuable books you gave me, I am picking up a knowledge
of them.' No doubt he would not have been so gracious to a
mere assistant surgeon who was not the son of his distin-
guished friend, and indeed in all Hooker's early undertakings
when he had to deal with officials, he was greatly helped,
and knew that he was helped, by the social and scientific
prestige at his back, and the introductions he received to
notable persons who could help him.

My time during this sea life has not been, I hope, so
uselessly employed as I expected it might have been.
Capt. Boss, as soon as he heard that I was very anxious
to work, gave me a cabinet for my plants in his cabin ; one

AID FROM BOSS 69

of the tables under the stern windows is mine wholly ; also
a drawer for my microscope, a locker for my papers, etc.
To me he is most kind and attentive, — forestalling my
wishes in many respects. One day he finds a ' box that
will do nicely for Hooker,' then a seat at his cabin table,
and a place always clear for me to sit down, when tired
of standing at the drawing-table. Two towing nets are
constantly overboard for sea animals. . . . Almost every
day I draw, sometimes all day long and till two and three in
the morning, the Captain directing me ; he sits on one side
of the table, writing and figuring at night, and I on the
other, drawing. Every now and then he breaks off and
comes to my side, to see what I am after. . . .

I have now drawings of nearly 100 Marine Crustacea
and Mollusca, almost all microscopic ; some of them are
very badly done, but I think that practice is improving
me, and as I go on, I hope that some will be useful on my
return. Were it not for drawing, my sea life would not be
half so pleasant to me as it is. In the Cabin, with every
comfort around me, I can imagine myself at home. Other
duties are given me to do ; indeed, on finding how idle I
was to be I asked the Captain if I could not in any way be
useful to him, when he gave me the Hygrometer to take
four times a day, at 9, 12, 3, and 9 ; and for two days in the
week at 3 A.M., after the registering there is to draw out
tables for different Meteorological purposes. The Captain
has a compound microscope exactly like your large one,
which I use whenever I require it, indeed he has made every-
thing in his cabin my own. He has expressed himself much
pleased with my Botanical collections, from which I judge
that he never saw a really good collection, for I never look
back upon a day in which I should not have done more
than has been done, though at the time I hardly well knew
how to carry what I had got. ... It would have amused
you to have come into the cabin and seen the Captain and
myself with our sleeves tucked up picking seaweed roots,
and depositing the treasures to be drawn, in salt water, in
basins, quietly popping the others into spirits. Some of
the seaweeds he lays out for himself, often sitting at one
end of the table laying them out with infinite pains, whilst
I am drawing at the other end till 12 and 1 in the morning,

VOL. I F

70 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

at which times he is very agreeable and my hours pass quickly
and pleasantly.

The years pass ; but the same note is continued in a letter
of April 20, 1843. Community of intellectual interests, no
doubt, minimised the inevitable little rubs of months of close
quarters in a sailing-ship, frankly acknowledged by the young
assistant surgeon.

Our Captain is still always to me most kind and attentive,
indeed his whole conduct to me, ever since we left, has been
quite uniform, and I have an immense deal to thank him
for ; as you may suppose, we have had one or two little tiffs,
neither of us perhaps being helped by the best of tempers ;
but nothing can exceed the liberality with which he has
thrown open his cabin to me and made it my work room at
no little inconvenience to himself. He is quite now the
same to me as ever he was, and will be I doubt not to the
end of the Expedition, so that my situation is most comfort-
able, nor would I change with any ship in the service.

But whatever his equitable claim in such circumstances
he would not lay himself open to the charge of grasping at
more than his due.

Whenever the seine was shot I attended on the return
of the boat, to pick out the fish that were wanted ; a very
few I kept for myself and Eichardson1 should he not get
them, but my duties of course precluded the possibility
of my making any notes or a large private collection.
Captain Eoss often feels himself jammed between me and
McCormick, when the latter wants to keep a nice thing for
his government collection, and I of course want to put it
with ours, for he makes no general collection of anything
but rocks and birds, and as I take the drudgery of collecting
all the other branches of Nat. Hist, with the Captain's
assistance, it would not be fair that I should be refused
the credit of bottling down the more scarce and beautiful.
Whenever there is the slightest difficulty I always give up,
remembering the proverb against * those who wrestle with
sweeps.'

* I.e. Sir John Richardson of Haslar.

BOTANY AT SEA 71

Botanical work on board ship was done under difficulties
of its own, especially at the outset. As has been seen, the
early collections found small favour in the sight of his scientific
friends at home, who, as his father said, looked to the actual
results apart from inexperience and the extenuating circum-
stances of drought ashore and wet on board, when in the tropics
the specimens pressed in the ordinary blotting-paper fermented,
and the presence of the passengers for the Cape left no room
for dealing properly with the plants. When they left, the
sick bay was available for the naturalists,

and a great comfort it is [he writes on March 28, 1840], as
it is spacious, and hitherto I have been very much at a loss
where to lay out my plants, not liking to take advantage
of the Captain's cabin for so extensive a job, and our berth
being too full during the day to grant me room enough.
Hitherto I have always laid them out and changed them
after my messmates have turned in, which often kept me
up very late after my excursions ; further, until the Captain
had reduced his cabin into order I had no place to put my
collections, and they used to get sadly kicked about the
lower deck ; now, however, I have a nice cabinet in the cabin,
where there is nothing to fear but the universal dampness
of the ship, and a few cockroaches which did me some little
damage, eating out the stems of some plants, and leaving
the leaves.

He accepted his father's criticisms as a stimulus to better
work. The conditions being what they were, this criticism
was perhaps rather uncompromising, considering that when he
sent his collections of some 200 species home from St. Helena
(February 3, 1840) he did not himself think he had much to
show for his labour :

Some are good specimens, others are only sent as
mementoes. I can hardly expect you to be much pleased
with them, though I assure you I never spent an idle day
ashore ; nevertheless I never came off at night, without
being convinced that I might have done much more than
was done. Capt. Boss wished me to delay sending them
till we arrive at the Cape. ... I do not care that my

72 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

collections should be mentioned in the public journals (like
McCorrnick's) should they even be worth it, which I doubt —
as all I care for is to please you. I grow every day more
selfish and totally indifferent to public opinion ; I still
scorn the Eoyal Society's commission in botany, and if
I only hear that the present collection does not go to you,
my next -first set shall be a different one, but you shall not
be the sufferer. The Koyal Society ordered me to send
them a first set, and when they have a right to order me,
I will ; as it is, I am so sure that this set is for you, that
I make it a tolerable one. Good as a set it may be ; but I
fear you will not think it so as a collection.

Letters were very slow in reaching the exploring ship :
sometimes they pursued her vainly half over the globe : and
thus it was not till two and a half years later (November 25,
1842) that he could speak of being reassured as to his later
work.

The dissatisfaction my first plants gave has weighed
on my mind until the receipt of your last letters, and all
along made me fear that I was physically incapacitated for
the high trust reposed in me, which the longer I remain in
the Expedition the more honourable do I feel it. My services
now are not those of a day, although but a few days have
been spent in collecting.

Botany at sea meant for the most part collecting on lonely
islands and examining the collections afloat when weather
permitted. A significant note in a letter to Eobert Brown
(November 28, 1843) explains :

In a few days we start again for the Ice, and as soon as
we reach smooth water and the pack, I shall begin finishing
my notes on the vegetation of the Falklands and Hermite
Island.

Botany at sea also meant collecting floating seaweeds and
examining them and the animal life upon them.

Till within a few days [he writes from the Cape on March
17, 1840] no floating seaweeds have been seen, when they
suddenly appeared whilst cruising off St. Helen's Bay about

BOTANISING ASHORE 73

sixty miles north of the Cape, whilst we were beating to
the Southward ; they certainly (though only of one kind)
gave a most exalted notion of a submarine forest, with its
accompaniment of a parasitic vegetation ; with fish for
birds, corals for Lichens, and shells for insects. Whilst
going six or seven knots through the water, we, stationed
in the quarter boats, harpooned these weeds as we passed,
and very good fun for botanising it was ; the largest brought
on board had a short thick branching root from which sprang
four great stems, the longest 24 feet. ... It belongs
to the genus Laminaria ; the old stems are brown, with
flat white corals on them, and some parasitic seaweeds ;
the matted roots contain numerous other seaweeds, shells,
Crustacea, corals, Molluscae, Actineae and red-blooded
worms. The leaves are infested with Patellas, Sertularias,
and Flustrae. From one specimen I took four seaweeds
and upwards of thirty animals, by carefully pulling the
root to pieces. Nor were these large seaweeds ; many
were seen twice as large if not larger. What extraordinary
power can have torn them up by the roots I cannot con-
ceive, for, from their length, they must grow far below low
water mark.1

Nevertheless, however engrossing the twofold interest of
these occupations, the old spell of botanising ashore always
gripped him anew with irresistible attractions. The same
letter tells :

I have heard naturalists complain of the tedium of a
sea voyage ; such cannot be naturalists or must be sea-sick
(which I have never been for an hour). I do not mean to
say I would not be better employed and happier perhaps
studying Botany ashore, with more comforts around me,
but I assure you my weeks fly, though from my slow working
I have not much to show, and, unaccountable as it may
appear to you, when we draw near shore I feel quite thrown
out of my usual routine of employment. I must own,

1 Writing to his father on May 3, 1842, from the Falklands, he gives an
explanation with which some observant naval officers supplied him :

' The officers of the Arrow are very nice fellows. One of them told me
that as the Macrocystis grows large, it finally weighs up the stone, which was
its moorings, and then the whole plant goes off to sea, which fully explains the
reason for our finding so much of it alive at sea.'

74 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

however, whenever my foot has touched terra firma, there is
a sort of magic in the place that makes me grievously loth
to quit it again. There are also peculiar emotions attend-
ing the seeing new countries for the first time, which are
quite indescribable. I never felt as I did on drawing near
Madeira and probably never shall again. Every knot that
the ship approached called up new subjects of enquiry, and
so it is with every new land or even every barren rock.
It was the same on approaching the Cape and viewing
Table Mountain ; I could have, and did, sit for hours
wondering whether this knoll was covered with heaths or
Rutaceae, whether this rill produced the Wardia, or that
rock the Andraea, where was Ludwigsberg, Wynberg, the
tree fern and all the spots which the mind associates with
our mutual pursuits, our friends, or our home. Selfish as
I doubtless am and proved myself to be at home, there is
one idea, the prosecution of which I often dream of, and
that is, to tell, of all other persons, my father, mother, and
brother of what I have seen ; I never view a new scene
but I think what pleasure it will give me to view it over
again with you all, to map to you the places where my
specimens were gathered, to paint the views to my mother
and to spin to William the yarns of incidents that befell my
excursions, while grandpapa and my sisters will look upon
me as ' the Monkey that has seen the world.'

As his field of study becomes more suggestive we see his
work passing from the collector's individual notes to the wider
questions of geographical distribution, so attractive to the
range of his mind. The details become the tissue of his
generalisations.

The earliest botanical impressions de voyage for instance, at
Madeira, overflow with his delight at finding the rich plant
life, known heretofore only from books and dried specimens,
now flourishing in semi-tropical exuberance. The experimental
cultivatipn of the tea plant appeals instantly to the practical
instinct which did so much for commercial botany in the
years to come. So too the * cabbage ' of Kerguelen's Land,
an excellent food for sailors, and the Tussac, or Tussock,
grass of the Falklands, with its prospect of acclimatisation

PEOBLEMS OF DISTRIBUTION 75

in the Western Highlands for pasturage ; to both of which
he makes constant reference, alike scientific and practical.
He sends five sets of his St. Helena specimens home for various
recipients ; he takes some 300 specimens away with him from
the Cape on his first short visit there (March 17-April 6, 1840)
for examination at sea.

By the time he has visited Kerguelen's Land (May 12-
July 20, 1840) his researches begin to take definite shape, both
in subject and in outlook, foreshadowing what was to appear
in his Flora Antarctica. Here emerges his serious interest
in the problems of distribution thrust upon him ever more
forcibly by the plants, living and fossil, so far removed from
any parent continent, and by the nature of Antarctic vegeta-
tion in general. He found the Kerguelen flora in form peculiarly
S. American, with some plants common to the Auckland
group and more to the Falklands. Later in the voyage he is
enabled to write under date November 25, 1842, * My regions
are different both in climate and forms from any other.' At
Kerguelen's Land above all, his favourite cryptogams, so much
less known than the flowering plants, and here relatively
abundant, invited his study. ' You direct my attention,' he
writes to his father (September 7, 1840), * particularly to
Cryptogamia ; believe me that I have at Kerguelen's Land
strained every nerve to add to its scanty Flora in that
particular.'

The Journal contains a very full description of this lonely,
rugged, storm-swept island, for

though two months there, to the last day I went botanising,
and as far as I know I have left no hole unexamined or stone
unturned. . . . You cannot conceive the delight which the
new discoveries afforded as they slowly revealed themselves,
though in many cases it was all I could do to collect from
the frozen ground as much as would serve to identify a
species.

Indeed the very first day he landed,

arriving on board, I found that I had ascertained the existence
of at least thirty species of plants in one day, and within

76 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

two miles of the harbour, thus proving that Mr. Anderson l
was either not ingenious or not ingenuous.

During the two months of his stay here, while the portable
observatory was set up for a long series of magnetic observa-
tions, not only did he enlarge the list of local species from
18 to 150, especially among the Cryptogams, but, by analysis
of his material here and elsewhere, he was able to show
the relative increase among the lower forms of Antarctic
vegetation,2 the peculiarities of plant life in the lonely
Oceanic islands ; the relation of the island floras to each
other and to those of the Southern Continents and of tha
Arctic regions.

His Journal records a curious discovery in the two small
lakes between Christmas Harbour and Northwest Bay.

In these lakes there occurs a most remarkable plant,
which resembles Sabularia aquatica, forming green patches
a foot or two below the surface of the water on a loose muddy
bottom ; here it flowers, the close imbrication of the calicine
segments and those of the Corolla protecting the stamens
from the influence of the water. Each germen contains
a small bubble of air, generated, of course, within the
ovary. Winter seems to be its flowering season, and I
found it in flower after a long search, under a coating
of 2 inches of ice ; as far as I have hitherto examined
it seems to differ from the characters of any Natural
Order.

The ' Cabbage ' (Pringlea antiscorbutica), as has been said,
comes in for a good deal of notice, along with other useful
plants on the island. He writes in his Journal :

Even in this remote corner of the globe, and scanty
though the vegetation be, it has more than an ordinary
interest, from the utility of two of its products. The

1 William Anderson, at first surgeon's mate, afterwards naturalist, on the
Resolution under Captain Cook. In the account of Cook's voyages, he is
referred to as ' the ingenious Mr. Anderson.' He wrote a full account of
the Kerguelen Cabbage aforesaid (Pringlea antiscorbutica).

2 Dicotyledons to Monocotyledons as 1:2; grasses as 1 : 2*6 of the
whole.

KERGUELEN'S LAND 77

destruction of its former forests has produced abundance
of good coal.1 Cook mentions the remarkable cabbage,
which, to a crew long on salt meat, is an invaluable
anti-scorbutic, and to many, a most agreeable dish ;
unlike other pot-herbs, it possesses after boiling so much
of its essential oil, as entirely to neutralise or destroy
any symptoms of heart-burn or flatulence; nothing can
be more wholesome than it is. The root eats like horse-
radish and the young hearts like coarse mustard and
cress ; the seeds are the food of the numerous ducks
on the island ; growing as it does near the sea, on a
spot upwards of 1000 miles from any land where fresh
vegetables can be obtained, it seems planted by Nature's
hand for the poor mariner, when suffering under his own
peculiar malady.

This curious plant was one of Cook's discoveries ; Hooker
had been specially urged by his father and Robert Brown to
investigate it on the spot, and it recurs again and again in
the letters on either side. From seed he brought back with
him, young plants were raised in Tasmania, though it seems
without success in establishing the plant as a staple of
food. Sir William at first failed to raise it at Kew ; his son
writes :

I do not understand your not getting the Kerguelen's
Land Cabbage to grow. I have had fifty plants of it from
seed. I had it growing in a bottle ! (hanging to the after
rigging), on a tuft of Leptostomum during all our second
cruise in the Ice, and brought it alive to Falklands. It was
sprouting before the Cape Horn plants went home, from
seeds I scattered under the little trees. We used to amuse
ourselves planting it here and there where we go. I shall
fill a Ward's case with Lyall 2 (it is the Terror's second case)
at St. Helena, with native plants, and sow the seeds among
it. Try it again in a cool place very wet and shaded, in a
black vegetable mould like peat. Do not bury it but lay

1 * If I could get a piece,' responds Sir William enthusiastically, ' I would
have it framed and glazed.'

2 David Lyall (1817-95) was assistant-surgeon on the Terror and a useful
botanist.

78 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

it on the surface. Depend upon it they will grow if cool
and damp enough.1

Some points in its development quite baffled him ; he
writes (July 6, 1841) :

The examination of the Cabbage was made on the Island
and several times since, and I send it in despair of under-
standing its organisation. You will remark that the radicle
is pointing away from the funiculus and is on the upper side
of the seed as it hangs, and how it gets there, supposing the
foramen of the ovule to be where Lindley 2 describes it should
be, I cannot conceive, for in its turning it must go f round
the seed. I suppose Brown understands it all ; the flowers
I nowhere saw, but he has them in the museum from
Anderson.

Brown, it may be remembered, was the inheritor of the
collections of Sir Joseph Banks, who had sailed with Cook.

Two grasses form most rich and nutritious fodder for
cattle, as we proved by some sheep being let loose on the
Island, who soon ran wild, and though they were landed
hungry and lean, they very soon fattened and thrived.
Goats, pigs, rabbits, sheep, and perhaps small cattle, would

1 After his return, however, he had to confess to Boss (Sept. 14, 1845)
that the seed he himself brought back to Kew ' never vegetated, though we
sowed all and in all manner of situations.' He wished to name the plant
Rossia kerguelensis, but ' our friend Brown had already applied the MS. name,
given both because of the anti-scorbutic nature of the plant and because
Pringle wrote upon scurvy, which has not much to do with the matter, it must
be confessed.' (To Ross, September 1, 1845.)

2 John Lindley (1799-1865). Like Brown and Bentham, Lindley, a hard
worker and man of versatile powers, took a conspicuous part in building up
the natural system of classification set forth by Jussieu as against the artificial
system of Linnaeus ; the convenience of which was merely for identifying plants.
Through the friendship of Sir W. J. Hooker (for he was an East Anglian) he
became assistant librarian to Sir Joseph Banks : then Assistant Secretary and
Secretary to the Royal Horticultural Society, 1822-60 ; Professor of Botany
at University College, London, from 1828 ; editor of the Gardener's Chronicle,
1841, till his death. He was mainly responsible for Kew Gardens being pre-
served and made over to the nation as the headquarters of botanical science,
though knowing full well that his opposition to officialdom would exclude
him from receiving any appointment. His chief works were The Theory and
Practice of Horticulture, 1840 ; The Vegetable Kingdom, 1846 ; the editing of
Botanical Register, 1829-47, and various works on the Orchids. In his views
of species he has been described as an evolutionist without knowing it.

INTEEESTS OF KEEGUELEN'S LAND 79

all thrive well on the Island, and would be no ordinary boon
to the whalers. The little Ranunculus is the only acrid
plant I have found near the harbour, so I suppose it must
have been this that Cook's party ate for cress ; it appeared
to me anything but wholesome.

Among the seaweeds many are doubtless edible ; on
one occasion I found our gunner seated on a rock with his
feet in the surf passing down what he called dulse ; it
certainly was eatable raw ; I need not add my friend was
a Scotchman. The Lichens are all much too tough to afford
any hopes of rivalling the Iceland Moss. Some of the Musci
might be used by the Laplanders as they do their own, as
swaddling clothes for their babies.

Strange that this was an island in S. latitude corresponding
to that of Jersey in the northern hemisphere.

To the last hour of his stay at Kerguelen's Land he was
absorbed in the strange interests of the place, and writing
from Tasmania, November 1840, with the prospect of visiting
another oceanic solitude, Campbell Island, he speaks of it as

another edition of Kerguelen's Land, I suppose. I know
I shall be happy there, for I was sorry at leaving Christmas
Harbour; by finding food forvthe mind one may grow
attached to the most wretched spots on the globe, yet
hitherto I fear I have rather played with Botany than done
any good at it.

The long stay at the Falkland Islands in 1842 gave time
for generalising upon the botanical material collected in the
South. The main lines of his thought begin to stand out
clearly in his letters of this date. To his father he writes on
November 25, 1842 :

The Cryptogamiae are far more numerous. I am not
aware of having omitted any species of any Nat. Order
which came under my notice; this perhaps prevented my
getting any better specimens of some Phaenogamic plants
that were in flower, but anybody can collect them, and no
botanists will attend to the Cryptogamic. I am further
anxious to know the proportions that the Nat. Orders bear
to themselves at different Antarctic Longitudes and to

80 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

themselves in each locality, as an object of primary import-
ance to the elucidation of Bot. Geog. and the effects
of climate upon the Vegetable Kingdom. Several of the
tabular results I have drawn out show a delightful accord-
ance, nor do I know of any result of this Expedition which
gave me such pleasure as to find how beautifully the
grasses rose in the scale of importance, beating even Brown's
published ideas, and yet they are not the only plants by
whose abundance or want the botanical nature of a country
may be judged of. As we go South, Fungi disappear,
Lichens increase, Pleurocarpi 1 diminish, in proportion to
Acrocarpi,1 as do the proportion of Pleurocarpi which fruit
to the barren ones. Cyperaceae decreases, and Dicotyledons
bear a smaller proportion to Monocotyledons. Nothing so
satisfies me, that I have observed carefully in any Island,
as to find these laws to hold good in the collections made
long ago and when it is too late to remedy any defects,
to look for more grasses or to wonder if I have not made
too many species of my Cyperaceae etc.

And to Dr. Boott 2 four days later he enlarges on the pro-
portion of the Eush tribe to the Grasses occurring in this region.

The descending scale for the Southern regions is beautiful
and in perfect accordance with what was to be expected
from the climate and position of the several islands.

Australia, 0'7:1.

Campbell's Island, 1 : 5.

New Zealand, 1:1.

Auckland Island, 1 :1*9.

Falklands, 1 : 2'5, and

Kerguelen's Land, 0 : 5.

1 Two divisions of the Mosses.

2 Francis Boott, M.D. (1792-1863). Born in Boston of British parents
and maintaining friendships in both countries, he took up the study of medicine
in 1820 (M.D. Edin.) and practised successfully in London 1825-32, with ideas
on fresh air in advance of his times. Another innovation Avas to discard the
traditional black coat and knee breeches of the physician for the ordinary dress
of the day — blue coat with brass buttons and yellow waistcoat. But with
characteristic fidelity he changed no more with the fashion, and his endeavour
to avoid singularity in 1830 ended by making him more singular than ever
in 1860. Inheriting a competency, he devoted himself to botany, specialising
on the genus Carex, his Illustrations of which appeared 1858-67. He con-
tributed a monograph of 158 species to Sir W. J. Hooker's Flora Boreali-
Americana ; his collection he bequeathed to Kew. He became a member of
the Linnean Society in 1819 ; secretary 1832-9, and treasurer 1856-61.

DISTKIBUTION : FUKTHEK RESULTS 81

These results, however, I must beg you to keep to your-
self, as we are not permitted to communicate Botanical
Information (does it deserve the name ?) except through
the Lords Commissioners !

He perceives also that the distribution and abundance of
vegetation in this region depends not on the height of the
mean temperature, but on the amount of moisture in the air
and the equable level of heat and cold, free from extremes.

To establish this accurately would prevent critics from
repeating that ' nothing of importance had been done towards
investigating the causes of difference in Geographical distribu-
tion since the publication of Humboldt's work.'

To his Father

March 7, 1843.

I long to see your new work on Ferns ; perhaps you will
do something to their Geographical distribution, which seems
most dependent on a uniform and moist temperature such
as Islands enjoy. All the Magellan species that inhabit
the Falklands, there become harsh and coriaceous, from the
vicissitudes of temperature, and of the hygrometric state
of the air to which they are exposed. . . . The Hygro-
meter I consider of more importance than the Barometer
in all ordinary cases, that is, where the Islands are not
large and the mountains not high. ... I have lately
been examining some of my hygrometer observations and
find that the difference between the vegetations of the
Falklands and the Fuegia may be well accounted for. When
the results are placed in a tabular form it is quite surprising
to see to what vicissitudes of temperature and moisture the
Falkland plants are exposed. Now the mean temperature
of the Falklands is the highest, but its plants are exposed
to dry winds, great heat of the sun's rays unimpeded by
any vapour when it is calm, and great cold at night, whilst
those of Fuegia are not so, and enjoy perpetual moisture,
and are very sensitive to extremes of temperature, as also
to dryness.

His original intention had been to write a Flora Antarctica,
where his work would be on a fairly little exploited field. As

82 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

he reached the Cape on the outward voyage he was already
planning the book.

March 1 and March 17, 1840.

I am now beginning to consider what are to be the limits
of my Antarctic flora ; if I confine it to 23° North of the
S. Pole it will consist of one species, I suppose, and that
the Protococcus nivalis, nor would this be a fair limit to
poor Mora, as she is guided by climate, not parallels which
man has laid down and called latitude. My idea is, to be
guided very much by the temperature of the Islands and
the nature of the plants they contain. It will be, however,
difficult to draw the line ; the Straits of Magellan must,
I suppose, come in with the Falkland Islands, whilst the
Southern Island of New Zealand, Van Diemen's Land, and
the Cape will be excluded. The mean annual temperature
of the Antarctic Ocean is said to be nearly that of the
Arctic ; if this is the case there must be some unknown
reason for the comparative barrenness of the Islands of the
two seas.

It was a different matter when, later, his father suggested
that he should undertake complete Floras of some of the places
he had visited. His answer (November 25, 1842) shows a
natural diffidence at the thought of embarking on so much
more complex a task.

In proposing me to publish Floras of New Zealand
and V.D.L., I fear you overrate my Botanical powers, for
I am very ignorant of any plants but those I have seen.
My strict Flora Antarctica will always begin where the
Pines cease, and I should like it to contain the most of
the country S. of Magelhaens (but Darwin 1 will give me
good limits there) provided I can gain access to the proper
materials. Auckland and Campbell Islands, Kerguelen's
Land, and the Falklands will be the only other stations except
what few you have from Macquarie Islands. Do tell me in
your next what the things are which Frazer 2 sent you : and
ask Brown whether any things have ever been collected in

1 As having visited the country on the voyage of the Beagle.

2 Probably Louis Fraser, 1810-66, who was on the Niger Expedition of
1841-2 and afterwards took charge of Lord. Derby's zoological collections
at Knowsley.

DESIGN OF THE FLOKA ANTARCTICA 83

Prince Edward's, the Crozets, Eoyal Companies Islands,
Emerald Island, and whether Webster's Deception Island
or Cook's South Georgian plants are in the Museum. Tristan
D'Acunha and St. Paul's and Amsterdam, though in such
low latitudes, have an Antarctic Botany, but I have seen

none of them.

/
However, he set to work on his own plants and his books

during the next six months with this end in view. One more
botanical letter to his father may be quoted to illustrate his
work on the Cryptogams, with its tendency to simplify classifica-
tion and its relation to his Herbarium work. After the third
visit to the ice he writes on the way from the Antarctic Circle
to the Cape :

March 7, 1843.

During the past voyage I have re-examined all my An-
tarctic Mosses. . . . The Andraeae puzzled me exceedingly
and occupied me very many days, for I had to examine
many hundred specimens. I do hope they are scrupulously
accurate, for I always compared the present examination
with what I made on the spot, and consider most of the
mosses to have had three examinations ; where there is so
much novelty I may have made varieties into species, but
in a field so new some allowance must be made. . . *

There are hardly any new genera, nor have I any wish
to get a notoriety by having * Hook.1 tagged on to the end
of a string of barbarous names. I should be far more proud
of placing a well-known plant in its true position and relation
to others than naming another and leaving others to squeeze
it in between what he may think its congeners.

All other mosses are divisible into Aero and Pleuro-
carpi ; there are five groups I consider quite natural, and
the three first of them abnormal ; these are what McLeay's x
quinary system acknowledges, but you must not think that
I am led away by any system, for I formed this system
before I saw McLeay's and before I understood his views.
When we met we never broached the subject of his system,
for I felt myself too ignorant of the subject ; I cannot,

1 William Macleay, of Sydney, son of the Colonial Secretary, was a naturalist
of some note, inventor of a now forgotten system of classification which posited
the number 5 as the basis for the structure and grouping of all living things.

84 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

however, forget a remark he made, saying * he was glad I
paid so much attention to the minute Orders and to Crypto-
gamic Botany, for in them would be found the foundation
of a truly natural system.' Now, though I do not put any
faith in the quinary arrangement, I believe that 5 happens
to be the number of groups into which mosses most naturally
divide themselves, and I am convinced of the truth of the
circular system. Fries 1 first developed it in the Fungi,
as Brown knows, for he pointed it out to McLeay, who
wrote a paper on it (Fries 's work) ; again Berkeley 2 takes
it up in the 'Annals,' vol. i, and quotes Montagne3 in
strong confirmation. Until, however, Lindley took it up
I do not know any other steps taken towards arranging the
groups of plants on a fixed plan. Amongst mosses there
are many beautiful analogies in the groups, but how to
characterise the genera is quite a puzzle to me. Gymnos-
tonum must be split up, for there is hardly a genus of
Acrocarpi to which each of its species is not far more allied
than to its congeners in the present arrangement.

The other drawings are attempts and nothing more, foi
they are the first Lichens I ever drew, and I am no hand at

1 Elias Fries (1794-1878), a Swedish botanist, successively Professor
(1834), Director of the Botanic Gardens (1859), and Rector of the University
(1853) at Upsala. He was an especial authority on the Cryptogams.

2 Miles Joseph Berkeley (1803-89), the great mycologist, was directed to
Natural History by the influence of Henslow at Cambridge, finally devoting
himself to the Cryptogams and especially to Fungi. In 1828 he first came
into touch with Sir W. J. Hooker, for whom he described all the fungi in the
volumes supplementary to The English Flora of J. E. Smith. For half a century
all the exotic fungi received at Kew passed through his hands, and over 400
papers on fungi stand under his name, apart from those at which he worked
in collaboration. His Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany (1857) remained
for many years the standard book on the subject, while he was one of the
pioneers of Plant pathology, popularly remembered as the investigator of the
potato murrain in 1846.

3 Jean Frangois Camille Montagne (1784-1866), botanist, was left fatherless
very young, entered the French navy at 14, and took part in the expedition to
Egypt. On his return to France in 1802 he studied medicine, and in 1804
was attached as surgeon to a military hospital at Boulogne. He became chief
surgeon to Murat's army in 1815 and again in 1819, and in 1830 was head of
the military hospital at Sedan. He left the army in 1832 and devoted himself
to the study of cryptogams. Elected to the Academic des Sciences in 1853,
and to other Societies, and received the cross of the Legion of Honour 1858.
Ho contributed many papers to the Archives de Botanique and to the Annales
des Sciences naturelles, besides working out the Plantae Cellulares for Webb
and Berthelot's Phytographia Canariensis, Dumont d'Urville's Voyage au Pole
Sud, Gay's Historia fisica de Chile, etc., etc.

WOEK ON THE CRYPTOGAMS 85

colour. I have descriptions in full of them, but I can make
no hand of the genera of Lichens, there seems to me a sad
want of tangible characters except amongst the larger.

I have also done a little towards the Flora of the Falk-
lands, and a good deal of an introductory paper on the
Geographical distribution of the Antarctic plants, their
relations to the Arctic, and the analogies between the
Antarctic, Polynesian, and American floras.

From the Cape I intend to carry on drawing up to England
and studying what Cape and Eio plants I can pick up, that
I may know something of the more common Tropical Nat.
Ords., of which at present I am totally ignorant. You
will indeed be surprised when you will find at what a loss
I shall be to give you the names of the most common garden
plant, but I have not seen a rose since leaving New Zealand
or any other flowers but Antarctic.

YOL. I

CHAPTEK IV

THE VOYAGE OF THE EREBUS AND TERROR I
PASSING IMPRESSIONS

FOR reconstructing the history of the four years' voyage,
abundant materials exist. The official account is Boss's
book in two volumes, * A Voyage of Discovery and Eesearch
in the Southern and Antarctic Eegions, during the Years
1889-43 ' (John Murray, 1847).1

This abounds in good matter ; not even the full-dress style
of the period, very conscious of its epaulets, can mask the
essential interest of these visits to the young colonies of the
South, to the solitary fastnesses of oceanic life, and the unima-
gined wonders of an ice-world in a ' furthest south ' four degrees
beyond any previous record.

Next comes Hooker's MS. Journal, upon which he drew for
some of the material of his letters home. These letters, or

1 To this Hooker contributed (from his Flora Antarctica) botanical accounts
of Kerguelen's Land, I. iv. pp. 83-7 ; Auckland Island, I. vi. pp. 144-8 ;
Campbell Island, I. vi. pp. 158-63 ; the Falklands, II. ix. pp. 261-77,
including an account of the Tussac Grass, p. 261 ; Hermite Island (Fuegia),
' the great botanical centre of the Antarctic Ocean,' II. x. pp. 288-302 ;
and Cockburn Island (in the South Shetlands), II. xii. pp. 335-42, together
with a description of the Fossil wood in Van Diemen's Land, II. i.
pp. 5-11, and of hunting wild cattle in the Falklands, II. ix. pp.
245-53.

Most of the illustrations are by J. E. Davis, Second Master of the Terror ;
nine are from Hooker's drawings, some signed, some marked in his own hand in
the copy of the book given him by Ross : these are Mount Minto and Mount
Adam, I. chap. vi. ; Cape Grazier and Mount Terror I. viii. (unsigned); Panorama
of the Great Barrier,!. Appendix (unsigned) ; Seal Hunting on the lee, II. ii. (the
engravedsignature is queried in pencil) ; Catching the Great Penguins, II. iv. (the
central figure in the black hat is pencilled Bates) ; Mode of Pushing through the
Pack during a Fog, II. iv. (unsigned); Tussac Grass of Falkland Islands, II. viii. ;
Hunting Wild Cattle in the Falkland Islands, II. ix. ; ' Balsam- Bog ' Plant
(Bolax Glebctria}, Falkland Islands, II. xi.

86

JOUENAL AND LETTEBS 87

copies of them, are faithfully preserved, bound in a large quarto
volume. His letters home were generally transcribed by
the willing hand of his mother — who frequently Johnsonised
the style to her own liking — for distribution among friends
and relations, official news being of the scantiest, while letters,
to these others, were regularly sent to her to copy. This solidly
bound volume contains fifty-two autograph letters, ranging
from four to twenty-seven closely written quarto sheets in a
minute hand, twenty-nine in copy only, and twenty-seven
duplicates which had returned in course of time to Kew. A
still larger companion volume contains 234 letters received by
him during this period.

So much of this abundant material may be cited as will
suffice to show the impression made upon his mind by new
scenes and new ideas, his occasional jaunts, more and more
coloured by his scientific objects, a few sketches of the people
with whom he came in contact, a passage or two to show his
sensitiveness to Nature, and his power of describing what he
saw.

At Madeira, as ever and again on his travels, his eye is
instantly caught by any likeness to his beloved Highlands,
whose beauty had sunk deep into his mind from his earliest
days. Equally he recalls the pictures of the same scenes
in the books of travel so well known to himself and to his
father.

On first nearing Madeira, I was strongly reminded of
some of the islands on the West of Argyllshire, only the
volcanic rocks are much redder, and clothed here and there
with low brushwood ; the tops of the hills are often capped
with pines.

The ravines are quite like Scotch ones, but more sparingly
wooded, and the faces of the very deep ravines are most
admirably like the view in Webb and Berthelot, full of
vertical perpendicular lines which are dotted with trees.
These views came into my mind directly I saw the
realities.

With the botanist's eye he notes for his father the botanist,
the belt of chestnuts running halfway up the mountains : ' the

88 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPKESSIONS

tops of the Mts. more sub-divided into conical peaks than
the Scotch hills and covered with grass ' : the mingled tropical
and temperate fruits growing in the island : the joy of the
crews on arrival when ' all hands were busy spreading Bananas
on our bread instead of butter and relishing grapes .more
than tea ' : though he found little in his diligent search for
Alpines on the extremely dry and barren rocks of the Curral,
for ' Neither the season nor place were favourable to botanising.'

Here he received the warmest of Scotch welcomes from a
Mr. Muir, formerly a Glasgow merchant, and a great friend of
his grandfather, ' who had charged me particularly to call
upon him,' finding his house by the help of a passing English-
man, after his enquiries, couched in Dog-Latin with Portuguese
terminations, had produced no effect on the natives.

Though unable to accept Mr. Muir's instant invitation
to stay at his Quinta as long as the ships lay off Funchal, he
was constantly there, and notes with special pleasure, in the
little parties got up to meet him, the absence of ceremony
among the British families living there. Indeed there were so
many Scotch and Glasgow acquaintances dining one night
with another friend, that 'the conversation was wholly upon
Glasgow or Britain, and Mr. Shortridge had a long discussion
with me concerning the respective merits of Mr. Almond and Mr.
Montgomery [two Glasgow ministers] ; distance lent energy
to the cause, and I supported the former with much more
warmth than I should have done at home perhaps.'

A party from the ships now carried out a long cherished
plan of visiting the famous mountain glen known as the Curral.
On the way, Hooker's unceasing interest in the practical side
of economic botany, already stirred by the discovery that the
coffee served him at dinner was home grown, made him pay
special attention to the * Jardine,' a tea plantation among the
chestnut woods some 2000 feet above the sea, belonging to the
late British Consul, Mr. Veitch. In this temperate region,
with a soil composed of a fine vegetable mould over volcanic
detritus, he notes that * neither bananas, coffee, nor dates will
grow here, but the climate seems peculiarly well adapted to
the cultivation of Chinese plants ; Camellias flourish, including

ASCENT OF THE CUERlL 89

the rare C. oleifera which produces the oil used in China.' Mr.
Veitch was hoping to grow tea regularly and cut into the
monopoly of the East India Company. To Hooker he con-
fided his plans and methods, ' telling me that it was his duty to
impart his knowledge to me as Botanist of the Expedition,
and only hoped I would not use it to his disadvantage on the
Island.' His visitor was allowed to take specimens of the
plants, but ' our time was too short to allow of our waiting
and tasting Mr. Veitch's tea. The owner very naturally
praises his tea, as equal to the true Chinese herb. Mr. Muir
informed us that it was execrable, and pronounced so by eveiy
one that had tasted it.' On the other hand Lieutenant Bird
testified to its excellence, while Captain Crozier, commander

of the Terror, reconciled these opposite views, ' tells me he

has often drunk Mr. Veitch's tea, and that formerly it used to
be so bad that bare civility could hardly tempt him to swallow
it and not do the other thing, but that which he tasted this time
was very fair tea indeed.'.

The lonely waste, where hardly any animal life was to be
seen, was tenanted by strange human beings.

After leaving the Jardirie we continued ascending through
the forest, the trees gradually dwindled away and nothing
remained but a short herbage with numerous bushes of a
Cytisus with which the hillsides seemed spotted. On
emerging at the top of the valley, about 3500 feet, we were
suddenly attacked by a party of pseudo Highlanders male
and female, chiefly children, ragged, dirty Portuguese,
each armed with a long pole, iron shodded (sic) for climbing,
with which they assailed our ponies, causing them to spring
over the rough ground at a rate which nearly rendered my
seat untenable. This was done apparently for effect, for
we came suddenly upon one of the most slpendid views I
ever beheld. We stood upon the brink of a tremendous
precipice which formed one side of a gully about 2000 feet
deep and f of a mile across. On looking over nothing was
seen but the tops of a few projecting trees, and at the bottom
a small stream that dashed along and was all but invisible.
The opposite precipice was steeper and more bare than
that on which we stood.

90 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPEESSIONS

The whole scene very much reminded me of a view among
the Grampians of Forfarshire, where you come suddenly
upon the Glen of the Dale ; Glen Dhu stretches away on
one hand, and on the other you look down into the broad
valley of Clova ; the present, however, was infinitely grander,
and the numerous laurel trees gave it a different aspect.
The river dashing at the bottom, which looked like a mere
burn, brought Scotland forcibly to my mind ; it foamed
away with a murmur which from the distance we could
scarcely catch.

The ragged Highlanders, for I can call them by no other
name, were most troublesome, begging and offering us
their climbing poles. ... On seeing me scrambling among
the rocks they paid me particular attention.

. . . On reascending I found my companions seated among
some rocks, surrounded by a brood of the most extraordinary
ragged urchins I ever beheld, of all ages from five to twelve,
dressed in tatters with high peaked carabooshes, their long
hair streaming over their faces, which were of a most deter-
mined Portuguese cast. They excited our compassion by
kneeling round us and begging by holding up their hands
with the palms together like Catholics invoking the Virgin.
Some of them were really pretty, though [with] very coarse
features ; among them was a very old woman whose husband
had been lost among the cliffs or rather killed. They had
large black eyes and seemed remarkably healthy, though
they live in the most wretched holes and feed upon chest-
nuts, scarcely ever touching other foods. Even the little
babies were sucking chestnuts. A few dogs were spectral
animals.

... On a grass bank, where we had left our horses,
there was spread for us a famous cold luncheon prepared
for us by Mr. Muir. 'Dr. Lippold * had joined us just before
reaching the Jardine, and he certainly amused us not a
little during dinner. The young half savages clustered
around us whilst eating, forming a ring, which gradually
approached and hemmed us in. Now the little German
abhors the Portuguese beyond any other nation, and he
could not brook these unfortunate urchins drawing near

1 Dr. Lippold had been sent to Madeira to collect plants and seeds, partly
for Kew, partly for the Duke of Bedford.

ATTACK OF RHEUMATIC FEVER 91

us. He used accordingly, every now and then, to start up,
take his stick, shout, hooroosh, shake his coat-tails at and
scare the poor little snips out of their senses, who would
run up the hills with amazing agility, their scanty clothing
tripping and causing them to tumble over and over as they
scrambled along on all fours, almost to our table-cloth.

An unfortunate result of this excursion was a sharp attack
of rheumatic fever, caused by lying on the damp grass at
lunch when overheated. Hooker was laid up in the ship for
a week, and could scarcely go ashore to make his farewells.
The report of this from friends in Madeira made his parents
very anxious, for it was many months before they received
his letters reporting himself perfectly well. In later life, it
is true, his heart was not strong ; but through all the follow-
ing years of strenuous travel and unceasing work, the minor
troubles which persisted indicated no serious weakness.

At Teneriffe there was no time to travel the twenty-eight
miles to Orotava in order to see the famous Dragon's-blood
tree. The brief afternoon ashore gave opportunity of very
little collecting. Nor was Hooker able, much as he wished,
to see the two English Jacks taken when Nelson made his
unsuccessful attack on Sta. Cruz. The church where they
hung high out of reach, since an English middy had audaciously
carried off the third, was too far away. However, ' I was much
amused by the little urchins grinning and repeating the words
" English flag " when asked where the Parochia was.' So
in the town itself ' the only remarkable thing I saw was the
camel used as a beast of burden.'

Their next point was the Cape Verde Islands, ' not that
we knew we were going there, for everything regarding our
destinations has been kept a profound secret until we cast
anchor in the harbours ! ' It strikes an old-time note indeed
to be told that :

On our arrival (November 11) a slaving schooner was
lying in the Bay, and I understood that a more cautious one
had made sail on discovering us heaving in sight. The
present one remained some days, and when taking her
departure her drunken skipper saluted us, and mocking,

92 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPKESSIONS

told us he was going nigger hunting to the Coast. We had
no commission to catch slavers or to do mischief further
than resenting personal injuries.

If Madeira afforded the first vision of real tropical verdure,
the Cape de Verdes intensified it with the unimagined grace
and beauty of a cocoanut grove, the one redeeming feature
of the prevailing Saharan desolation near the coast. The
fertile interior was twelve miles away from Porto Praya ; still,
in a week here, during the bad season, Hooker managed to
collect 110 species in a tolerable state and saw perhaps 100
more in a useless state — a very fair proportion of the 300
brought home by a previous collector. Of the famous Baobab
tree he remarks that neither to himself nor to Captain Eoss
did it give the impression of being such a slow growing and
ancient tree as was reported by those who had seen one cut
down.

Distance was not the only obstacle confronting the botanist.
Eeturning from their first day's outing they found that * the
Consul had very thoughtfully left word for us to prepare our-
selves for the coast fever (or yellow fever), which was certain
to lay hold of all Europeans who should expose themselves
as we had done.' Nevertheless they went not once again, but
twice, further afield to the beautiful valley of St. Domingo in
the interior, the first time entirely, the second half way, on foot.

The Consul persuaded us to ride, assuring us that a walk
of twelve miles there and twelve back would assuredly be
followed by fever. We therefore hired two ponies, the
only two we could procure, and the very worst I ever saw,
and a Jackass for which we drew lots. Mr. McCormick
and I soon relinquished our beasts, and sent them back
before leaving the Town, and .the Jackass, having performed
the feat of unassing Mr. Hallett and running through the
Town with our poor purser hanging to his neck, we deter-
mined to walk.

After the Saharan desolation of the lower country, where
under the tropical sun the soil of black volcanic slag and ashes
scorched the feet in walking, the picture changed suddenly.

THE CAPE DE VEEDE ISLANDS 98

So enchanting is the scenery of these glens, and so sud-
denly do they start up beneath the feet, that one almost
feels persuaded that the author of ' Easselas ' was there
before him, or that the scenes of the Arabian Nights were
not all laid in the East.

Evening fell cool and refreshing as they descended this
valley, and ' one little bird sang so like a robin that we all
exclaimed at once we were in England.'

To give his father a notion of the fantastic peaks and
pinnacles of the surrounding mountains, he employs his
frequent method of reference to their common knowledge of the
literature of travel. ' They reminded me of the Organ Moun-
tains of Eio de Janeiro, only these were much sharper.'

Hospitality was freely offered by a Portuguese of some
position in, Porto Praya, but educated in France. In this
remote valley he lived with his wife and several little slaves ;
his property surrounding his house being cultivated with
tropical fruits and plants.

. During dinner our hostess arranged three little slaves
round the table ; they were very clean and neatly dressed,
quite young and jet black. After dinner they each received
an embrace from their mistress and came to us for the same
(which I assure you [he tells his sisters] was not withheld
because of the swarthiness of their complexions, and was
accompanied with a donation of fruit). Our host said he
treated them as his children, and would not part with one
for anything. On taking our departure we gave our kind
host all our shot and I my powder flask, as the only recom-
pense he would take.

So delightful had the excursion been, that on the Monday
(17th) he repeated it, in company with Wilmot 1 and Lefroy.
This time they left early, and managed to ride across the
first six uninteresting miles, when ' Mr. Wilmot was the first to
find out how to make a Porto Praya pony gallop (if it ever can).

1 Lieutenant Eardley Wilmot was an engineer officer. A close friend of
Lefroy (see ii. 343) he had joined in his effort to improve the training of officers
at Woolwich. With Lefroy also he was selected for magnetic work on Ross's
expedition, his destination being the Cape Observatory.

94 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPEESSIONS

It is accomplished by exaggerating the motion of galloping
yourself on the saddle, kicking your heels into the animal's
flanks, and personifying a flying postboy.'

This day there was time to botanise ; and after dinner
with the friendly Frenchman they ascended a peak imme-
diately behind his house, shaped like a steep cone with a
pinnacle on the top of it, amid prophecies that they would
break their necks.

The ascent culminated in an arduous climb, and a descent
which seemingly could not be worse and was at least fresh,
on the further side. Swinging down from ledge to ledge, while
an agitated group of little niggers far below shouted and
gesticulated unintelligibly,

I was well rewarded by finding, when about half way
down, a lovely fern with beautiful soft green foliage growing
like our Cystopteris out of the crevices of the rocks ; it grew
with lots of the Campanula and Umbellifer (found on the
way up) which so put me in mind of old Scottish forms of
plants, that I only wanted a companion who had botanised
over Ben Lawers to share my \ joys with me. [Before re-
turning,] I emptied my pockets into my travelling port-
folio, which I may mention here is the only good way of
preserving plants in the tropics, and were it not for the
weight, ought to be looked upon as an indispensable addition
to the vasculum. The poor withered herbs that I gathered
on my previous excursions used on my return to be more
crumpled still from the fiery heat of the sun beating on
the vasculum, and sorry specimens they have made, though
invariably put into paper immediately on my return.

No time was left for geologising, though the relation of
the limestone and the volcanic rocks was an inviting problem.
But the whole scene left a deep impression, and the Journal
records :

Man always looks back with pleasure to such spots as
this, where disinterested kindness has been shown him ;
when to this is added a new country and the charms of a
scenery half tropical and half — what is dearer still to me —
Scottish, both as to scenery and general features of a scanty

ST. PAUL'S KOCKS AND TRINIDAD 95

vegetation, his happiness to whom the works of Nature
have charms, is, for the time, complete.

Three more Oceanic islands were visited before the Cape,
the unusual course west to St. Paul's Eocks, then south to
Trinidad off the Brazilian coast, then east to St. Helena,
being followed in order to fix certain magnetic determinants.

On the eight or ten detached rocks of St. Paul, some sixty
feet high, ' a wretched cluster about as big as all the houses in
the Crescent put together/ Hooker did not set foot. Landing
in the tremendous surf was so dangerous that Captain Koss
gave up the second visit, on which he had intended to take
Hooker. Botanically, however, this was little loss. Not even
a lichen grew on the rocks, and his shipmates brought him
back specimens of the only seaweed which grew there, serving
to make a rude rest for the Noddy, interwoven with a few
feathers.

Trinidad was a shade less inhospitable, its valleys possessing
a little vegetation. Among its mountain crags

we easily pictured to ourselves the figures of gigantic Turks,
bishops, &c., on the summits : there was no wood but a
very remarkable tree on the top of the highest hills (2000
feet ?) — it struck me that it was a tree fern. All over the
coast there are remains of barked white trees lying on their
sides, but no live ones. They lay in different directions,
and except the introduction of goats has, by eating up all
the young trees and leaving the old ones to perish, destroyed
the vegetation, as was the case at St. Helena (see Darwin),
I am at a loss to conceive how they have so universally
disappeared.

The one accessible beach on the lee side, where a landing was
effected in the morning, was stony and barren and hemmed in
by precipices ; in the afternoon the surf on the windward
side seemed hopeless. However :

When about to give up the attempt one of the

party espied a small cove to the N. of the Nine Pin rock,

and there we landed with great difficulty. A narrow plat-

, form of rock afforded us a footing. When within 100 yards

96 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPEESSIONS

of the shore, a grapnel was dropped and the boat was
then backed to the rocks, a bowman carefully paying out
the rope ; then taking advantage of a lull another sea-
man with a lead line jumped ashore and made it fast ; a
third was stationed at this line in the boat, then, as the
surf rose, the grapnel line was held tight and the lead line
paid out, thus preventing the boat from being cast ashore ;
when the reflux came the contrary was done. In the
intervals we jumped ashore and the instruments were
handed out after us. To gain the beach from this we
had to walk along a ledge of rock up to our middles in
water, carrying the instruments by turns, both men and
officers. . . .

After ascending about 600 feet of a shelving debris we
found ourselves at the foot of a continuous precipice, that
shut us in completely. The rocks were in most places
perpendicular and smooth, without a sign of vegetation
but a few lichens ; in other places the rocks were broken
up into quadrangular blocks, which when moved came
tumbling down and bringing others with them, which con-
tinued their course till they reached the Captain's instru-
ments on the beach where he was conducting his [magnetic]
experiments. These were materially affected by the iron in
the rocks.

As bearing on the problem of distribution, the population
of this lonely island is carefully noted. Besides the sea-birds,
Noddy and Tern, whose eggs were sought by the Grapsus
crab, ' of insects I saw a Hemerobius, a small fly, cockroaches
from the wreck of a vessel, common house-fly, and some
spiders.' The land crab was as much in evidence then as to
more recent visitors to the island — ' a very short, strong,
thick-set animal,' with * an enormous mouth and large savage
black eyes. When threatened he takes up his post under a
stone, and commences opening his claws, and putting them
to his mouth in a menacing attitude, evidently expressing a
'desire to eat you, opening his formidable mandibles at the
same time.'

Arrival at St. Helena was the more welcome because of
the slowness of the voyage.

ST. HELENA 97

The Terror has been a sad drawback to us, having every
now and then to shorten sail for her. I cannot tell you how
delighted we were to get here (St. Helena), having been
upon salt Junk for 74 days, with hard biscuit for vege-
tables. . . . The weather has been during the voyage very
fine indeed, though very hot at times, so much so that
sleeping upon deck is quite delightful. . . .

St. Helena as a colonised island was very different from
the others. Appealed to as a fount of botanical culture he
pokes fun at himself as a practical gardener. Strawberries
and similar European plants refused to fruit in the absence of
a regular summer and winter season. He suggested on theo-
retical grounds two alternative methods of checking their ' run-
ning to leaf ' ; ' between these two methods I hope I have
hit a gardener's plan, or what will look like one ; if the more
orthodox plan succeeds my suggestion will, I hope, be looked
upon as the invention of a fertile brain instead of the
guess of an ignoramus.*

But * the plant that pleased him more than any other '
was a fine Araucaria (monkey puzzle). Few specimens then
existed in Britain, and this, as a new species from Brazil,
is described in full detail. The fruit, it was asserted, never
ripened ; but his keen eye noted several seedlings which the
owner of the garden had never observed. He has a boyish
delight in climbing the spiny tree and knocking off some cones,
because travellers declared the tree unscalable, and at sea he
writes, ' even now I look at the cones slung up in my cabin by
a true lover's knot with great satisfaction.'

, But here also he is confronted by his favourite problems of
geographical distribution, of the interaction of imported animals
and plants on the old flora. The climate differs on the wet
side of Diana's Peak ; so do the plants. He perceives a striking
phase of what was afterwards to be called the ' struggle for
existence ' bluntly revealed in the action of animals on plants,
plants on each other, and plants again on animals, owing to
the introduction of new forms of life into the island.

So, he writes in his Journal from his passing notes — time
forbidding fuller observations :

98 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPKESSIONS

At that particular elevation (about 700 feet, 1000 feet
being the average elevation of the interior of the island)
there is hardly a trace of the original plants in the soil, they
having been completely destroyed by tne introduction of
pigs and goats into the Island, which eat up all the young
trees, leaving the old ones, which are invariably succulent
Compositae, to perish, or else tearing off their bark which
is soft and loose. In addition, the soil and climate is so well
adapted to the growth of forest trees, which when once they
have formed a shelter sow themselves, that there remains
no opportunity for the native trees to recover the soil, which
is now dry and not adapted to their habits, the rich vegetable
mould which they formed being swept by torrents into the
valleys subsequent to their destruction. On the northern
slope of Diana's Peak I have seen a broad belting of trees
put a stop to the descent of the Cabbage trees (a name given
to the six or eight species of native arborescent compositae)
which cannot exist along with any other vegetation that
overtops them, nor can they grow singly. Another tree
is said to be completely extirpated — the Ebony. Large
masses of the wood are still found in some of the valleys,
though I was unable to procure any specimens.

Though the introduced trees have adapted themselves
to this soil and climate, the Animal Kingdom and other
indigenous vegetation are not to be found under their shelter.
The insects and birds which I observed among the native
trees were not to be found in these plantations ; of the
birds in particular I observed this. It is also the case with
the Lichens and Insects, two species of Usnea and another
Lichen being found on the firs and oaks only, whilst only
one species of plant, Rubus pinnatus (an indigenous species),
grows indifferently on open banks and in the wood — never
in native wood.

Longwood, with its associations of fallen grandeur, was
less to him than the wonders of nature ; nevertheless, he
writes in his Journal on February 6 :

So very much is talked about Napoleon's tomb, that

though I felt very little interest in seeing it, I was deter-

[ mined to be no more called a Goth, which name I had

earned from my previous indifference, and to go to this

NAPOLEON'S TOMB 99

more hackneyed spot than Eichmond or Kensington
Gardens.

His fears were justified when he reached the tomb.

It is situated at the head of this valley, guarded by a
sentinel who duns you about the mighty dead, and gives you
water that the Emperor drank ; on turning your heel upon
him, numerous children assail you with flowers, Geraniums,
that the Emperor was fond of. On turning into a .pretty
cottage to get some ale at 25. a bottle, the cork was no
sooner drawn than out came the Emperor with it ; it was
the Emperor this, that, and the other thing ; our hostess's
daughter came in with the Emperor on her lips ; his ubiquity
certainly astonished me. As a last resource I commenced
gathering Lichens ; surely the hero of Marengo could have
nothing to do with Lichens on a stone wall, when another
disinterested stranger came to inform me that the Emperor
had from it marked out the position of his tomb, and that
the Emperor was fond of the wild plants I had in my hand.
I fairly took to my heels, heartily wishing that for my own
sake as well as for the good cause of humanity, the Emperor
had had his wish of living and dying in some remote corner
of Britain.

The Cape was reached on March 17, and left on April 6,
1840. There is little to note during this brief stay. Hooker's
impressions of the Cape date from his second and longer visit.
This time he collected, as has been said, some 300 species of
Cape plants to study on the voyage. A long five weeks of
sailing brought the ships to Kerguelen's Land, where Eoss's
prolonged magnetic observations kept them from May 12
to July 20.

Though this lodestone of Hooker's childish imaginations
deserved all too well its other name of Desolation Island,
its fascination for him was reinforced, as we have seen, by a
still stronger spell, the charm of discoveries leading on to
luminous generalisations. The letter to his father from
Hobart (August 16, 1840) describing the place deserves fairly
full quotation.1

1 The passages enclosed in square brackets are from the Journal.

100 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPKESSIONS

We proceeded to Kerguelen's Land, and after twice
being blown off in a gale we at last, on May 12, anchored
in Christmas Harbour. During the passage there were
few sea-animals, so I studied Cape plants with Harvey,
Endlicher,1 and De Candolle.2

From a distance the Island looks like terraces of black
rocks ; on which the snow lies, causing it to look striped
in horizontal bands. On the melting of the snow, the flats
appear covered with green grass and the hills with brown
and yellow tufts of vegetation. The shores are almost
everywhere bounded by high, steep precipices, some of
frightful height, above which the land rises in ledges to the
tops of the hills. The varied colour in the vegetation gave
me hopes that the country might be rich in mosses, &c.
[nor could anything the ingenious Mr. Anderson in ' Cook's
Voyages ' said persuade me to the contrary. . . . Surely,
I thought, this cannot be such a land of desolation as Cook
has painted it, containing only eighteen species of plants].

Christmas Harbour is well described and figured by
Cook, indeed the accuracy with which he made a running
survey of the coast is quite marvellous, and shows how
talented a man he was. I cannot say so much of his
Surgeon and Botanist, ' The ingenious Mr. Anderson/ as
our copy calls him. Had Cook been here in winter he would
have found it a different place to lie in from what it is in
summer ; the winds blow into it from the N. W. with the most
incredible fury, preventing sometimes for days any inter-
course with the shore. We have the chain cables of a 28
gun-ship, and yet we drove with 3 anchors and 150 fathoms
of chain on the best-bower, 60 on the small, and a third
anchor under foot, the Sheet. Such a thing was never heard
of before !

1 Stephen Ladislas Endlicher (1804-49), a Hungarian, Professor of Botany
in Vienna from 1840, and author of a Genera Plantarum.

2 Augustin Pyrame De Candolle (1778-1841), a Genevese whose most
important work was done in France between 1796 and 1816, when he returned
to Geneva. He used his immense knowledge of botany to become the leading
systematist of his period. (For the adoption of his system by Bentham and
Hooker in the Gen. PL, see ii. 19 seq., 22, 415. ) Beginning to work out his great
system on.too large a scale (1818-21) he continued it in the more manageable
Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetdbilis, in seventeen volumes, 1824-73,
ten of which were the work of his son and successor, Alphonse. The latter, like
Hooker, was strongly interested in distribution and economic botany, writing
a Geographic Botanique in 1855 and Origine des Pktntes Cultivees in 1883.

VISIT TO KEKGUELEN'S LAND 101

During our stay I devoted all my time to collect every-
thing in the botanical way, and I hope you will not be dis-
appointed with the fruits of my poor exertions. You say
you hope I shall double the Flora and I have done so.1 I
was much surprised at finding the plants in a good state of
flower and fruit (all but two).

My time was my own to leave the ship when I liked, for
the Captain took off all restrictions to my going where I
liked. My rambles were generally solitary, through the
wildest country I ever saw. The hill tops are always covered
with snow and frost, and many of my best little -Lktonsi were
gathered by hammering out the tufts or sitting on: them till
they thawed. The days were so short arid tl>e;coaiit),y,ao
high, snowy, and bad that I never could ' get iar- from the
harbour, though I several times tried by starting before light.
As far as I went the vegetation did not differ from that of
the bays. .' . .

I went several boating excursions in the neighbourhood,
and in one was dismasted and nearly swamped. So Captain
Boss would send no more, and I am promised to be of a longer
and better party on the next opportunity. Two Lycopodia,
one splendid one, and a Fern were all Mr. McCormick added
to my collection. He brought numerous splendid quartz
crystals and zeolites, &c., together with lots of coal and fossil
wood. The latter we had long before found, and I first
detected it lying in immense trunks in the solid basaltic
rock ; its existence here is wonderful in the extreme ; I
have plenty of specimens.

[In the absence of trees, the coloured patches of Lichens
on the hillsides, the heaving belt of seaweed girdling the
shores, took the place of forest green or autumnal tints.]

The Lichens appear here to form a greater comparative
portion of the vegetable world than in any other portion of
the globe, especially when it is considered that from the want
of large trees there can be no parasitical species. The rocks
from the water's edge to the summit of the hills are appar-
ently painted with them, their fronds adhering so closely to
the stone that they are with difficulty detached ; in other

1 Sir William had written : ' I wish I could have a day's botanising with
you in Kerguelen's Land. I think we could at least double the Flora. Look
well to the Cryptogamia and see how far south the Algae extend and what are
the species.'

VOL. I H

102 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPKESSIONS

cases they seem to form part of the rock which, from its exces-
sive toughness and hardness, almost defies any attempt to
procure specimens that can be satisfactory. But it is at the
tops of the hills that they assume the appearance of a minia-
ture forest on the flat rocks, and nothing can be prettier than
the large species with broad black apothecia that covers all
the stones at an elevation of from 1000-1500 feet. A smaller
species like a little oak-tree grows in spreading tufts also
upon stones, and is of a delicate lilac color. Near the sea
they are generally more coriaceous, especially a yellow one
that then- .forms bright yellow patches on the cliffs. In the
ca'ves, also near the sea, a light red one is so abundant as to
tinge 'such situations with that color, and many other dpecies
inhabit the rocks and their crevices.

Seaweeds are in immense profusion, especially two large
species, the Macrocystis pyrifera1 and the Laminaria radiata?;
the former of these forms a broad green belt to the whole
Island (as far as seen) of 8-20 yds. across within 20 feet or
so from the shore. Here its branches are so entangled that
it is sometimes impossible to pull a boat through it, and
should any accident occur outside of it, its presence would
prove an insurmountable obstacle to the best swimmers
reaching land. On the beach the effect of the surf beating
it up and down is very pretty, but not so striking as the view
from a little elevation, of a bay, with this olive green band
running round it. The sea birds, etc., when on the water,
always fly over or dive under to reappear on its other side.
The Laminaria hangs down from every rock within reach of
the tide, perpetually in motion from the lashing of the surf,
and yet from its shininess and strength always unhurt. I
think I may safely affirm that no other species in the vegetable
kingdom has so secure a rooting as this seaweed has on the
bare rock. I have often sat upon the cliff overhanging the
sea at the N.W. bay during a gale of wind, and watched the
surf break with terrific violence on the rocks, which are often
themselves detached and alternately brought backwards and
forwards by the swell and reflux with a deafening roar ;
still the coriaceous fronds of this weed are with impunity

1 This ' is the only strictly Antarctic plant of the island, which floats alive
in the water and increases there like the Sargasso weed : hundreds of miles
from any land 64° South is the highest latitude in which I have seen it.' (To
Bentham, April 27, 1842.)

BIRDS OF KERGUELEN'S LAND 103

washed backwards and forwards, then form attachments
defying the power of the sea. . . . [The only use in Nature
I can assign to it is the shelter it affords to a species of Patella
from the attacks of the gulls, which prowl about during low
water and secure as their prey any other unfortunate shell-
fish which is exposed. The weight of the fronds of the
Law-warm hanging down over the dry rocks forms an in-
surmountable obstacle to the birds.}

The birds, unused to man, were devoid of fear. In the
shallow bay next to the Arch Point, were myriads of the
beautiful Sheathbill as the sailors called it (a Chionis), so
tame that it allows you to come quite close to it. It was
something like a pigeon, black legs (not webbed), beak and
eyes ; it ran with great agility among the rocks [like ptar-
migan, helping itself by the first joint of the wings, which is
provided with two callous extremities admirably adapted for
this purpose] and came close to examine me ; its plumage is
of a spotless white, with a slight pink tinge on the primaries
of the wings ; the bill was a sheath common to the^two
nostrils. On one occasion I thoughtfully sat down on a stone
and commenced whistling a tune when, on turning my head,
I found I had unwittingly been performing an Orpheus's
part, for upwards of twenty of these beautiful birds had
gathered about me, and were gradually approaching, declin-
ing their heads and narrowly watching my motions, and
would even perch on my foot, rocking their heads on one side
in the most interesting manner. Among them were some
penguins, peering over the rocks ... so tame that they
allowed me to take them by the beaks.

Among the stones were feathers in amazing quantities
and

many skeletons, especially Penquins', which are, I suspect,
destroyed by a very large gull, whose bill is like that of a
hawk, and its webbed feet terminated by hooked claws of
great strength. The penguins' food is, I suspect, fish, at least
the stomach of a common one was full of such matter ; • and
the white birds are omnivorous, eating flesh, seaweeds, and
insects. One that we kept on board used to run about the
decks after the sailors, and at their dinner used to help itself
from their dishes, eating meat boiled or raw, raisins, rice,

104 THE VOYAGE : PASSING IMPKESSIONS

salt meat, and would drink water, limejuice, and grog ! Its
tameness and gentleness rendered it a general favourite, but
its spotless plumage soon turned gray, and then black.

So too the common Jack penguins were easily tamed.

At first we had about a dozen on board, running wild
over the decks following a leader ; they cannot climb over
any obstacle two or three inches high, so we thought them
safe, until one day, the leader finding the hawse hole empty,
immediately made his exit, and was followed by the rest,
each giving a valedictory croak as he made his escape.

[As food, the sheathbills] are tolerable eating, rather
tough though, and they have a rank flavour and smell when
newly killed, and require soaking before cooking, when they
eat well in pies and mulligatawny.

[The penguins'] flesh is black and very rich, and was much
relished at first for stews, pies, curries, etc. ; after a day or
two we found it too rich, with a disagreeable flavour, whence
partly from prejudice I believe', they were dropped, except in
the shape of soup, which is certainly the richest I ever ate,
much more so than hare soup, which it much resembles.

Certain annotations in the presentation copy of Boss's
Voyage deserve passing mention. They unmask two pieces
of unconscious humour on the part of Dr. McCormick, one a
mistake, the other the fruit of a well-laid practical joke. In
the scientific appendices, McCormick (II. 409) describes the
Kiwi or Apteryx, that wingless bird, as seeking ' larvae and
seeds of a rush (Astelia Banksii), its favourite food.' On the
margin is pencilled ' grows on high trees only.' And on p. 414
he describes the nest of the albatross, which ' only lays one egg.
In one instance only I found two eggs in the same nest (both
of the full size, and one of them unusually elongated in its
longest diameter), although I must have examined at least
a hundred nests.' Indeed a puzzle, anxiously detailed ; but
we smile at the accusing pencil, ' placed there by Oakeley,'
the mate of the Erebus.

CHAPTEK V

TASMANIA AND THE ANTAECTIO

FROM August 16 to November 12 they stayed at Tasmania.
The dominant person in the island was the Governor, Sir John
Franklin,1 who, seconded by Lady Franklin, gave all aid and
welcome with the enthusiasm of an old Arctic explorer, indeed
volunteering to take a share himself in the long term day
observations, which reminded him, he declared, of old times
in the North.2 Nor, later, did he forget Hooker. Lieutenant

1 Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). Though he fought at Copenhagen and
Trafalgar, it was as an explorer that Franklin won chief distinction and became
the friend of the elder Hooker. From 1800 he had spent three years with
Flinders in the Investigator surveying the coasts of Australia. In 1818 he first
joined in the search for the North-West Passage, for the discovery of which
he ultimately paid with his life. Sailing eastwards from Spitsbergen, the
expedition had to turn back ; but Franklin, commanding the Trent, under
Buchan in the Dorothea, revealed himself as a great commander and a scientific
investigator and was elected F.R.S. in 1822. In 1819-23 he led an exploring
party along the Saskatchewan and the Coppermine rivers and eastward along
the coast ; in 1825-7 he descended the Mackenzie river and followed the
coast west, trying to meet Beechey, who was pushing east from ^ehring Strait.
From 1837-43 he was Lieutenant-Go vernor of Tasmania, where, as will be
seen, he welcomed Joseph Hooker ; in 1845 he set out on his last voyage in
the Erebus and Terror, Ross's ships in the Antarctic, accompanied by Ross's
second in command, Captain Crozier, and was heard of no more. Bet\veen
1847 and 1857 no less than thirty-nine search-parties were sent out from
England and America. Piece by piece the mystery was solved. Franklin
was one of those who died while the ships were hopelessly beset by ice for
eighteen months ; Captain Crozier and the rest, 105 in number, perished
as they tried to march homewards.

2 Ross's ' devotion to his beloved pendulum ' was the dominant note. In
the primitive room whose floor was Mother Earth, for lack of timber, ' the
officers relieve one another in regular watches, and I never met with such
devotees to science. You would be delighted to see Captain R.'s little hammock
swinging close to his darling Pendulum, and a large hole in his thin partition,
that he may see it at any moment, and Captain Crozier 's hammock is close
alongside of it.'

105

106 TASMANIA AND THE ANTAKCTIC

t

Dayman, who was left in charge of the magnetic observatory,
writes, ' Sir J. Franklin expressed his regret that he had not
seen more of you while you were here.' Others had occupied
his attention.

Lady Franklin had established a Natural History Society,
or rather Soirees, that met every fortnight, on Monday evenings
at Government House, and Hooker was elected an honorary
member. Lady Franklin herself was, it seems, somewhat
imperious, and to the young man incomprehensible in her
autocratic ways. Hence he writes (November 9, 1840) :

Lady Franklin . . . would like to show me every kind-
ness, but does not understand how, and I hate dancing
attendance at Government House. I have dined there five
or six times. . . . She very kindly invited me to go to Port
Arthur in their yacht, to botanise ; we were three days
away, — two of them at sea, and the third, a Sunday, it
rained furiously. I got about 500 specimens on Monday,
and a few after service on Sunday, though Lady F. did not
like it, and very properly, but I thought it excusable as
being my only chance of gathering Anopterus glandulosus.
Do not think this is my habit. Captain Koss is too strict,
were there no other reasons.

His own disinclination to spend his time in meaningless
amusements can be gathered from letters of the period. Herein
he was fortified by a letter from his Glasgow friend, the botanist
Arnott, who warns him to collect, not to dance or amuse him-
self : ' H.M. does not pay for this.' He quotes the example
of Lacy and Collie, who were not employed to play the fiddle
on Beechey's voyage, yet that seemed the principal part of
their occupation !

His main concern from April to July 1841 was botanising
work that afterwards bore fruit in his ' Flora of Tasmania.' He
has an eye, however, for human affairs. Among the trees
charred by the natives' bush-fires from ancient times, he
marks some few hollowed out by fire to form their houses :
a meagre record of the thousands of native Tasmanians, for
of them all ' only three remain, all males, and they consist of an
old and a middle-aged man and child. They are very savage,

TASMANIA IN 1840 107

but seldom seen — only once lately, and then near the lakes
in the interior/

As to the better society in Tasmania, the last of the Convict
settlements and acquainted with bushrangers, it ' is perfectly
English/ a commendation bestowed on the most comfortable
houses he enters in any Colony, and

there is a marked line drawn between the children of
convicts or ex-convicts and those of honester, even if less
capable, folk. Wealth is accumulating fast : and the banks
allow 10 per cent, on deposits.

Literature, however, is at a low ebb, and except a few
English families, there are none who take the better
periodicals, or would comprehend them if they did.

There are lots of splendid Pianos and Harps, and few
who can use them. Three hundred copies of Gould's most
extravagant book *• are purchased by these colonists, solely
for the pleasure of seeing the show of it on- their tables.

Looking back after a couple of months' absence he exclaims,
' altogether Van Diemen's Land was quite a home to us and a
most attractive place/ His remembrance is of his personal
entertainers, and the best is of those who could provide him
with the music he loved :

There is really so much good society, wealth, and splen-
dour in the private houses : music is much cultivated, and
all the new operas, &c., are procured as soon as published.
Many of those pretty Strauss Waltzes you used to play I have
heard here. At Government House there is always excellent
music, and the military band is one of the best in the lines.

So little had he gone into society at Hobart that on the eve
of departure he winds up :

You would hardly believe it, but Mr. and Mrs. Gunn2 are

1 Either the Synopsis of the Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands,
1837-8, 72 plates, or the first of the seven folio volumes of The Birds of Australia,
1840-8, 601 plates.

2 Ronald Campbell Gunn (1808-81) emigrated to Tasmania in 1839, becoming
superintendent of convict prisons and a police magistrate. A keen naturalist,
he opened a correspondence with Sir W. Hooker and Lindley, exchanging
plants for books and scientific apparatus, and sending zoological collections to
J. E. Gray at the British Museum. [The D.N.B. wrongly names him Robert.]

108 TASMANIA AND THE'ANTAKCTIC

the only persons I have had to take leave of in Hobart Town.
Except the officers of the 51st I know no other persons
here, and they appreciate me much more than if I had been
gay, they are a set of excellent fellows, — the best regiment
I ever saw.

In the same letter comes a reference to one Jorgen Jorgen-
sen, about whom Sir William had bidden him make enquiry.
Jorgensen's special connection with the Hookers began with the
fact that on the way back from a famous journey to Iceland,
an account of which is given later, he had saved Sir William
from perishing on a burning ship.

Jorgen Jorgensen had nearly slipped my mind. I have
seen him once or twice, but he is quite incorrigible ; his
drunken wife has died and left a more drunken widower ;
he was always in that state when I saw him, and used
to cry about you. I have consulted several persons, who
have shown him kindness, about him, and have offered
money and everything, but he is irreclaimable ; telling the
truth with him is quite an effort. When once openly
employed by his friends against some bush-rangers, he was
at the same time betraying his employers. He wrote to
me asking me to lend him your ' Tour in Iceland ' ; Mr.
Gunn was luckily present and told me that he had had a
copy lent him many months ago and still not returned.
He lives entirely at the Tap, where he picks up a liveli-
hood by practising as a sort of Hedge lawyer, drawing out
petitions, etc.

It would be unpardonable to withhold an account of this
meteoric personage, which is to be found in Appendix A.

All were sorry to leave Hobart Town, where, as Hooker
tells his cousin, Mrs. Fleming (Jane Palgrave),

we were treated with the utmost kindness by the inhabitants,
who received us like brothers and gave us balls and parties
innumerable ; indeed nothing could exceed the attentions
paid to us ; they rivalled one another in loading us with
their favours. The Governor's house was open to us, and
he gave all the ship's company vegetables from his garden
every day, with fruit for the officers. ... All this was,

THE FIBST VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH 109

however, too good to last, and when the time came to leave,
there were many bitter regrets, especially ..when we thought
that the Yankees and French had made fine discoveries to
the Southward a few months before, and that we were looked
up to as about to eclipse all other nations, and that
it remained to be proved whether we deserved their kind
treatment or not ; this was, however, a spur to us all,
and we sailed down the Derwent bent upon doing our
utmost.

The first voyage lasted, as has been said, from November 12,
1840, to April 6, 1841. The three weeks from November 20
to December 12 were spent on the Lord Auckland Islands,
where the long term-day magnetic observations were made
and Hooker reaped a rich botanical harvest, as also at Campbell
Islands, December 13-17, while New Year's Day brought the
first sight of the ice. This time they got through the pack ice,
a stretch of 200 miles, in four days, more fortunate than in the
next season further to the east, when the pack stretched 800
miles and held them forty-seven days. As a rule, the great
expanse of ice quieted the waves, and Hooker welcomed
these periods of comparative calm for his microscopic work
or drawing ; but a hurricane in the pack, hurling the masses
of ice about like huge missiles, such as lasted for three days
on the second voyage, smashed bowsprits and rudders and
would have sent any other ships to the bottom. The weather
was nearly always bad ; the reader of Boss's voyage counts
eleven storms punctuating the incessant chronicle of thick
weather, fog, snow squalls, high winds and seas, after two
months of which February 18 brings the grateful record of
the first night on which stars were visible.

Of this journey he writes to his father after returning to
Tasmania, on April 8, and August 24, 1841.

Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land : April 8, 1841.

MY DEAR FATHER, — Yesterday at 4 P.M. we anchored
at our old station opposite the Paddock, and accordingly
I hasten to have this letter ready to send you by the first
opportunity, which will be in a few days. We have indeed
had a most glorious and successful cruise to the southward,

110 TASMANIA AND THE ANTAKCTIC

and seen many wonders hitherto quite unexpected, though
it has been very unprolific. We reached 78° 3' S. Latitude
and approached as near to the S. Magnetic Pole as was
possible, within 150 miles, having laid down its position
with perfect accuracy from observations made to the N.W.
and S.W. of its position. We have run along and roughly
surveyed an enormous tract of land extending from 72°
to 79° S. Latitude ; every part of it further south than
any hitherto discovered land, and our progress was finally
arrested by a stupendous barrier of ice running 300 miles
E. and W. I shall, however, give you a list of our positions
every day at noon since leaving V.D. Land, last, that Maria
may lay it down in your S. Polar chart and I shall add a
small chart of the coast we have seen. (P.S. I have too much
to say to leave room.)

And now as regards the object of the expedition, it is
certainly a failure, our intention having been to have made
observations on the actual site of the S. Magnetic Pole, and
also to have wintered within the Antarctic Circle, that we
might have made a series of experiments with such instru-
ments as must be used on land — from the first object we
were deterred by the Pole's lying inland, among a stupendous
range of mountains covered from their tops to the sea beach
with everlasting snow and ice. Nor can we anywhere
approach the mainland as the sea is covered with streams
of ice and sometimes extending in one continued line for
many miles. In approaching such a coast the danger
arises from the chances of a shift of wind, or a gale which
would prevent our working off, when all the ice would set
down on us and jam us ; or, what is quite as bad, we might
be becalmed and frozen in, for the sun here has no power
to melt the ice even in the height of summer ; wintering
in such a Latitude Captain Eoss pronounced as totally
impracticable, as we should be frozen in, and only get out
when a current should take the pack, which would imbed
us, north, and melt it in warmer water.1

1 As he further explains to his father (Nov. 25, 1842) who had been told
by the Admiralty that they were then to winter in the ice, perhaps in order
to keep some term days in the South Shetlands : — ' We cannot remain in the
pack except under sail, for the S.W. wind would gradually blow us out of it,
. . . and it is idle to suppose that an accessible harbour could be found where
the ice and snow are perennial. There is no great winter cold to shut us in
safely, in a few days, or summer's heat to thaw it.'

DISCOVERIES WITHOUT HAKDSHIPS 111

All the polar voyagers were astonished beyond measure
at the stupendous masses of ice, and their singularly regular
figure ; they are all square or oblong squares generally about
60 to 100 feet out of the water, and of course seven times
that below, its J being always under water, they are all
formed along the coast and drifted north from it, — 84 have
at one time been counted from the mast head, of all sizes,
from J mile .to 6 miles long ; this was in about 70° South.
The whole of the land surveyed from 72° to 79° presented
the appearance of range upon range of peaked mountains,
covered everywhere with snow, except where the precipices
were too perpendicular for it to lie, and these are exposed
to constant disintegration from the masses of snow rolling
from above down their faces, and sweeping huge masses on
to the Icebergs below, which when they are removed from
the coast by a gale, transport these erratic boulders. All
the coast of one of the Islands we landed on, is lined with
masses of ice covered more or less with sand, stones and
rocks. In such situations it is impossible for plants to grow,
and I add that during the whole time that we were within
the Circle, the Thermometer never rose above 82° and very
rarely so high, you will not be surprised at this ; on board
the ship its average range was 18°-24°, never lower than
12°, of course ashore it must be much colder. The sun is
very powerless here ; at 75° North the sun in summer raises
the mercury in a black bulb Therm, to 100° and upwards,
but here only to 42°. The sea is equally unproductive,
its temperature 29°, and 28° is the freezing point of sea
water. When near the shore, I have always been looking
for some trace of vegetation in the sea, but now I am perfectly
convinced that in this longitude vegetation does not enter
the Circle. Emerald Island, off which we passed some
seaweed, is probably the Southern limit.

The success of the Expedition in Geographical discovery
is really wonderful, and only shows what a little perseverance
will do, for we have been in no dangerous predicaments,
and have suffered no hardships whatever ; there has been
a sort of freemasonry among Polar voyagers to keep up the
credit they have acquired as having done wonders, and
accordingly, such of us as were new to the Ice, made up our
minds for frost bites, and attached a most undue importance

112 TASMANIA AND THE ANTAKCTIC

to the simple operation of boring packs, &c., which have
now vanished, though I am not going to tell everybody
so ; I do not here refer to travellers who do indeed undergo
unheard of hardships, but to voyagers who have a snug ship,
a little knowledge of the Ice, and due caution is all that is
required. At one time we thought we were really going
on to the true South Pole, when we were brought up by the
land turning from S. to E., where there was a fine Volcano
spouting fire and smoke in 79° S., covered all over with
eternal snow, except just round the crater where the heat
had melted it off. I can give you no idea of the glorious
views we have here, they are stupendous and imposing,
especially when there was any fine weather, with the sun
never setting, among huge bergs, the water and sky both as
blue, or rather more intensely blue than I have ever seen
it in the Tropics, and all the coast one mass of beautiful
peaks of snow, and when the sun gets low they reflect the
most brilliant tints of gold and yellow and scarlet, and
then to see the dark cloud of smoke tinged with flame rising
from the Volcano in one column, one side jet black and the
other reflecting the colors of the sun, turning off at a right
angle by some current of wind and extending many miles
to leeward ; it is a sight far exceeding anything I could
imagine and which is very much heightened by the idea that
we have penetrated far farther than was once thought
practicable, and there is a sort of awe that steals over us
all in considering our own total insignificance and helpless-
ness. Everything beyond what we see is enveloped in a
mystery reserved for future voyagers to fathom.

But you are all this time wondering what are the fruits
of this Expedition to me especially. During our stay at
Lord Auckland's group I made a collection of plants with
which I hope you will be pleased, among them were two tree
ferns, and many new species. I have accompanied them
with as full notes as I could, especially relating to geographical
position ; there are some most remarkable new genera, and
I think a new Nat. Ord. among them. . . .

All my time when we have had fine weather to the
S. has been taken up in examining them, and I fully
think that Mr. Brown will be much pleased with the notes
and drawings, which are numerous ; they must, however,

MAEINE ZOOLOGY > 113

be judged very leniently. I have endeavoured to be care-
ful, and when the motion of the ship is such that my things
have to be lashed to the table and I have to balance myself
to examine anything under the microscope I fear many
errors have crept in. ...

To Us Father

August 24, 1841.

Much do I wish that I had opportunity to devote myself
entirely to collecting plants and studying them, but I want
you to know how I am situated, that we are comparatively
seldom off the sea, and then in the most unpropitious seasons
for travelling or collecting. This is my main reason for
devoting my time to the Crustaceae, &c., a study to which
I am not attached, and which I have no intention of sticking
to. My other reasons are that there is no one else to study
what there will be no other opportunity in all probability
of seeing alive, and the ready use of the pencil is indispensable
to the subject. Again, the discoveries we have hitherto
made are not only beautiful but most wonderful, curious
and novel. The collection is almost all of my own making
and Capt. Boss's (altogether indeed). No other vessel or
collector can ever enjoy the opportunities of constant
sounding and dredging and the use of the Towiag-net that
we do, nor is it probable that any future collector will have
a Captain so devoted to the cause of Marine zoology, and
so constantly on the alert to snatch the most trifling oppor-
tunities of adding to the collection, and lastly, it is my
only means of improving the expedition much to my own
advantage (as far as fame goes) or to the public, for whom
I am bound to use my best endeavours. I again repeat
that I have no intention of prosecuting the study further
than I think myself in duty bound. In harbour I only
collect them with Seaweeds, and never draw or do anything
but stow them away ; and as for [when I am] at sea, I hope
the notes and drawings I sent home will show that I do not
neglect Botany, nay, that I have spent as much time, as
the heavy seas and bad weather of 70° S., would allow me
to plants and mosses. All this renders me most anxious
to see the termination of the voyage, -J. or I have no wish but
to continue at Plants. Not that I am anything but extremely

114 TASMANIA AND THE ANTAKCTIC

comfortable here both in my mess, the cabin and the ship.
My only regret is that the necessarily altered course and
prospects of the voyage stand so much in the way of Botany.
The utter desolation of 70° South could never have been
expected, and Capt. Koss as fully expected to winter, and
collect plants in spring and leave the ice for good and all
as I did, as also that we should be able anywhere to land
and collect as in the North. It cannot be helped now, we
must again return to the Southward, and I shall be again
employed alternately collecting sea animals, examining
plants and sketching coast views. I shall, however, never
regret having gone the voyage, for I doubt not we shall enjoy
the thanks and praise of our countrymen for what we have
done. No pains has been spared to render the voyage
serviceable, we have done our best, and Capt. Boss's
perseverance has been put to the most severe test in pene-
trating as far as he has, and for my own part I am willing
to work night and day, as I have done, to make accurate
sketches of the products of our labors. To me it will be
always a satisfaction to know that I have done according
to my poor abilities, and if I cannot please Botanists I am
not therefore to be idle when I may do some good to zoology.
Could I with honor leave the expedition here, I would at
once and send home my plants for sale as I collected them,
but now my hope and earnest wish is to be able on my
return home to devote my time solely to Botany and to
that end the sooner we get back the better for me. My
habits are not expensive, but should I not be able to live
at home with you, I would have no objection to follow
Gardner's x steps and gain an honorable livelihood by the
sale of specimens.

It is well worth setting down another and quite unlooked
for impression of these scenes, for some of the most curiously

1 George Gardner (1812-49) was a Glasgow man who studied under Sir
W. J. Hooker. His botanical journey to Brazil in 1836 was made possible
through Sir William, who helped him to secure a number of subscribers,
including the Duke of Bedford, for the plants he might collect. He returned
in 1841 with a vast collection, an enumeration of which he published, as well
as accounts of new species, and a paper on the connection of Climate and
Vegetation. His full account of his travels appeared in 1846. In 1844 he
was appointed Superintendent of the Ceylon Botanical Garden, where his active
career was cut short by apoplexy, March 10, 1849. The vacant post was
offered to Hooker, but refused by him.

A SAILOK'S TALE OF WONDERS 115

effective descriptions of moving incidents come from simple,
unlettered souls. They do not reflect upon the nice choice of
words. The occasion makes the artist. They feel strongly
if they feel at all, and their feeling bursts out in the first natural
expressions of a forcible if limited and ungrammatical voca-
bulary. Such an * inglorious Milton ' was the blacksmith of
the Erebus, a lively Irishman named Cornelius Sullivan. He
first wrote down an account of their joint adventures on the
second voyage from the dictation of his friend, James Savage,
a seaman who had joined the ship at Tasmania. But this half
story was obviously inadequate. He was moved to add the
wonders of the first voyage.

My friend James [his exordium runs], before i begin to
give you anything Like a correct acct. of our dangers and
discoveries, it is but justice to this My first voyage to the
South, to give you an acct. of our Discoveries, before you
joined the Expedition — this is the most Sublime but not
the most dangerous.

With a sailor's eye on the weather and a poet's eye on its
pictorial effects he tells us :

Janry the llth at two oclock on Monday Morning, we
discoverd Victoria Land the Morning was beautiful and
clear, at 7 oclock in the afternoon we were under the Lee of
the land, sounded in 250 fathoms of water — not a cloud to
be seen in the firmament, but what lingered on the mountains
—Large floating Islands of ice in all directions. Hills vallies
and Low Land all covered with snow. The snow topd.
mountains Majestically Eising above the Clouds. The
pinguins Gamboling in the water the reflection of the Sun
and the Brilliancy of the firmament Made the Bare Sight
an interesting view.

That night we Stood out from the land, we did not Loose
sight of it for the Sun was high above the Horizon at mid-
night as it would be in England on a Christmas day.

While we were in these distant Regions we had no night
I mean dark.

12th Do. Captn. Boss went on Shore he took possession
of the Land without opposition In the name of Queen

116 TASMANIA AND THE ANTARCTIC

Victoria — hoisted the British Colours Gave the Boats Crew
an allowance of Grog with three hearty cheers for Old
England.

The set phrase for taking possession is delightful where the
only opposition could have come from the curious crowds of
penguins, martial in looks but mild in behaviour, for :

The Species of Penguins amphibious Little Creatures
were so thick the Captn. Could not enumerate them, But the
beach was Literally cover d. with them.

At 12 oclock the Captain Come on Board we made all
Sail Eunning by the Land to the Eastward Blowing very
hard and Still Keeping out to Sea to avoid Danger.

On the 13th we made Mount Sabrina [a poetic lapse for
Mt. Sabine. Doubtless he had no more acquaintance with
' Comus ' than with the learned and gallant Secretary of the
Eoyal Society, but at all events the shipping list gave him
the name, for the Sabrina was one of Weddell's little boats
when he made the previous record for ' farthest South ']
here is a Phenomena. This splendid mountain Eising
Gradually from the Sea Shore to the Enormous height of
Sixteen thousand Eight hundred and ninety feet high. I
Could compare it to nothing Else but the Speir of a church
drawn out to a regular taper point. Protruding through the
Clouds. But beyond this as far as the Eyes Could Carry the
object Seemed more Interesting.

' My friend if i could only view and Study the Sublimety
of nature — But Lo i had to pull the brails.

The prose of life has a most unhappy way of obtruding itself,
especially on board a sailing-ship in dangerous waters. But
though his interrupted musings could never be wholly satisfied,
he picked up scraps of knowledge as he went along and moreover
added reflections of his own-

This noble battery of Ice which fortifyd. the Land two
hundred feet high. And floating islands in all directions this
Strange Scenery was Kemarkably Striking and Grand. The
bold masses of Ice that walld. in the Land, the romantic gulf
of the mountains as they glitter in the Sun Eendered this
Scene Quite Enchanting, this Mountain is most perpendicular

A SIMPLE STOKY 117

mountain in the world — we have Seen it at night a hundred
and fifty miles Distant.

We shapd. our Coarce a Long the land to the South East
a Distance of two hundred miles farther. On the 28th we
discoverd. Mount Erebus this splendid Burning Mountain
Was truly an imposing Sight.

The height of this mountain Six thousand feet hight
with a gradual ascent from the Sea Shore. From the Sum-
mit of this mountain issues Continually Vast Clouds of Smoke
when Scatterd. about with the wind forms a Cloudy Surface
of Smoke a long the Surface of the mountain.

At the west End of Mount Erebus it plainly appears there
has been a Desperate Eruption from the Craggy appearance
— it is Sufficient to Convince an accute observer.

The south side of this Splendid mountain was Lost to our
view, Land and Ice obstructed the Scene. We did not land
here nor did we deem it Safe to Land neither ; we could not
see fire nor matter, the Sun Shone so brilliant on the Ice and
Snow it completely Dazzled our Eyes. Yet it is my firm belief
that this must be an imposing sight in the dark of winter.

As to the Barrier, * or as I should call it nature's handiwork,'
what could be more impressive than the artless record of how
the plain sailors were struck dumb by the wonderful sight,
and, if we read between the lines,- felfc that they need not be
ashamed of their emotion when their experienced Captain
himself was equally touched ? Thinking from the masthead
view that they would ' run down ' the barrier by midnight,
they set sail in the evening.

But as far and as fast as we run the Barrier apperd. the
Same Shape and form as it did when we left the mountain.
We pursued a South Easterly Cource for the distance of
three hundred miles But the Barrier appeard. the Same as
when we Left the Land. On the first of Febry. we stood
away from the Barrier For five or six days and came up to it
again farther East, on the morning of the eight Do. we found
our Selves Enclosed in a beautiful bay of the barrier.

All hands when they Came on Deck to view this the most
rare and magnificent Sight that Ever the human eye wit-
nessed Since the world was created actually Stood Motion-

VOL. I I

118 TASMANIA AND THE ANTAKCTIC

less for Several Seconds before he Could Speak to the man
next to him.

Beholding with Silent Surprize the great and wonderful
works of nature in this position we had an .opportunity to
discern the barrier in its Splendid position. Then i wishd.
i was an artist or a draughtsman instead of a blacksmith
and Armourer We Set a Side all thoughts of mount Erebus
And Victoria's Land to bear in mind the more Imaginative
thoughts of this rare phenomena that was lost to human
view

In Gone by Ages.

When Captn. Eoss Came on deck he was Equally Sur-
prizd. to See the Beautiful Sight Though being in the north
Arctic Kegions one half of his life he never see any ice in
Arctic Seas to be Compard. to the Barrier. So that the
South Pole must be degrees colder than the North pole is
evident from the Enormous thickness of the ice. An Ice
island floats on the water with J under water, consequently
the ice islands we have Seen two hundred feet hight above
the Surface of the water must be Sixteen hundred feet high.
That is exactly four times than the Cross of St. Paul's
Cathedral in London. To view an iceberg when the Sun
shines clear on it for any time is very injurious to the Eyes
for the Avalanches in the Ice presents a deep blue and
greenish hue. From a concussion of air that generally
casts a dimness on the Sight and leaves the object the greatest
Source of wonder and admiration. It would take a man
of Talents to describe this unequal Sight For no imagi-
native Power can convey an adequate idea of the
Eesplendant Sublimity of the Antarctic Ice wall. It is
quite Certain and out of Doubt that from the seventy eight
Degree to pole must be one Solid continent of Ice and Snow.
The Fragments as i call the floating Islands though Large
Enough to build London on their Summit must through a
Long Succession of years have parted from the Barrier they
could never accumulate to such Enormous hight otherwise.
Some bergs from one mile Sqre to ten miles and Some Larger
but i could not ascertain the sqre of them.

A lighter scene emerges on the return to Hobart Town,
April 7 to July 7, 1841. While the ships were cleaned and

FESTIVITIES AT HOBART 119

refitted, all the officers' time was not devoted to science. Hobart
redoubled its welcome to the successful explorers ; ' our arrival
was hailed with delight by the inhabitants. Invitations of
all sorts were poured in upon us for riding, hunting, and shoot-
ing. The Theatre invented a Melodrama, and a Panorama
showed us all off on the ice.'

In return June 1 saw a grand ball given on board. The
Erebus and Terror were lashed together, the decks roofed in,
a covered way run to the shore over a bridge of boats to meet
a direct road cut through the woods for 300 yards by Sir John
Franklin, decorations and supper on a lavish scale, the whole
paid for — and it cost a pretty penny—by a contribution of so
many days' pay by each officer. Mrs. Fleming, in a letter written
a few months later, receives some description of the frolics,
which were kept up till 8 next morning, when the hosts were

left to the misery of seeing the broken supper, the lamps
taken down, and the horrid contrast which twelve hours
always produces on such scenes.

The lower deck was shut up and the Captain's cabin
fitted with mirrors, brushes, and combs, &c., &c., and all
the little nick-nacks you ladies use at toilet, and maid
servants from Govt. House to match. Parties of us were
stationed at the gangways to show the ladies below, and
it was great fun to wait for a lady and gentleman coming
along the passage and the moment she emerged into the
blaze of light, offer an arm which she of course accepts, and
lead her to where the maid servants are, through the crowd,
while her poor husband, brother or father stared about him
and asks for his partner.

. . . We were lionized beyond anything, and the glorious
First of June is to be noted hereafter in the Van Diemen's
Land Almanacks as the day on which the most splendid
entertainment the Tasmanians ever witnessed was given.

It may be imagined that, as a consequence, many hearts
were lost to the ladies of Hobart ; indeed, ' two of our officers
are engaged in the colony and shall return thither, as soon
as we are paid off, to fulfil the contract, or as we tell them,
victimise themselves. (Don't you look black now.) '

120 TASMANIA AND THE ANTAKCTIC

And Lieutenant Dayman, who remained here to mamge
the magnetic observatory, writes Hooker at Sydney a good
deal of chaff about their shipmates, who had had the field to
themselves before H.M.S. Favourite arrived : ' The Favourites
say, if they speak to a girl, they are told she is engaged to one
of the " diskivery officers." But he has no shaft to let fly
at his friend ; he cannot recall any ' particular admiration '
of his to give news of ; * I suppose you are something like
myself, a general admirer of the fair sex.'

From Tasmania a short visit was paid to Sydney in connection
with the magnetic observatory, lasting from July 7 to August 5,
1841. Sydney in those days, only one year since the importa-
tion of convicts had ceased, could boast no shops finer than
the Hobart Town ones ; round the beautiful harbour stood
a few fine houses, in particular the new Government House,
still uninhabited, built in the Elizabethan style, the new
Custom House and Mr. McLeay's house with its garden full of
interesting plants.

The town itself lay in a hollow ; its long streets ending at
The Cove in dirty wharves where Hooker was nearly drowned
in the pitchy darkness one night. It showed some fine buildings
of a reddish sandstone ; but more were dirty and insignificant,
public-houses predominating. George Street was disfigured
by the dead wall round the large, barracks ; the architecture
of the churches displayed a sad lack of taste. The streets were
lighted by gas and patrolled by abundance of constables
at night to keep the peace ; but though broad they were ill
paved and muddy in the rain. Between the actual town and
a wildness as of the far west there were hardly any houses ;
not even a public-house, such as abounded within ; it was a
city without suburbs. A few gentlemen's houses were scattered
up and down the bay, but no snug cottagers' or farmers'
dwellings were to be seen, nor smiling cornfields. An ill-
kept Irish hovel on the north shore had no parallel in
Tasmania.

Colonial unconventionality is measured by the use of
tobacco : ' smoking along the street seems very much practised,
to such an extent that notices are often to be seen prohibiting

BMIGEANT ILLUSIONS 121

the practice in places where no one in England would think of
using the weed.'

The newly arrived emigrants had visionary ideas of their
future, as Hooker had occasion to learn when returning one
day from a botanising walk.

About half past five it began to pour with rain, and
with a load of plants we were glad to take refuge in the
New York tavern, the parlour of which was filled with lady
emigrants (from the ship Queen Victoria). While drinking
our beer we were much amused listening to their conver-
sation. They were apparently of the middle class of English
farmers, Yorkshire from their speech. In their delight at
being emancipated from the ship, they dreamed of nothing
but comforts to await them up the country, and seemed
to think that their hardships were over ; one talked of
having a nice house, with a verandah, on a hill near the
water, with a garden, &c. ; and really her husband must
provide her such a one. Little did she think that she will
perhaps have to spend two years in a mud hovel, with a
marsh before the door and the bush for a verandah. Another
congratulated herself on the prospect of making herself
useful by knitting mosquito nets for her father ; if in
three months' time she is making onion nets, or seines for
a neighbouring lagoon, it will be perhaps the highest part
of her daily toil. Generally speaking, the young men were
smoking cigars and drinking hot or cold grog ; one talked
of going to a billiard table and another of the theatre, after
having spent the day going about to milliners' shops with
their consorts. What this colony holds out for a settler
I do not know, but to me these seemed a most mistaken set
of people in their ideas of future comfort or happiness. . . .

It soon ceased raining and we started off through the
town and government domain for the ships, splashing through
the mud at every step, while the little urchins compared
us carrying our grass trees to Moses among the bulrushes.

The Mr. McLeay here mentioned had lately been Colonial
Secretary and was soon afterwards knighted (see p. 9) ; and
his son William (already referred to, p. 84) was a naturalist
of some mark. To them Hooker had an introduction from his

122 TASMANIA AND THE ANTARCTIC

father, and received a warm welcome. Twice the naturalist
came on board the Erebus and spent all day looking over the
Southern collections. ' He is delighted,' Hooker writes to his
father on July 18, ' with my drawings of sea animals, of which
many are entirely new ; I must, however, redouble my efforts
on that head, little as I care about them, as I hear that the
Americans have done much during their voyage to them, and
that, McLeay says, is the only thing they have done.'

On the way to Sydney ' the tow-net produced some new
and good things for the pencil, and we actually brought up
several live animals from a depth of 400 fathoms ! Lat. 38° 32'
and long. 167° 40', but no trace of vegetable life.'

The presence of living corals at such great depths was
pronounced very remarkable.1 Some of the shells Captain
King recognised as South American, especially the small yellow
bivalve from the Macrocystis (the seaweed found floating far
to the south, thousands of miles from the American coast).

Among the Auckland Island sea animals, he marked * a
Galathea very like an Arctic one,' while ' a curious animal
from Kerguelen's Land approaches more nearly to the fossil
Trilobites than any hitherto discovered, the antennae being
apparently wanting, and the eyes are as in the fossil
Entomostraca.'

McLeay was full of stories of Dr. Buckland and his blue
bag ; but only one is recorded in the Journal. ' Dr. Buckland
could tell the age of a skull by the taste, which he proved by
producing that of an old woman buried a few years before,
which tasted greasy, &c. &c.'

A long visit to McLeay's garden proved it to be a botanist's
paradise. ' My surprise was unbounded at the natural beauties
of the spot, the inimitable taste with which the grounds were
laid out, and the number and rarity of the plants which were
collected together.'

1 On Sept. 1, 1845, Hooker writes to Ross : * I read in the Ann. Nat. Hist.
a notice of Goodsir's labours with Sir J. Franklin. He seems to be doing
remarkably well, as the notice said that 300 fms. was greater dredgings
than had ever been obtained before. I wrote an answer to the Editor, saying
we had repeatedly dredged at that and at greater depths, giving a few general
remarks as proofs.'

AT SYDNEY 123

The interior of the house, a striking specimen of Colonial
architecture, the individual trees and creepers, flowers and
shrubs, the revival of nature when the rain ceased and ' a few
insects came out, the Diamond birds flitted from tree to tree
and the large Sea Eagle or Osprey left his lonely lair and
commenced wheeling over ,the calm waters of the bay,' and
beyond the bay ' a rocky precipice christened Sunium, on
which it is the intention to build a temple ' — all this is fully
set forth in the Journal with one very homely touch as to
' Mr. William's workshop ' :

The smell of camphor and specimens, so well known to
me at home, reminded me strongly of olden times, especially
as I found everything in the inimitable mixture of con-
fusion and order in which Mr. Brown's shop at the Museum
and his rooms in Deane Street are wont to be.

(To his Father, August 25, 1842.) — McLeay has promised
to collect for me in New Holland, and knowing him as
we do, when one thinks that hardly a dozen mosses have
been described from that vast country, there can be no
bounds to the novelties he may fall in with. He was
quite delighted when I showed him the Scloiheimia Brownii
growing on rocks near his house, and the Dawsonia amongst
some roots he had brought from the forests of the interior.
He seemed rather cautious about broaching his Quinary
system, and I was rather anxious to hear how he thought it
would apply to the higher orders of plants. The circular
system no doubt holds among the Cryptogamiae, Fries
having proved it with regard to Fungi, and Berkeley seems
to incline the same way.1

The record of the visit ends with the entry for August 5 :
'At 11 A. M. sailing down Port Jackson along the cold-looking
sandstone cliffs, leaving Sydney with few regrets but leaving
Mr. McLeay's fine establishment where there was much to see.'

1 ' As to McLeay's theory, I fairly worked myself out of that error by the
mosses, which I first arranged to please McLeay himself.' (To Harvey,
June 8, 1845. Cp, p. 84.)

CHAPTEK VI

SOUTH AGAIN I NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

IN ten days they made the Three Kings' Islands, and on
August 16 entered the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Here the
ships stayed till November 17. New Zealand was still regarded
by many who had spent years there as hopeless for colonisation.
* Colonists,' wrote Dr. Sinclair sweepingly, ' had nothing to
do except they put themselves on a par with the natives and
breed pigs, cultivate potatoes on the sides of hills and perhaps
turn savages.' To a botanist, however, it was fascinating.
Hooker, under the guidance of Mr. Colenso,1 the printer to the
missionary establishment, and himself a keen botanist, made
a number of excursions into the country, though it was all
too swampy to go far, collecting many specimens, especially
of the Cryptogams, for the Bay of Islands was otherwise a
comparatively well-known centre.

From New Zealand, on November 23, 1841, the ships set
out for their second voyage to the South, sailing on a more
easterly meridian in order to reach the Great Ice Barrier at
the point where they had been compelled to turn back the

1 William Colenso (1811-99). He was born at Penzance, and was a
cousin to the late Bishop Colenso of Natal. As a youth he was apprenticed
to a printer of Penzance, and later was employed by the British and Foreign
Bible Society in the same capacity. The Society sent him to New Zealand in
1834 with the first printing press established there. In 1844 he became a
missionary, and after training at St. John's Coll., Auckland, was ordained to
a church in Napier, where he lived till his death. His botanical writings, though
numerous, are fragmentary and are chiefly contributions to the Tasmanian
Journal of Natural Science and of the New Zealand Institute, &c. For sixty
years he collected information regarding the language, customs, songs, &c. of
the Maori. F.L.S. 1865 and F.R.S. in 1886. Sir Joseph named the genus
Colensoa after him.

124

PEKILS OF THE ANTAECTIC 125

previous season. Turning south at long. 146° W., where
little ice had been met by previous navigators, they found
the line followed by Cook in 1774 and entered the pack on
December 18. But the experience of one year is not that of
another. The pack ice extended 800 miles. For forty-six
days they struggled with the ice before getting clear of it.
The weather was much worse than on the former voyage. On
January 19 a terrific storm dashed them about in the ice for
twenty-eight hours. Huge waves hurled masses of ice against
the ships like battering-rams. The Erebus's rudder was
damaged. But so well were the ships strengthened against
the ice, so closely were their holds stowed, making the hulls
a solid mass from side to side, that to Eoss's delight and sur-
prise they suffered no further damage. Eepairs were difficult,
the workers being drenched for hours by the icy water ; but
within four days the crippled ships were repaired, Captain
Eoss permitting this work of necessity to be performed on
the Sabbath clay, as indeed he did again after the collision
in the following March.

Escape from the pack was as perilous as remaining in it.
On the evening of February 1, clear sea came in sight, but the
long westerly swell raised ' a fearful line of foaming breakers '
on the pack edge, menacing them through the gathering
darkness, an equal danger whether the wind fell or increased to
a storm as it threatened to do. The only course was to take
the immediate hazard. Two hours' battling with the waves,
shotted, as it were, with blocks of ice, brought them into
safety, with the loss of part of the Erebus's stem. It was
worse on board the Terror, for there fire had broken out, some
blocks of wood having been left too near the hot air stove,
and it was only extinguished by flooding the hold two feet
deep.

After these dangers, the troubles arising from the looser
floating ice were of less account, until, more than a fortnight
later, the floes were dispersed by a couple of storms. Then
on February 23 the Great Barrier was reached, six miles
further south and ten further east than the previous year.
From this point it trended N.E. as they followed it for

126 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

twenty-four hours, till compelled by the approach of winter
to turn north and then east again, through the endless floes,
making for the Falkland Islands, which lie to the east of
Cape Horn.

But this was not the last of their adventures. They had
recrossed the Antarctic Circle and hoped to have got clear of
ice, when at midday on March 12, 1842, in the midst of a fierce
storm, a great berg appeared ahead, and in trying to weather
it the Terror collided with the Erebus, carrying away her
bowsprit and foretop-mast. For nearly ten minutes the two
ships lay interlocked, drifting down upon the berg and the
breakers, each ship, as it rose on the great waves, threatening
to send the other to the bottom. Breaking at last from this
disastrous embrace, the Terror was seen to run before the wind
and disappear beyond the lee end of the berg. The Erebus,
disabled by fallen spars, was drifted down on the berg. For
three-quarters of an hour she lay among the breakers, striking
her masts against the berg as she rolled, and lashed by the
spray falling back from the ice cliffs. But perfect discipline
was maintained. At last the hamper was cleared, the main-
sails were loosed, and the ship slowly crept from her perilous
position by the desperate expedient of a ' sternboard,' i.e. sail-
ing stern foremost down wind, her yardarms scraping along
the berg, from which she was only held off by the strength
of the undertow. Clearing the berg, they found themselves
running upon another, the passage between being but thrice
the ship's breadth. It took all the Captain's skill and all
the crew's steadiness to get the ship's head round into the
channel. Once through, however, they were safe in smooth
water under the lee of the berg, and there, to the great relief
of all, found the Terror awaiting them in anxious suspense.

Next morning, viewing the long line of bergs that showed
this sole passage of escape, Captain Koss was inclined to re-
gard the collision as a blessing of Providence, albeit somewhat
rudely administered. It had turned them sharply off their
original course, which would have spelt worse disaster, to the
only practicable place of escape. The sailors were indefatigable.
In three days, as they ran before the wind, repairs were effected,

THE NATUKE OF THE BAEEIEK 127

and the Falklands, between 2000 and 3000 miles away, were
reached on April 6, 1842, 'the first land of any description
that has greeted our eyes now for 135 days/ the more grateful
because here at length they were told * that our late success (the
first visit to the ice) caused an immense sensation of triumph
in England ! These are the first flattering words we have
received from home ; nor can you conceive how welcome is
the news, having penetrated beyond even our former Ultima
Thule of Latitude.'

His own views as to the nature of the Barrier, and of the
pack ice of the Antarctic, especially as bearing on the pros-
pects of the third voyage to the South, appear in a letter to
his father, dated November 25, 1842.

All the Ice in the Antarctic Ocean is formed by the
gradual accumulation of Snow, on small pieces of Ice which
only dissolve by being drifted to warmer latitudes. The
Icebergs are probably the accumulation of centuries. These
bergs are stranded all along the coast. The Barrier is
probably only a large solid pack filling up a broad shallow
bight, like that of Benin or S. Australia. Some unusual
severe winter, ages ago, first filled it with a sheet of Ice, and
as the snow fell it sunk deeper and deeper every year till
it stranded ; the sun has no power on it now, and so every
snow shower must add to its height. What atmospheric
changes the revolutions of centuries may produce we cannot
know ; but whilst the climate of the South is so equable
and the removal of the ice by drifting probably proportioned
to its slow drifting accumulation to the South of the Packs,
these vast phenomena must remain comparatively un-
changed. The Barrier, the bergs several hundred feet high
and 1-6 miles long, and the Mts. of the great Antarctic
continent, are too grand to be imagined, and almost
too stupendous to be carried in the memory. With regard
to the prospects of this coming cruise, I am anything but
sanguine of great success. The past winter has been a very
bad one indeed, and further we know that though the sea
was clear of ice when Weddell went down, there was ice
when the two French and the Yankee expeditions attempted
this Longitude ; whether they tried to get through it boldly

128 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

or no is not to the purpose ; there is no doubt it existed.
My opinion is that the Packs shift slowly, and that a place
open for one season may be shut for many successive ones.
I have heard that an English Lieut, called Kea, or Wray,
went down in a sealer, and met the Pack in 60°. Now,
though I sincerely hope to make the Pack and get through
it, rather even than meet no ice, still we twice have been
entirely successful, and it is humanly possible that ships
can always penetrate at whatever point they take the pack.
A little more ice last year would infallibly have stopped us
had it detained us a few weeks more. I would give up all
my pay to be sure of gaining 78° again, for the French and
Yankees will surely laugh if we are foiled in any one attempt.
Should we find much ice we shall be a long time in it doing
our endeavours to get South : they are fine times for me, as
the smooth water sailing is quite delightful, and it is a great
comfort to know that, if we cannot get on, we can always
go back with the S.W. winds and the drift of the ice. Should
we fail we shall all feel it deeply and almost wish to be
allowed to try again. It shall not, however, be our faults
if we do fail, it may be our misfortune and a very sad one.
None of us despair of success in beating the French and
Yankees ; but it is ourselves we want to beat, and thus
we are our own enemies.

At the Falklands they stayed five months (April 6 to
September 8) and later another month, November 13 to
December 17, before the third and last trip to the ice, the
intervening two months being spent in a visit to Hermifce
Island, to the west of Cape Horn.

A long series of magnetic observations was carried out ;
for Hooker, exploration, hunting, arrangement of collections
and letter writing filled up the time. Delighted though he
was to * be fast by the nose again ' at Port Louis in the wet
and mist of a storm that rose just too late to prevent their
entrance into the Sound, first impressions of the Falklands
were dismal. ' Kerguelen's Land is a paradise to it. Desola-
tion stares in our faces, except a few houses at the settlement
where there are about sixty souls, including His Excellency

THE TUSSAC GKASS 129

the Governor (a Lieut, of Engineers) and some Sappers and
Miners.'

The purser went ashore after nightfall in search of fresh
provisions. Eager to bring Hooker some new botanical
specimens, he grappled in the dark with some wayside plant ;
it turned out to be Shepherd's Purse ! ' To-morrow I shall do
something better,' is the sanguine comment.

Beef there was in plenty, and horse-flesh at need, for cattle
and horses ran wild on the island, for hunting which the
Governor offered the use of horses and dogs, and there
were wild geese and ducks and rabits for the shooting ;
but no flour was to be had, nor any green thing but some
turnips.

Lieutenant Moody appears to have been somewhat auto-
cratic and not always wise as an administrator ; but with
natural good sense, Hooker remained on good terms with him,
and avoided being drawn into other people's disputes. Moody
was greatly pleased with his report on the Tussock grass, the
one product of the island with commercial possibilities in it,
and sent it to England as a paper to be read before the Geo-
graphical Society (November 1842). So that Sir William
writes gaily of the interest in the Expedition,

excited by some little matter which Col. Moody and I
laid before the Geo. Soc. from our sons, relating to the
Falkland Islands. You are considered (how correctly I
won't say) the fortunate discoverer of the most wonderful
Grass in the Falkland Islands, that is to make the fortune
of all Highland or Irish Lairds who have bogs, for bogs —
* pates ' [peats] they will have it, are the proper soil for
the plant. And said Bogs for hundreds of miles, where
nothing has yet grown, will be clothed with such luxuriant
grass as all the cattle in the world cannot keep down. You
have no idea of the quantity of letters I have from strangers
in all quarters, from the South coast of Kent to John o'
Groat's, and from the East of Fife to the West coast of
Connaught, humbly begging me, the happy Father of so
renowned a son, to give them but the tythe of a fibre

130 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

of the root, or one seed ; or in default of them a piece of a
leaf ! l

But the disagreement of Captain and Governor had other
consequences at last, as told in a letter to Sir W. Hooker
(April 29, 1843) :

The Governor of the Falklands was very kind indeed
to me and we were great chums ; but he and our Koss
quarrelled most grievously, so that I was often unpleasantly
situated ; but told them both, that I had nothing to do with
their affairs. The worst of it was that Moody let us go to
sea for the South without fresh beef, so Smith and I went
and shot a bull calf and a horse, which were very good
eating ; we caught another horse, having run it down with
the dogs, quite a little thing, and tried to keep it as a pet
on board ; but the little thing, which was quite fond of me,
died before we got to the ice. However, keep all this to
yourself, for I am going to have nothing to do with their
rows.

1 The wonderful Tussock grass, when at last raised, ' has thriven marvellously
both in the Orkneys and Hebrides, having seeded abundantly and sown itself
(1847),' but did not practically fulfil these glowing anticipations in the Northern
hemisphere. Moreover, the first sowings of seed sent home by the Expedition
baffled the botanists. This is the key to Hooker's belated satisfaction when
writing to Ross in November 1844 :

' I am delighted to hear that some of the old Tussac vegetated, as everyone
has said that our Expedition seed all failed : it is quite a triumph to me, I assure
you, as now the Expedition was the first to introduce the grass. I have eleven
plants in my bedroom, growing very slowly, and there are a great many in
the Garden.'

Even then it was not all plain sailing, as a subsequent note to Ross (Sept. 1,
1845) records :

* Your excellent brother's plant of Tussac flowered with us, and turned
out the British Dactylis glomerata, to our shame and confusion at Kew, for we
were sufficiently positive of its being the right thing. The fact is that we have
only lately procured young plants and raised seeds of the true Tussac, many
other things flowered before with various people but none the right. It grows
exceedingly slowly and is a rigid wiry grass in its young state and will not
(apparently) flower for a long time yet. Pray do not laugh immoderately at
us for all this bungling, for all kinds of people, botanists, gardeners, and agri-
culturists have been deceived with what springs up in the pots. What we now
have young plants of and raised seeds of, is not like what I should have expected
Tussac to be, but as ten plants were watched sprouting from the seeds them-
selves and it totally differs from all other grasses, resembling the young plants
received from the Falklands, we are pretty sure it will become the true Tussac.
Enclosed are seeds which will surely germinate, but they must be watched, as
lots of other things spring up in the pots. I can give you a young plant if
you will tell me where to leave it in Town.'

BOOKS AND EEADING 131

From the botanist's point of view, the Falklands turned
out better than was expected. The mosses took first place
for interest ; then the monocotyledons, of which he had about
forty species, and he found a good many plants undescribed
in De Candolle after the publication of D'Urville's lists.

He was grateful for having the run of the Governor's
library.

I often spend a day there and afterwards take on
board with me any of his books that please me. Those
I have been lately reading are — Pope's Homer's Iliad,
Mrs. Hemans' Poems, Daniell's Chemical Philosophy and
Pugin's Christian Architecture, a very miscellaneous selec-
tion, but even from the last; with all his faults and
bigoted Eoman Catholicism, I have gained much good.
Keith's Evidence (of Prophecy) and Pollock's Course of
Time I had read long before without appreciating them
as I do now, — Stephens's Travels in the East pleased me
much and Milner's Church History, what I have seen of
it, for it is too much for me to get through here. (To Lady
Hooker, August 24, 1842.)

As regards botanical books, however, he tells his father
(August 25, 1842) :

It was very foolish in me to have brought so few books
on Cryptogamic plants, having nothing but London's1
Encyclopaedia and the miserable Sprengel 2 to help me.
From knowing something of the mosses before, I can get on
with them and examine them very minutely, but with the
Algae and Lichens I am sadly puzzled. Your parcel to
me, when it comes ! will be a great catch, if it is only for
the Journal, to which Berkeley no doubt still contributes.

It was better when a packet arrived from Sir William :

1 John Claudius London (1783-1843) was a famous traveller, landscape

§ardener, agriculturist, and horticultural writer ; Fellow of the Linnean
ociety, 1806. His energy, despite ill health, is illustrated by the fact that
at one time he was editing five monthly periodicals, from the Gardeners'
Magazine to the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum.

2 Kurt Sprengel (1766-1833) was Professor of Medicine and later of Botany
at Halle. His investigations greatly stimulated the microscopic anatomy of
plants, though his own results, owing to inadequate means of investigation,
were not always trustworthy.

132 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

Falklands : November 25, 1842.

The books you send out are capital. Lindley's
Elements seems a most valuable work to me and the
very one I wanted, for I have a very high opinion of him
as a Nat. Order man — though he makes too many it
is impossible not to admire the thorough knowledge he
has of the subject ; and now that a linear arrangement
will never do, and Fries 's Motto ' omnis ord. nat. circulum
per se clausum exhibet ' is daily gaining proof, Lindley's
groups and alliances of plants which, like sects, are more
like one another than anything else, must be invaluable.
;_ I am no judge of the goodness of this arrangement of the
groups, but it is the throwing the Nat. Orders into groups
and showing the dependence of one group on another which
impresses me ; his theory of the mosses is an eyesore to me
and shows the folly of theory without practice. . . .

As to his occupations on the treeless, wind-swept island,
he tells his father (May 3, 1842) :

On this Island my time has been entirely devoted to
Botany. . . . Every day adds something new to my col-
lection, especially among the lower tribes. During my
late excursion, I found the Ballia Brunonii, which I have
now gathered all round the world. . . . Altogether this
place is better for Botany than I expected, and but for
Lichens, &c., it beats Kerguelen's Land, [though] collect-
ing here is no sinecure, for the days are very short and the
nights long.

Later he tells his mother (August 28, 1842) :

The weather and state of the country, now swamped,
prevents my making any excursions to a distance, though
I enjoy the short walks about the bay very much and seldom
go out without picking up some novelty. At present my
time ashore is wholly taken up with seaweeds and marine
animals, for which purpose I wander along the beach at
low water with long boots on, collecting ; but the wind is
so cutting and the water so cold, that I often wonder whether
my hands spend most of the time in the water or my pockets,
whither they are wont to stray, as in days of yore.

ANTARCTIC BOTANY 133

As spring approached, even the Falklands put on a brighter
face. The forthcoming visit to Hermite Island offered an
attractive prospect, despite the fact that, with the equinoctial
gales coming on, a long and uncomfortable passage might be
expected. There is at least this consolation : ' We know from
now long experience, that no sea can hurt such vessels as ours,
which rise like tubs on the water and tumble about in the
waves.'

Already he is beginning to think of the Fuegian Fagi, &c.,
as described in his father's * Journal of Botany ' ; and correct-
ing Webster's confusions in his account of Captain Foster's *
voyage :

It is, however, among the Mosses and other Cryptogams
that I shall hope for novelty in the S. extremity of the
American Continent. . . . You will not wonder that after
spending so long a time in the Antarctic regions, I should
be most anxious to complete the Botany of this desolate
part of the world, by going even to the Horn, and that any
new Moss or Lichen from such latitudes appears of infinitely
more value to me than a new Palm or Bafflesia would to
you, nor can you well conceive my delight on finding the
three curious Halorageous, Portulaceous, and Crassulaceous
weeds of Kerguelen's Land at the Aucklands, then Camp-
bell's Island, and again on the Falklands — three curious
forms of small Natural Orders, as strictly Antarctic as
Parrya or Sieversia is Arctic.

Amongst the lower orders I find it takes all my eyes to
get up a tolerably complete collection, for in such dreary

1 Henry Foster (1796-1831), navigator and surveyor. His most important
voyages were with Captain Clavering and Sabine in the Griper, to the coasts
of Greenland and Norway, after which he was elected to the Royal Society ;
as astronomer with Parry in his Polar expeditions of 1824-5 and 1827, when
his astronomical and magnetic observations won him the Cople}' medal ; and
from 1828, when he was sent out in command of the Chanticleer to the South
Seas to determine the ellipticity of the earth by pendulum experiments at
various places, as well as to make magnetic and other observations. His
work took him to the South Shetlands, and thence to St. Martin's Cove, behind
Cape Horn, a spot afterwards visited by Hooker. Here he met Captain King
in the Adventure, who was surveying the neighbouring islands. He was
accidentally drowned in the Chagres River just after he had at last succeeded
in measuring the difference in longitude across the Isthmus of Panama by
means of rockets. The account of the voyage was written from the journal
of Webster, surgeon of the Chanticleer.

VOL. I K

134 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

climates, where vegetation itself is scarce, I find that every-
thing, in however bad a state, must be taken at once and
looked for, in fruit or flower, afterwards. Indeed I often
wonder what can be done with the barren specimens I am
forced to be content with. [From a letter to his Father,
August 25, 1842.]

To Ms Mother

December 6, 1842.

September 8th we weighed and made sail down the Sound
as I was writing a letter to Bessy. On the following day
we were greeted as we expected by a stout S.W. gale, which
blew almost without intermission until the 16th, during all
of which time we were hove to and battened down, most
delightful as you may suppose after four months in harbor.
On the 16th we were eighty miles to leeward of the Falk-

: lands ! when, after a short calm, Easterly wind sprang up,
and as the sea went down, we ran on rapidly to the Horn.
Fair winds took us on to the land ; on the 19th we made it
early in the morning, consisting of ranges of snowy peaks,
and soon after saw the far-famed Horn. The day was
beautiful and so we passed in the afternoon right under the
cliff, which is quite a fine one, — very steep and precipitous
to the Southward. Jagged and peaked at the top, covered
with very stunted brushwood of the crumpled or deciduous
leaved beech, which was brown as the leaves were not ex-
panded yet. The cliff is of a black color and about 600 ft.

. high with plenty of Albatross, Cape pigeons, and other sea
birds wheeling about it, indeed we were so close that we
could see them sitting on the face of it. A little cairn of
stones raised by the officers of the Beagle is on the top of all.
After rounding (or doubling) the Cape, the Bay of St.
Francis opens out and the view is very fine. This bay was
supposed to be in Hermite Island until that Island was
found to be made up of many enclosing this sheet of water.
Horn Island is the most Westerly and, as its name owns,
boasts of the Cape. Hermite Island is the Easternmost
and Cape Spencer, its most Southern point, is very similar
to and abreast of Cape Horn (some two or three miles further
North). We beat up the Bay and at night anchored in very
deep water under a bluff precipice off the mouth of the
Cove. When it came on dark, it was a very curious place,

CAPE HQKN AND HEEMITE ISLAND 135

for we were under high black-looking mountains rising at
once from the water, and we could just see their white tops
glimmering through the darkness.

When the moon got up the view was beautiful, and a
more extraordinary anchorage for wildness and sublimity
we never lay at. In the morning the quietness of the spot
and the green woods, which we had not cast eyes upon for
twelve good months, was most refreshing. The little cove
was so foreshortened lying amongst hills so high all round
that we could hardly suppose it would afford shelter, which
it did however, when we were warped about If miles up
towards its head, opposite a few wigwams of the natives.
The island is so narrow that we could always hear the hollow
roar of the surf on its weather shores, and after one of the
hard gales which were common there would be a slight swell
in the cove, whose beaches were so steep as sometimes
to prevent landing. All along the JJ. side of the Bay the
Mts. are quite precipitous, with a great deal of snow on their
ridges. On the South side they rise at an angle of 45 degrees
up from the water, with a few cliffs here and there so straight
that though the cove is very narrow the top of Kater's Peak,
1700 ft. high, is seen from the ships when in the centre. The
head of the cove runs up in a broad densely wooded valley
to another ridge of hills which complete the amphitheatre of
mountains. Altogether the place reminded me very much of
the Trossachs or the head of Loch Long contracted.1

The foliage being much like that of the Birch, and the
steep mountain torrents keeping up a continual roar which
often put me in mind of many a night spent in the Highlands.
Nothing is so soothing as the sound of rushing water, and
it was very delightful to lie at night in bed with the door
and hatch open and hear the little cataracts roaring, how-
ever, I soon found sleep much more delightful and forgot the
romance, —finally its effects were quite mesmeric (Is that
the new name ?). The weather for the first few days was
most beautiful, and we began to think the Horn a sadly
abused and traduced place. Spring came on rapidly, the

1 * In grandeur, perhaps, St. Martin's Cove was little behind that favourite
spot. Many things were, however, wanted to complete the picture as Scotch ;
perhaps, like Glen Croe, it was wild without being really beautiful, and only
assumed the latter appearance to us because for eleven months we had not seen
a tree.' (To Rev. James Hamilton, November 28, 1842.)

136 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

Berberry flowered with bright golden blossoms, the tufts
of Misodendrons on the beeches grew quite brilliant, and the
crumply leaved beech burst at every twig, emitting a delicious
resinous smell. Nature was evidently taking every advan-
tage of the fine days, and I began to think that seed-time
and harvest would all be over together in one month, and
could not conceive what the poor plants were to have to do
during all the summer if spring was so fine. My Father's class
song of Spring, all I remember of which is, ' The Larch hangs
all its tassels forth,' was nothing to this. I certainly never
saw anything like the sudden bound vegetation took in ten
or twelve days. We arrived in winter and it was summer
already. A few days more, however, changed the face of
nature, and after all the Snow had disappeared, two or three
hours covered everything with a white mantle and the
weather continued very changeable during our whole stay.
Clouds and fogs, rain and snow justified all Darwin's
accurate descriptions of a dreary Fuegian summer. In-
deed all Darwin's remarks are so true and so graphic
wherever we go that Mr. Lyell's kind present is not only
indispensable but a delightful companion and guide.

The Westerly winds which prevail seldom affect the
waters of the cove, but when they are strong and gales
set in with drifting clouds, snow and rain, the whole land
appears savage to a degree. The force of the wind and its
effects are not to be compared to Kerguelen's Land, where
the steady torrents of wind came rushing down in one
impetuous stream through the valley at the head of
Christmas Harbour ; here they dash down from the narrow
gorges of the mountains^ deflected from their course, and
burst on the ship with a clap like thunder, tear the water
up and are gone in an instant ; two will sometimes meet
from opposite quarters, and unfelt a few yards off, whisk
up a cloud of spray and continue struggling down the Cove
until, perhaps, they split and run along in two divaricating
lines of foam, as far as the eye can trace them. The gusts
were in no instance stronger than at Kerguelen's Land, and
from their short duration do not bring d strain on the cable
or cause us to drift from our moorings, but from their sudden-
ness they were more remarkable. It was very interesting
to walk the deck with hat tied on and watch these freaks

THE FUEGIANS 137

of ^Eolus, or to see a squall or Williewaw, as they are called,
strike the Terror, heel her over for a minute, and rush on
till it met the steady gale outside, of which we felt nothing.
On the hills its effects were also very remarkable, especially
high up near the Gorges, where the trees which met it in its
first burst would be all shattered, and lay in every direction
for an acre perhaps ; these, too, are sturdy, tough, stag- headed
little obstinate trees whose splintered trunks, though only a
few inches (8-14) in diameter, show that their mettle is good.
The poor Fuegians of course attracted our attention
before anything else, and surely they are the most degraded
savages that I ever set eyes upon. They are considered
as the lowest in the stage of civilisation of all nations under
the sun, — the Tasmanians, now banished from that Island,
alone excepted. They inhabit various scattered parts of the
coast in separate tribes, said to be at war with one another.
Those we saw amount to about twenty and are said to be
confined to Hermite Island. They have wigwams made
of nothing but a few branches arranged in the form of a
beehive in the woods close to the sea, — there are two or three
of them in almost every bay of the Islands, and they wander
either across the hills or in their canoes from one to another.
These canoes are the most useful articles they possess, though
very clumsily made of the Bark of trees sewn together
over a framework. The bottom is plastered with white
clay, of which a supply is always kept on board to stop a
leak — they take great care of their boats, and whenever they
haul them up, which is the women's duty, they make a sort
of road of smooth pebbles up the beach, and then cut
quantities of seaweed over which they drag the boat up high
and dry. Little baskets made of rushes woven together,
and a drinking cup cut out of the root of a Laminaria, are
the only domestic utensils, — wood ashes and clay used as
a pigment and a few shells strung on seal sinews their only
ornament, whilst their only weapons are a long sling and
a very long spear of wood with a bone head so fitted on to
the shaft that on striking a seal or penguin the shaft falls
out and remains attached to the head by a piece of sinew,
and thus encumbers the animal by floating. These Fuegians
wear no clothing whatever either in Winter or Summer
except such as are given them by us, — more apparently for

188 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

ornament than comfort. The men do little or nothing except
a seal or such like comes in their way, whilst the women are
employed collecting limpets and mussels, which are eaten
raw or half-cooked and form the largest proportion of their
food ; to do this the poor things have to go every day often
up to their middles in water, — snow falling heavily at times,
and with a young child slung to their backs. Their manners
are little above the brutes, filthy and squalid to a degree,
and they will eat anything but salt meat that we offered
them. They are all great thieves and excellent imitators
both of language and action, though they have never im-
proved themselves permanently from their intercourse with
Europeans. Their language is a most horrible, guttural
concatenation of sounds and unlike the New Zealanders,
whose tongue is harmonious and beautiful to the ear, —
they, as I said before, imitate a sentence of any language
readily, whilst few of the N. Zealanders can pronounce
I of the English words.

Our walks were of course confined to the Island, and
there was not much of general interest to attract attention.
Beginning a walk was the worst part, as one must tear
through the dense wood and force a passage up the hills,
— the ridges are generally bare of wood and easily walked
over to some distance, but whenever the valley comes wood
is sure to be packed into it. Of Mosses, Lichens, &c., there
are a profusion, and the collecting them kept me constantly
at work. Above the wood, however, the rocks are very
bare, from the frequent heavy snow storms, which often
overtook us on the hills and made the walk back very un-
pleasant, the wind clogging it on our persons. Nothing,
however, but personal weakness, or too sudden a change,
would have made Sir J. Banks feel their effects so much,
for we thought nothing of it, and were it necessary, even
without a fire, a shelter might be made, which with the
warmth of two or three persons close together, might have
defied death by cold.

Writing to Mrs. Boott, November 28, 1842, he insists further
on this point.

This part of the world (Fuegia) has always borne the
character of being eminently rigorous and inhospitable, —

THE THIED VOYAGE 139

very much because poor Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander,
after being accustomed to tropical -heat and that hottest
of harbors, Kio Janeiro, were rather suddenly cooled down
here in the height of summer. The climate in winter is,
however, as mild in proportion as the summers are chilly ;
the annual temperature is assuredly low, but the averages
of that of each season are remarkably close.

Sir William was delighted with the living plants sent home
from Hermit e Island, and writes on March 14, 1843 :

So valuable a consignment has not been received at the
Garden since we came here. The two new kinds of Beech,
and these the most Southern trees in the world, are invaluable,
and the Winter's Bark Tree (of the latter only one specimen
was in the kingdom before) are growing beautifully.

Of the third voyage to the South Hooker wrote later to
his father (March 7, 1843) :

Now that the voyage is over we are very proud of it
(pride in poverty, you will remark), for we have got nothing
easily. This cruise was not so hazardous as the last, being
less in Bergy seas, nor have we been in any so extreme
danger, but then as the ships cannot last for ever it becomes
daily more uncomfortable on the philosophical principle
of the * Pitcher going 99 times to the well.'

Leaving the Falklands on December 17 ' without one regret/
they preceded south on the meridian of 55 ° W., seeking for
a continuation of Louis Philippe Land to the south-east.
They met the pack on Christmas Day, and three days later
sighted Joinville Land in the South Shetlands. Extended
exploration was made and various islands discovered, while
the ships were nearly wrecked on Darwin Islet. On New
Year's Day, 1843, Mount Haddington was discovered ; on
January 5, Cockburn Island, in 64° 12' S., of which formal
possession was taken. Boss's ' Voyage ' contains Hooker's
special report, five pages long, of its rare vegetation.

Landing on the * very singular crater-shaped, conical
Island,' he writes, ' I procured the ghosts of eighteen Crypto-

140 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

gamic plants, but no Phenogamic, all very scarce indeed but
one or two Lichens.' Among his finds he mentions :

Ulva crispa ! also I see found in Eoss Islet, according to
your list of Parry's plants, [and here are pencilled in the
words] apparently exactly that of Europe, &c., so that unless
the Bed Snow of Forster should prove the real plant of
Antarctic regions, this is the only plant common to both
extremities of this globe, and it would be interesting to
ascertain which intermediate positions it inhabited. It is
probably found in Europe generally.

This voyage was like to have had an untoward interruption,
if not termination, for the ships were nearly frozen in between
the islands, and only escaped after six days' struggle with the
ice. Another fortnight was spent in trying to pierce the main
pack, when again they were nearly frozen in ; but once clear
of the pack, on February 4, they made for Weddell's track
in long. 40° W., where earlier in the century he had found clear
water as far as 74° S. But now this line was blocked by
a dense pack, while the weather was unpropitious. Crossing
the Antarctic Circle on March 1, next day they saw the sun
unclouded, the first time for six weeks, and on the 5th turned
back at 71 J° S., long. 14° 15' W., only to be overtaken by a
fierce gale lasting three days, during which they were repeatedly
in danger of shipwreck in the ice or of collision. On the
llth they recrossed the Antarctic Circle, as all devoutly hoped
for the last time, and bore up for the Cape, which was reached
on April 4, 1843.

Officers and men alike were growing weary of the prolonged
voyage, and the threatened addition of a fifth year was as
unwelcome as it was unusual. The fatigues and monotony
of the South outweighed the solid allurements of double pay.
Koss, with his keen interest in the magnetic work and his
ambitions as an explorer, and Hooker, with new fields of science
opening before him and his heart in his work, were, as the
latter confesses, the only two who could have both pleasure
and gain in a fifth year or even longer voyage. ' It is nothing
to me if they keep us out six, except the want of seeing my

LENGTH OF SERVICE 141

friends, for I am always improving myself, and it will give me a
greater claim on the scientific world.' The unscientific officers,
though doing their arduous work devotedly, were buoyed up
by no scientific enthusiasms, and with no chance of withdraw-
ing honourably from the task, felt it a hardship to be kept
in harness so long, having only calculated on a three years'
cruise. They were being outstripped by others on active
service, and the promotions that came to them in the guise of
special reward were already due for length of service, while
the * Terrors ' especially were nettled that when the Geo-
graphical Society gave Captain Boss their Gold Medal, no
word was uttered in recognition of the officers and crews by
whose labour and loyalty he had been able to push his explora-
tions so far. And Hooker writes home of a rumour that they
had wintered in the lonely Falkland Islands lest at any other
port the seamen might desert rather than face another expedi-
tion to the ice. All were delighted when they learned at the
Cape that they were to make their way slowly homeward by
St. Helena, Ascension, and Rio.

The Admiralty rule that all collections, journals, and charts
made on the voyage should be handed over to the Department,
and Ross's keen desire that his account of the voyage should
not be forestalled by any public leakage of news, geographical
or scientific, hedged private letters round with difficulties.
It was expected that finally both Hooker's Journals and his
botanical collections would come back to him. Before leaving
England he had written to thank his grandfather, Dawson
Turner, for offering to help in getting his Journals ready for
the press when he returned, and added, * My Journal will be,
I hope, very full if not very good, and I shall send home extracts
to all my friends in the shape of letters to my father and grand-
father. These Journals on my return are to be given up to the
Admiralty, who will, I hope, send them to my Father, since
Capt. Ross has promised that he will use his endeavours
that the Botanical collections shall be sent to him.' Meantime
Hooker had urged his parents to keep his letters strictly within
the family circle. Even the sending home of an occasional
sketch to illustrate his travels, or of a pretty shell for his

142 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

sister, ' allowing brotherly affection to outweigh patriotism/
was strictly speaking a contravention of rules, which, if it
reached official ears, might get him into hot water with his
commander. The young officers, securing spare specimens
for themselves sub rosa, were occasionally hard put to it to
escape detection.

The Captain [he writes to his father on November 25,
1842] has a noble collection of Birds in casks, — a most noble
one. I do not let him know that I skin any at all, for he
is a capital specimen himself of a Naturalist, no more do
Smith or Oakeley, and you would laugh to see us playing
bopeep along the deck as he comes along, for he has an eye
like a hawk, and the moment he suspects, —the sooner you
give up with a good grace the better. I had a narrow
escape the other day with a noble Maccaroni Penguin with
gold feathers and crest, by jumping down the main hatch
as he came up the after one.

The spare sets of specimens for his father had to pass
officially through the hands of the Admiralty and the British
Museum ; but at the Museum, Eobert Brown was ' better
than the regulations,' and facilitated Sir William's examination
of the plants.

Hence, accordingly, the urgent tone of the following passages
from a letter to Sir William (December 5, 1842),though lightened
by a reference to Boss's epistolary anxieties which, .as will be
seen later, very nearly chanced on the explanation.

There is another subject which annoys me exceedingly,
and is the only one in the course of the Expedition which
does : it is the following passage in a letter from my mother
dated August 1 :

' . . . Your drawings (you need not tell Captain Boss,
unless he would like to hear it) are known far and wide.'

I thought in my letters I explained my wishes on that sub-
ject fully to you all, so much so that I feared to trouble you
too often by positive desire that they should be known but
to few, and as to * unless Captain Boss would like to hear it,'
I surely have said often enough, or at least given it fully to
be understood, that I had no business whatever to send

OFFICIAL SECKECY TKANSGKESSED 143

them home at all; and that did it come to his ears I should
not so soon hear the end of it. Nothing but affection for
you all prompted me to make them, it was a pleasure to me
to do so, although my conscience told me that I was not
acting properly to an Expedition whose orders I have often
told you are ' all journals, charts, drawings, &c.' to be given
up. That it will now come to Captain Boss's ears there
can be no doubt, I have difficulty enough in weathering him
who know him well, I must however blame myself for send;
ing them at all. If you have made Davis's drawing of the
ships in the Pack also to be known ' far and wide ' you will
run every chance of doing him a serious injury who is
dependent on the service. Again, a midshipman from the
Philomel, a youngster of the name of Fox, comes up to me
on a cricket ground where I was enjoying a little exercise
with the Philomels after the General Halkett sailed and tells
me he has heard my letters read in Dublin by his Aunt
and Mrs. Butler, some relations of some one of the name of
' Innes.' Who these Foxes, Butlers, and Innes are I do not
know nor care, but my letters were never written to be made
so public or to leave the house further than Yarmouth or
Hampstead, nor do I choose to be the gossip of half the
friends' friends who may like to see them. My own wishes
with regard to them have been expressed often enough, and
surely I am old enough to know my own mind on such
matters ; they were written for my near relations alone,
and contain such messages to others as are requisite for them
to know ; my repugnance to any such notoriety is so strong
that if these wishes cannot be complied with I must give
up writing anything but simple statements. You may
remember that I was always very averse to any society but
that of persons whose pursuits were similar to mine, and
more particularly to that of four-fifths of our Glasgow and
other friends with whom my parents, brother and sisters
were on terms of intimacy ; this may be owing to a peculiar
temperament of mine or more probably to a fault ; still
I cannot help it, and care to be known by few but Botanists
and men of Science. With them my own industry must
introduce me, and what other real friends I have I can write
to. Do not be angry with me for writing the above'; as
a duty to myself it was in my opinion necessary for me to

144 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

state that I fear my letters and drawings are given far more
publicity to than I warranted, and I cannot help speaking
firmly, perhaps too strongly, on the subject. You are
doubtless surrounded by many and very kind friends at
Kew, and no one can be more grateful to God than I am ;
you are calculated to shine in their society and have an
open heart to receive their friendship, it is however totally
different with me — a few friends are all my narrow mind
has room for, and I often think they are kept better on that
very account. My ambition to rise in one branch of science
will soon cause them to think themselves neglected if I
should make their acquaintance and not keep it up. I
should have mentioned this subject in my mother's letter
but shall not ; we are men and may talk to one another
without feeling that annoyance which women often will,
and I am sure you know my feelings well on the subject,
though my dear Mother's love may have prompted her to
make me the subject of all conversation everywhere. Do
remember then that I do extremely dislike having my letters
shown to those I do not know, and that with regard to
the drawings it is not fair to me to make them known far
and wide, inasmuch as I have defrauded the Expedition
of them.

However, all's well that ends well. The publicity, such
as it was, arose from a command visit to Buckingham Palace.
Sir William was bidden bring his news of the Expedition to
Prince Albert, who listened with extreme attention, repeating
the main points accurately to a visitor who came later, and
taking to the Queen Fitch's drawing from Davis's sketch of the
ships in the pack. This put a very different complexion on
the affair. The unfeigned interest of the Queen and the
Prince Consort in the doings of the Expedition made up for
seeming neglect elsewhere, and could not be objected to by
Captain Koss, himself a correspondent of the Prince by royal
command. Sir William's explanation cleared the air, and had
answer (April 20 and March 7, 1843) :

You have now quite explained the mystery about my
drawings which hung over yours and my Mother's Falkland
Island letters. Of course the honour is quite too flattering

BY KOYAL COMMAND 145

to allow me to be angry, even had I cause. I often speak
testily when I do not mean it, as you know ; and hope I
said nothing in my letter that gave offence, but I must say
I was then annoyed to hear that ' my drawings and letters
were known far and wide.' We did take possession of the
land (landing on the little island) in the name of Her M.G.M.Q.
Victoria, and so we did last January, and on another little
island. I wish His E.H. much joy of Her Majesty's acquisi-
tions, nothing but Her wish will get me near them again,
for I suppose if the Queen tells you, go you must nolens
volens. Their Majesties' interest and attention is most
flattering to a poor Asst. Surgeon, beyond everything
flattering. *

Capt. Koss wrote Prince Albert a long letter from the
Falklands which caused him many hours' deep study and
the purser many candles. ... If he should show any more
interest in the Expedition he may like to hear the particulars
of the cruise, all of which I leave to your judgement, only
premising that I do not at all like my letters to be sent about
whole. Use your discretion about any parts you like, but
you must see that I may say many things intended only
for the four walls of West Park. Had I my own way I
would forward occasional notices of the cruise to the
' Athenaeum,' but I feel sure Capt. Koss would not like it,
nor do I wish to be the mouthpiece for both ships, trumpeting
our own fame.

It seemed likely that Boss's calculated economy of news
might defeat its own ends.

Capt. Eoss told me the other day that ' the " Athenaeum "
was never friendly to him and took no notice of our pro-
ceedings.' I thought the latter part very true but did
not tell him, telling him instead that the papers had no
means of getting news about us ; he did not, or would not,
take the hint. He seems to wish all the news to come home
with him, to astonish the world like a thunder clap ; but
will find himself much mistaken I fear ; ' out of sight, out
of mind,' and if the knowledge of our proceedings be stifled
it will beget indifference, instead of pent-up curiosity, ready
to burst out on our firing one gun at Spithead. I do not
believe he tells Sabine too much, or his own father.

146 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

Indeed, his lifelong friend, Archibald Smith,1 writing on
August 3, 1842, tells Hooker that the public have less
interest in the expedition than should be if they understood
its aims. ' But,' he adds, * Eoss will deserve a peerage if he
gets to the pole, and I have got a motto from Virgil ready
for him — " Polo dimoverat umbram." And Dr. Sinclair,
returning from New Zealand, found himself greatly in demand.
He had seen the half fabulous Discoverers with his own eyes.

People read so much fiction nowadays [he writes from
Edinburgh in January 1843], and your labours have had
sufficient of it to make a similar impression, that they
were glad to hear a living man and not a book express his
readiness to swear he saw you going on a-discovering as daily
work.

Moreover, when in March 1843 Sir William Hooker obtained
the Admiralty's permission to draw up for his ' Journal of
Botany ' a general account of what Joseph had done, he found
that already in Paris they had begun to publish the Botany
of D'Urville's last voyage, including some of Joseph's best and
newest plants, though without any text so far, while a specimen
of the white Chionis, sent home by some member of the Expedi-
tion, was bought by a German and described in Germany.
Clearly there should have been a Committee, as in France, to
issue a preliminary report, reserving full descriptions till the
return of the Expedition.

Sir William's article, when it appeared, pleased Captain
Koss and the officers generally, excepting Captain Crozier,
who was much offended — so sailors love their ships — by the
description of the Terror as a ' heavy sailer.'

For the sake of contrast with to-day, an impression of
Capetown in the forties may be recorded at some length,

1 Archibald Smith (1813-72) was the only son of * Smith of Jordan Hill.'
He was Senior Wrangler in 1836, and entering Lincoln's Inn, became a dis-
tinguished real property lawyer. His most living interest, however, remained
in mathematics, both pure and applied, and his working out of the practical
formulae for the correction of observations on board ship and especially for
determining the effect of the iron in a ship on the compass, incorporated in an
Admiralty Manual of 1862, were of the highest value. In 1865 he was awarded
a gold medal by the Royal Society, of which he had been a Fellow since 1856.

CAPETOWN 147

where, on the first visit in March 1840, he tells his cousin,
Mrs. Fleming :

We went to Simon's Bay near to Cape Town, where. the
Naval dockyard and stores are ; as we lay there for upwards
of a fortnight, many excursions were made to Cape Town,
distant twenty-one miles, and as we always went on horse-
back or in a gig, we had our full proportion of accidents ;
little damage was however done, except to the horses and
vehicles, for though some say that sailors are bad drivers,
I am quite of the contrary opinion, for landsmen generally
break their heads or limbs and the horse gets off, while you
never almost hear of a sailor riding or driving without an
accident ; that accident never affects him further than his
pocket, an instance of sagacity in the members of the Naval
profession too often overlooked, while their modesty is so
great that they never own to meeting with an adventure
of the sort, which" would infer that they had the address to
rescue themselves when their animals are killed and vehicles
smashed.

On the second visit he writes more fully to his mother
(April 9, 1843) :

The cliffs of the Mountain are here the grandest for effect^
I ever saw, at least I always thought so ; perhaps from
coming off the sea, — they quite frown down on the road
though 3000 ft. overhead ; the worst of them is that they
are essentially sterile, and there is a something in the look
of the empty and silent water courses which the verdure
and beauty of the slope below will not make up for. I
quite felt that I should have heard the murmur of the many
distant cataracts, which ought to have poured down each
little gully. One of the first houses on the road is called
Feldhausen and was of great interest to us, as there Sir John
Herschel 1 lived and set up the telescope with which he
catalogued the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. It is
a very nice white house with a long avenue of dark Fir trees,
which give it anything but an inviting appearance ; near

1 Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) continued and expanded the astronomical
work of his father, Sir William. From the beginning of 1834 he spent four
years at the Cape mapping the southern heavens as h^e, had the northern.

148 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

it is a little monument erected on the position of the Tele-
scope. One could not help looking at the place where
England's greatest Philosopher lived ; the man too who
paid us the compliment of calling ' our Expedition ' the
Forlorn Hope of Science,' — perhaps though that was
because it was a forlorn hope to expect any good out of
such a set as we are, — whether it was intended to flatter,
frighten, or stimulate us, we take it as the greatest
compliment ever received.

A little further on and Cape Town bursts at once into
full view, and a most wretched view it is ; the slope of the
road is bare of trees, the town lies, not nestled but dabbed
on a gradual slope at the foot of the opposite side of Table
Mt. to what I described above ; the great bay is before
it, Lion's Mt. to the right, the high inaccessible (except
in one narrow gorge) cliffs at the back, and Devil's Mt. on
the left ; not a tree anywhere, either on the road, town,
or hills. The houses look mean, are square, generally low,
arranged in squares, glaringly white-washed, with blue or
red tiles. You enter by some dirty hovels and mud walls
on a road covered with an impalpable red dust, which covers
and paints three or four wretched fir trees, which are bent
at an angle of 45° by the S.E. winds ; approaching, it does
not improve, a short turn of the road almost brings horse
and gig up against the castle ramparts, which are of a lively
gray color, abutting on the road, with a foss all round dug
out of red clay earth, and some dirty hamlets scattered
without order all round. To avoid this you turn your
head to the left and meet a glaring white-washed house
with a red roof, which in such weather at once puts one in
mind of a red heat and white heat, and further on the sterile
cliffs of the mountain. Entering the town is, as I have
described, most unpromising, and as to itself I cannot say
much more for it. There is a large open space of red clay,
surrounded with a low wall and ditch, having walks inside
under stunted Oaks and the vile Firs. This gives shade
and that is all ; grass will not grow ; and to make it
attractive, to Ladies I suppose who are naturally fond of
shopping, there are dirty women sitting on the walk sides
selling gingerbread, stale fruit, and lollypops. A little
further on is a large building which, with Ludwig's Gardens,

CAPE TOWN 149

is the saving clause of Cape Town. This building contains
a fine reading room with every good paper in proper order
and at hand ; one wing, prettily planted round with rose
briars and climbing convolvuluses, contains a Library of
30,000 volumes, all in most excellent order, with the tables
covered with magazines. . . .

I found the streets all narrow, ill-paved, hot and dusty, the
houses generally mean and irregular, some of the shops good
but little shade anywhere : most of the houses have a long
narrow terrace just before the door, with a seat for smoking
at each end and an ugly fir tree or stunted acacia planted
over each settee. Now these terraces cannot be walked
over, and as they take up all the room where the pavement
should be, there is walking straight on, but in the middle
of the street ; and then the poor advantage of the shady
side is lost, without you hug the wall and double every
terrace, crossing and recrossing the zigzag gutter, most
ingeniously contrived to go the shortest distance by the
longest way. The Natives are of mixed breed. Hottentots
are scarcely seen anywhere, Malays are very common,
both men and women, generally with a red Bandana hand-
kerchief round the head ; they have a separate meeting
house and burying place. Next are the Dutch breed, often
round built, especially the ladies, and inclined to be swarthy.
They roll handsomely along the streets, are plump and
often well looking, sometimes very handsome, — the men
are as often thin and smoke many cigars. All Dutch born
in the colony are called Africandoes as the colonial
Australians are called Currency and the St. Helenas Yam
stocks. Except the shopkeepers the English are not much
seen ; they compose the upper classes, generally live out
of town, and drive in to shop, etc. The Governor, though
viceroy of the Colony, keeps a very poor table and only
gives one ball a year ; the society is quite divided between
the Dutch and English ; they do not mingle much, though
I suspect much of the former class to be far superior to
the latter. Amongst the strangers and occasional visitors
none are so conspicuous as the Indians [i.e. officers of the
Indian army] ; they saunter about slowly with white jackets,
straw hats, and whips in their hands, though ten to one they
belong to foot regiments ; they may be descried at once by

VOL. I

150 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE

having long yellow hatchet faces, curious noses of sorts,
yellow whites to their eyes, and are said to have no livers,
whence I suppose the bile is deposited elsewhere, in the
face, eyes, etc., and even so much as to affect their tempers,
for some are hypochondriac and others highly irritable ;
they are gregarious, and frequently live in boarding houses.
. . . Baron Ludwig 1 received me with the greatest kindness
and wished me to stay at his house, which I declined, not
seeing any occasion to trouble him, and having a great deal
of shopping to do, which I wished to effect in the cool of
the evening, when he would expect me to sit at home. I
breakfasted and lunched there, however. His house is one
of the best in Cape Town, with a noble drawing-room,
handsomely furnished with two busts of his noble self, one
of the late Baroness and one of the poet Schiller. My
Father's picture used to hang there before, but was not now,
and of course I did not ask for it. He, my Father, has given
way to William of Wiirtemberg, who so graciously showered
down the crosses and snuff-box on him of Cape Town, which
emblems you may remember in the Crescent. I found
* Peter Schlemihl ' in his Library and could not help reading
part of it for old acquaintance sake ; it was the very copy
my Grandfather gave him ; tell this to the dear old man
and how many associations and thoughts of him it brought
up ; his own handwriting ascribing it to Chamisso was on
the title page. I think I was more pleased to have found
that book of my dear Grandfather's than with anything
else in Cape Town ; I had a great mind to steal it.

It has struck me very forcibly during both my visits
to the Cape, that there is in the Colony a most remarkable
want of _, a love for flowers, which I always thought so
peculiarly a Dutch taste, but so it is. Look here, the only
Eucalypti and Casuarinas I have anywhere seen, are in
i Ludwig's garden ; but though they are planted by him for

1 Baron C. F. H. von Ludwig (ca. 1784-1847), Ph.D., chemist and botanist,
left his native Wiirtemberg in 1804 for the Cape, where he founded a Botanic
Garden, Ludwigsburg, and became Vice-President of the South African
Literary and Scientific Institute, and a member of the Cape Association for
Exploring Central Africa. He was a correspondent of Sir William Hooker,
who, in dedicating to him the 62nd vol. of the Botanical Magazine in 1835,
made special mention of the rare and beautiful plants with which he had
enriched Europe, and called him the Friend and Patron of Botany. He
visited Great Britain in 1836-7.

CAPE TOWN 151

the purpose, and are the best trees possible to break the
violence of the S.E. winds, still on the outside of the town
the road is sometimes (where anything is) planted with
pudding-headed Pines, which are blown at angles of 45
with the ground, beastly black in color above, and covered
with the red fine dust of the sand below.

Except Ludwig's garden I enjoyed nothing in Cape
Town, for you would not care to hear how the days were
sultry without a breath of wind, the streets full of a fine
red dust, so light as to be always floating, or how often I
had to go to the same shop to get things changed, etc. It
was my intention to go up Table Mountain, but Ludwig
has no one who could take me up, and the heat was so
scorching that all my enthusiasm fairly oozed out of my
finger ends, and except for catering for Kew in cool large
rooms, Botany was at a standstill.

CHAPTER VII

THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE : PERSONAL

THE voyage left its mark on the young naturalist. His
physique was strengthened : the long spells of isolation,
though depriving him of much that he longed for, helped to
fix the lines of his thought and character and aims.1

The cruize [he writes to his mother, Juno 29, 1841] has
proved me quite hardy. Except a slight cold and its con-
comitant discomfort, I have had nothing to complain of,
and that has been since my arriving here (Tasmania).
During all the time I was in the Southward I did not know
an hour's illness of any kind whatever : the cold is healthy
in the extreme, and an occasional ducking of sea- water proves
rather beneficial. I always accustom myself to taking
moderate exercise in hauling the ropes, setting sails, putting
the ship about, &c. Thus my chest expands, my arms
get hard, and the former rings almost when struck.

And when he reached the Cape in 1843 he tells her that, as
they felt the weather stifling and hot, ' to dine on board the
Flagship the other day I had to borrow garments ; not one
of my 3£ dozen white trousers will go on : so much for my
rude health.'

1 Mrs. Richardson, Franklin's niece, writing to Hooker on August 3, 1842,
remarks that she would never have recommended the Navy to him as a career
— and that it might even be unsatisfactory as a means of travel and experience
when a cautious reserve is wisest : adding sagely, ' As a piece of mental training
I cannot think lightly of that retirement into oneself which is the natural
consequence of not entirely liking our associates, and not agreeing with their
views or notions. Mrs. Barbauld calls this sort of thing the "Education of
circumstances," and notices how it contributes to form the character.'

152

LOVE OF MUSIC 153

So far as science went, the lengthening chain of months
enlarged his powers and strengthened his professional position.
Without counting the inevitable separation from friends, the
chief thing he found lacking on the voyage was music, though
he could not profess to be a musician any more than an artist.
He tells his sister Elizabeth (May 12, 1843) :

On board this ship I want music more than anything,
and am always ready to break my leave for the sake of
hearing it. I often wish I understood it, and perhaps
oftener still (am glad ?) that I do not ; since, as matters
now are, I cannot perceive those faults that would grate
upon the ear of a musician.

He does not care for * modern ballad music ' but likes the
older English and Scotch airs, e.g. * Where the bee sucks,' —
good sacred music, such as Handel, ' Israel in Egypt,' and
Haydn's ' Creation' ; and some operatic music of which he
is kept in mind by the nav^l and military bands, and is
delighted that the girls and his mother are practising his
favourite songs and glees against his return.

Thus it may be imagined what a double disappointment
awaited him at Eio on the homeward voyage.

To his Sisters

Rio de Janeiro : June 20, 1843.

The Americans have an immense fifty-gun ship as Com-
modore ship stationed quite close to us, and would you believe
it ? the Goths have no band on board but some huge drums
and squeaking fifes, which they make a terrible din upon
every night, and beat off with Yankee Doodle at 8 P.M.
Not only is the noise horrible, but at that time a tolerable
band plays on board the Brazilian flagship, whose music
is consequently drowned before it reaches us.

A letter of November 28, 1842, to his old friend, Mrs. Boott,
gives the fullest account of his artistic tastes and education.

I often regret that I never saw any pictures that can be
called good. A relish for this branch of the Fine Arts has
not yet extended to the Colonies, whose children cannot

154 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEESONAL

be expected to exercise taste, when the parents have no
models to show them. My own taste on such subjects was
never formed ; though, like most persons, I knew what
pleased me, and was much soothed when I was told (on
regretting the circumstance) that Sir Joshua Eeynolds never
could appreciate any part of a painting till he had seen it
several times. Sir Walter Scott, I think, in * Paul's Letters
to his Kinsfolk,' says, when speaking of the Louvre in its
palmy days, that the beauties of the finest pictures do not
strike him at once. Without comparing myself to either
of these great men, I must say that next to the want of
Society, the want of music and painting is one of the most
irksome which a sea Voyager is bound to endure. When
I have been weary of work, even a tinkling musical-box has
sounded most charming ; but all the boxes have, at last,
been either broken or given away, and my sole consolation
remains in whistling those tunes which most recall pleasant
scenes to my memory, —though this is sorely to the annoy-
ance of my neighbours, whg growl, like free-born Britons,
at the noise I make.

Letters already quoted point to the smallness of his intimate
circle. It embraced his nearest relations, and beyond these
but a few who could really be called friends. This inner
circle was grievously broken during his absence. First his
brother William died suddenly of yellow fever in Jamaica.
Then his two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Harriette, at school
in Kensington at Little Campden House, were threatened
with consumption and taken away for special treatment at
Leamington, afterwards wintering in Jersey. Elizabeth, the
first to give anxiety, gradually recovered ; Mary Harriette,
who fell ill later, faded away all too swiftly. Joseph had
expected to hear of his grandfather Hooker's death before
long ; but the octogenarian, with the vitality which he handed
on to his male descendants who passed much of their youth
in the open air, lived on and was happily moved from Glasgow
to Kew, a heavy journey in those days.

The first bad news caught him cruelly at a moment of joyful
expectation. Save for a letter sent to Madeira, which had
overtaken him at the Cape, his first budget of news met him

HIS BKOTHEK'S DEATH 155

at Tasmania, in August 1840, eleven months after he had left
home. The black- edged letter beginning, * My dear and only
son,' turned all his delight into mourning. He was devoted
to his brother William, ' so warm-hearted a fellow that he would
cut his right hand off to help even a stranger.' The brother
who had been ' hourly in his thoughts ' these many days had
been dead since the first day of the year. From the Cape he
had written to his mother :

So poor William has gone to Jamaica ; if you but knew
how often I think and dream of him you would not be sur-
prized at the sorrow I felt that he should have parted from
you, though it is doubtless for the best. Poor Isabella1
is left behind. ... I feel sure it will be a delight especially
to my sisters to take charge of the child till my return when
I shall consider it my own should it be better to leave it
behind than take it to a foreign country, or should any other
circumstances demand another father for it. [He knew
William was out of health, though he did not believe, as some
did, that he was threatened with consumption.] I wish
very much that I had received that letter before, as I had
intended to send my brother a check which I can well spare ;
it is now too late— and I am sure money must be wanted ;
he need not look upon it as a gift, at any rate it would be
but a poor recompense for all the kindness I have received
from the poor fellow's hands. The child I do hope to
bring up, and you must tell that to my future housekeeper
Maria, to whom I send my best love.

It was to this favourite sister that he unbosomed himself ;
the poignant contrast of exchanging the hardships of ' the most
tempestuous latitude in the worst season of the year ' for the
calm beauty of the Derwent with Hobart set in tall trees under
a snow-capped hill, only to find in his envied package of fifteen
or sixteen letters the news that should make him the one
sorrowful man in the ship : * now he is gone, and there will
be none of my childhood's playmates when I return to talk
over bygone times with, for he was at school my only
companion.'

1 He married Isabella Smith, April 22, 1839.

156 THE ANTAKCTIC VOYAGE : PEESONAL

The characteristic note of his early religious training appears
in his words :

Mr. Nelson and Susan have now, I trust, met with him,
and little as worldly affairs have to do with the state above,
I can never divest myself of the idea, that one, though a
small share of the pleasures that attend the good, is the
meeting of those whom our God and duty have sanctioned
our loving. ... Do not think I repine at this dispensation,
nor at the additional and not less felt one of my Grandpapa's
illness. I have far too much to be thankful for both for
myself and for those who are left, and if there is one thing
that cheers my thoughts of home, it is having a faithful
sister of my own age. You perhaps do not know how
responsible your situation at home is, and it is my great
happiness to think that when sorrow weighs down my parents
they can feel full confidence in you. Were I not sure that
this is the case, it would make me miserable indeed.

To his father, who had also warned him of his sister's illness,
he writes (July 6, 1841) :

For my part I can hardly bear to think upon the probability
that I shall return to the house I left so lively and merry,
and not hear a single gladsome voice, no music and none of
the attractions that used to welcome me home every winter
night from college. My affection for those who remain
will indeed be greater, but of how much sadder a nature
will their welcome be than what my vivid fancy has been
accustomed to paint when thoughts of home were my only
solace.

As to the prospect of his father leaving Glasgow for Kew :

I sincerely hope he may for his own sake ; for my own
I am quite indifferent ; except Jas. Mitchell, I have no
friends that I care about except Adamson now that Thomson
and the Steuarts are gone. I shall, however, always look
upon the dirty Town as the only place connected with old
associations, and whatever attractions other places may have
for me, none can have localities so endeared to me as that
Town which is the same as my birthplace. It is true I
have no friends there, but equally I have none elsewhere ;

FAMILY AFFECTION 157

wherever he and you all live, should circumstances favour
my living at home on my return, there I shall be happy to
find you, though now no spot is dearer to me than Invereck ;
two sketches of it hang in my cabin.

The best anodyne, however, was hard work and busy occu-
pation : so that he writes to his father on September 7th:

Still I have been very happy here, and never before could
I have so deeply felt how much the study of our mutual
pursuit tends to alleviate our distress.

The uncertainty made him ' afraid to mention names of
those so far off and in such precarious health.' But warned
of Mary's decline, and eagerly following the successive hopes
and fears for so dear a life, he schooled himself to meet the
inevitable, and the pathetic accounts of the child's last
months found him prepared as much as might be to accept
his own irremediable loss with the resignation to the will of
an inscrutable Providence that was an integral part of his
parents' faith. Still, resignation involved a sharp struggle
with feeling, and as he drew near the Falklands after the second
voyage to the ice, he wrote to his father (April 5, 1842 ; the
words are quoted from a copy only) :

Much as I long for tidings of you all, I cannot but feel
sure that they must be woeful ; and to own the truth, one
of my reasons for beginning this letter before we cast anchor
is that I may be able to communicate to you some of the
cheerfulness I now feel, and that my letter shall not be
tinged with that sorrow and moroseness which I fear may
have characterised some of my former epistles : these were
written on the spur of the moment, when to my shame
present griefs obliterated the recollection of past mercies,
and whilst pining over what had occurred, I had forgotten
how much I of all others had to be thankful for, and how
little it was my duty to trouble you with such complaints.
Whatever the tidings may prove to be, I have too long
suffered from hope delayed and been kindly by you all too
well prepared, ever to feel again the poignant anguish with
which I received the first letters that awaited me at Van
Diemen's Land.

158 THE AtfTAKCTIC VOYAGE : PEESONAL

The movements of the exploring ships, the irregularity of
the post* carried by sailing vessels, the occasional vagaries of
the Admiralty letter-bags going from one naval station to
another, made the receipt of news from home spasmodic. For
instance, he tells his sister on May 26, 1842, ' My latest news
from home is March 29, 1841, and that is in answer to a nearly
two year old one of mine from Hobarton." Such news was
often anticipated by the English newspapers found at ports of
call ; the ' Athenaeum ' in particular giving news of persons and
events in scientific circles. To this he owed his first intimation
of ' the first and last piece of good tidings that has greeted me
about our own family/ This was the appointment of Sir
William to Kew at Lady Day, 1841. He found a copy of the
journal for March 23 with the news when he was at Sydney
early in August. His father's letter about the appointment,
written six clays later, reached him at the Bay of Islands on
November 23. On the strength of it he persuaded Captain
Eoss to relax the strict rule of the Expedition and let him
send Sir William a box of plants he had collected.

Hope deferred was at length satisfied ; a month before
hearing the news he had written :

What to think about Kew I do not know ; the ministers
have put you off so very often that they may do so longer.
Next to my poor little Mary, that subject lies nearest my
heart, and most sincerely do I hope you may not be after all
disappointed. To live near your friends is now your chief
aim and must be essential to your comfort ; and to be able
to raise Kew to the rank of a tolerably good national estab-
lishment would be the most honourable service a Botanist
could render his country, besides being the most pleasant
one you could set your mind to.

Kew, he had felt strongly from the moment of his father's
appointment as Director, must eventually become a National
establishment. He is amused to find from a newspaper of 1842
that Lord Lincoln, head of the official department that ruled
Kew, opposed Sir William's scheme of opening of the gardens
to the public on the ground that they were ' the only gardens
near town to which Her Majesty could repair for exercise,'

THE KEW APPOINTMENT 159

seeing that Kew had never been so used since Kew Palace was
given up. Futile pretext for obstructing public progress.
A liberal policy must prevail, the Upper House being won over
by reason of ' our noblemen and statesmen being so fond of
trees and their gardens ' and finding that Kew disseminates
new plants ; all the more successfully because it has secured
the new palm stove. Already (March 7, 1843) his ideal is to
see the gardens on an equal footing with the British Museum,
and under a body of Directors chosen one half of Botanists
at least.

My mother tells that Invereck [their cottage on the
Clyde] is sold, and I. much fear that the great expense your
family now puts you to is in some measure your reason for
parting with it. Everything seems to have gone wrong
from the very day on which I first left Glasgow, and believe
me that could I with honour give up the Expedition it would
not be long before I should be at your side to take my share
of your labors ; as it is, even were I uncomfortable in the
ship, I could not give it up without it being said I was afraid
to go on, and further I hope ere this will reach you, you will
be snugly ensconced not ten miles from Aunt Palgrave's.

Now he could expand affectionately over his father's
advancement in the sphere of their ' mutual interest.' He
discusses plans for the future ; caters for his new command by
making Colenso and Konald Gunn1 promise to send interesting
plants to Kew from New Zealand and Tasmania ; looks forward
eagerly to the day when he will himself share in his father's
labours. * My father always works too hard ' he agrees
with Dr. Boott, the old friend of the family (November 29,
1842).

Now that his employment means more exercise out of
doors, he will grow stronger. ' Walking, in particular, always
agreed with him, and good walkers invariably enjoy good
health ; who ever saw a sick two-penny postman ? or Police-
runner ? '

And to his father he writes (April 20, 1843) :

1 See pp. 107 and 124.

160 THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE : PERSONAL

You must not work too hard at your plants and Library ;
rather get on in the gardens, which is more healthy, and in
which I shall not at first be the slightest assistance to you,
from downright ignorance ; I will get up as much back
work as you like in the books and Herbarium.

The double link of affection and common intellectual
interest runs through all the letters to his father, and may be
noted even in money matters. He has no use for his double
pay on the voyage ; and his father's valuable publications, the
* Icones Plantarum ' and the ' Journal of Botany,' are entirely
unremunerative. Let him use the money for these ; popularise
the Journal by portraits of living botanists. If he will not let
Joseph pay for the books sent out to him, at least he must
accept something for the keep of his pet dog.

You must not refuse to make use of my bills for all such
purposes [e.g. looking after dog ' Skye,' which was not allowed
to accompany its master to the Antarctic. The Erebus,
he tells his sister, only carried some fowls — for colonising
purposes and two cats. Therefore ' Love me, love my
dog '], the money is no use to me. I have enough to spend
and to waste, for one cannot help wasting when port is so
seldom seen ; as sure as a bill is cashed it all goes, and they
are sent home instead to be made use of and not buried in
a bank. You may be sure I should not scruple to draw on
your liberality were I to be extravagant or foolish, and my
outfit cost you a great deal more than it should have done
had I been judicious or in any place but Chatham, and you
should not therefore scruple to use the bills, especially in
any way of forwarding your works. You have too many
calls on your purse to attend to many things which strike
others ; for instance, I would far rather pay for a new
plate than see such a rotten lithograph of Richard l after
the excellent ones of Cunningham and Swartz.

Do not let the Journal die for want of funds so long as
I have a bill to send home. I have no work that pleases
me so much.

1 Achille Richard (1794-1859), doctor and botanist, Professor in the Medical
School of Paris from 1831. Besides various monographs and studies in medical
botany, he wrote Nouveaux Elements de botanigue et de physiologic, 1819, and
with Lesson described the botany of D'Urville's voyage.

FATHER AND SON 161

He had wished to send a present to his brother, but it was
too late ; or to other relations, if his mother were still obsti-
nate about making use of what he did not want ; and to her
he writes (December 6, 1842) :

I wish you would not lay aside the few pounds I sent
home for me, for I shall not want it ; if I can only get enough
to keep me respectably I shall be content to live from hand
to mouth, and I would not give a penny for a fortune which
is sure to prove a curse to most men and a breeder of idle-
ness ; however, it is all very well to talk so when there is
no chance of getting one, — but I should much prefer that
the bills were used, — indeed had I not thought they would
be, I should have put them into a V.D.L. bank, or invested
it there in land and sheep ; however, it is all the same to me.

The years of service in one of His Majesty's ships gave
Hooker, as it gave both Darwin and Huxley,1 an invaluable
acquaintance with the realities of things, and there was ' a
masonic bond ' between these friends * in being well salted in
early life.' But the voyage did not alter his career as it altered
the career of the other two. He was already a naturalist
enlisted in the ranks of pure science ; a rising botanist when
he set out, a botanist of higher repute when he returned.
From Sir William's point of view, the only serious danger was
that he might desert botany for zoology. Hence, as has been
said, his delight to receive early assurance that Joseph cared
most for botany and intended to devote himself to it when he
came home. Here he could best help on his son, with the
added satisfaction of knowing that his collections and library

1 Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) studied at Charing Cross Hospital and
entered the Navy as Assistant Surgeon. Through Sir John Richardson at
Haslar, who had noticed his scientific ability, he was appointed to the expedition
under Captain Owen Stanley in the Rattlesnake frigate, which was to survey
the east coast of Australia and the islands as far as New Guinea (1846-50). His
work on the Oceanic Hydrozoa won him the F.R.S. at the age of twenty -seven,
and the Royal Medal the following year. In 1854 he obtained a professorship
at the Royal School of Mines, whence sprang the Royal College of Science at
S. Kensington, where he was Professor of Biology and afterwards Dean.
President of the British Association 1870 ; of the Royal Society 1883-5 ; Privy
Councillor 1892. As Darwin's most vigorous upholder and expositor, as an
educational reformer and a brilliant and forceful essayist and speaker, he was
one of the chief factors in breaking the shackles imposed on thought and opinion.

162 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEKSONAL

would be inherited by some one who could make a good use
of them.

Plans for the future are first outlined in a letter of February
3, 1840, written from St. Helena.

One of your last questions to me on leaving Chatham
was : ' What do you think of doing on your return ? '
To this, if I remember right, I gave an indirect answer from
not knowing the service I was bound for. As I know, from
your affection to me, you would like a good reply, now that
I can form an opinion, I shall give it honestly. The Naval
Service generally is very bad for a Naturalist ; the par-
ticular branch, however, in which I serve, is very good.
Though there is not such a scope for the Botanist as I could
desire, there is a splendid opportunity of improving myself
as a general Naturalist. I am very fond of the lower orders,
though farther than studying them here, and perhaps aiding
in their future publication, I never intend to follow them
up nor any other branch but botany.

Gaiety of any kind has still less charms than ever for
me. Even at sea, I am quite happy drawing Mollusca in
the Captain's cabin, and I only wish that I had more books
and were drawing plants. If ever on my return I am enabled
to follow up botany ashore, I shall live the life of a hermit,
as far as society is concerned ; like Brown perhaps, with-
out his genius.1 If I have to serve again on board ship, it
will be in a service like this, congenial to my taste and
pursuits, and not in the regular King's Service. The sea
agrees with me, and I am very happy on it, as long as I can
work. I am never sick, nor have been so since leaving
Chatham. This hot weather is my only and bitter enemy,
and from it I suffer very much, in several ways.

What I said of my life and prospects, my dear father,
is, of course, strictly private. I am quite happy where I

1 To this comparison his father replied : * I am neither surprized nor sorry
that you have no taste for the gaieties of life ; but neither do I wish you to
turn " hermit." If you are no more of a hermit than Brown, indeed, I shall
not complain. That is, whether you know it or not, he is really fond of Society
and calculated to shine in it : and to my certain knowledge, never so happy as
when he is in it. But he has unfortunately sceptical notions on religion, which
often make life itself a burden to him : and which bring him no comfort in the
prospect of eternity. I really wish that he were now in this house that he
might see what is the death-bed of a Christian ' (the elder Hooker).

PLANS, SEKIOUS AND OTHEE 163

am, and see my way clearly before me till we return, after
which no foresight can tell what will become of me. I can
always fall back on the service as a livelihood. I shall
never regret having joined this expedition. We must, along
with Captain Boss, fail completely so as never to try again,
— or succeed. No future Botanist will probably ever visit
the countries whither I am going, and that is a great
attraction.

For a time, however, in 1841, his plans were sorely shaken
by the barrenness of the first Antarctic cruise and the shortness
of the stay in Tasmania, which seemed fatal to his project of
writing a Flora of the island. The rest of the cruise threatened
to waste two good years of a botanist's time. At this juncture
his Tasmanian friends conceived the plan that he should be
invalided and left in Tasmania, where he could continue his
botanical work. His health had suffered, in sober fact, from
brooding over his brother's death and the other bad news from
home. His friend Eonald Gunn, a botanist himself and
officially private secretary to Sir John Franklin, suggested,
in the spirit of Midshipman Easy, that he should work up a
cough and hoarseness, symptoms of impending consumption,
for the benefit of that keen-eyed disciplinarian, Captain Eoss.
He pointed out the obvious drawbacks to going so far as to
quit the service, and the burden it would be on his father if
Hooker could not live on his half pay while publishing his
collections ; but he was ready and able to help him in fifty
ways in taking this short cut to botanical fame.

Happily the plan was dropped on reflection ; the considera-
tions contra were very strong, and there was the further chance
that as he recovered his scientific holiday might be%cut short
by an order to join some other vessel. Moreover, Sir William's
next letter urged him not to leave the service till he was fairly
home and could see at least what could be done about publish-
ing the collections, and though this only reached him later, it
confirmed his new resolutions to go on with the expedition
which he could not honourably leave. His gleanings in less
abundant fields were richer in scientific results than the harvest
he looked for as a collector.

164 THE ANTAKCTIC VOYAGE : PEKSONAL

Such regrets as he felt appear in a letter to George Bentham,
the botanist (Falkland Islands, November 27, 1842) :

It does sometimes make me sigh, to hear of and to see
the rapid strides which Botany is taking both at home and
abroad, and to contrast it with my present narrow sphere
of exertion ; nor can I forget how young De Candolle asked
me at your house ' why I was going .to such a barren country
as the Antarctic regions.' I am far from regretting that I
joined this expedition, and I shall always look back on its
• progress with infinite pleasure ; still, the few plants I have
obtained are dearly won, and unless my friends will kindly
help me by allowing all the Antarctic plants already in
England to be added, the results will be meagre enough in
Phaenogamic Botany. Of the Cryptogamia I do not despair,
but this tribe is sadly neglected and finds small favor in the
eyes of most Botanists.

By the end of the voyage the practical issues before him
take shape in a letter to his father, written from St. Helena
on his way home (May 18, 1843), when his eager desire to travel
again — but for a shorter time and in a less barren botanical
area — is balanced against the necessity of staying at home
to publish results.

St. Helena Roads.

I have a long yarn to spin you about my future prospects,
Capt. Boss having been sounding me. He wants me to
remain in the service, to serve only for Scientific Expeditions ;
and has, or is going to write home, about my promotion.
He told me that he must write for Lyall's 1 and mine at once ;
and had delayed it, expecting me to have spoken of the
subject to him, which I of course never dreamed of doing,
it being out of my place. As he said, it was a piece of injustice
to delay writing for Lyall ; and that he could not do that
without doing so for me also and stating my superior claims,
provided I remained in the service : he desired an answer.
I told him that I did not intend remaining, provided I
could get any good or decent shore employment ; but that
I had no idea of giving up the Navy till I felt my way on
land, which I could not do before arriving in England.

1 Assistant Surgeon on the Terror.

NAVY PEOSPECTS 165

Unlikely as it is, there is a possibility of your not being able
to help me five months hence, and how foolish I should be
to have thrown away the certainty of promotion for the
uncertainty of anything else ! I also told him that I had
no idea of being applied for, until our arrival in England ;
but as he was good enough to do so before, I should take
advantage of his offer, provided that he would not be offended
at my throwing away that offer on my arrival, adding, that
I believed and expected I should be worth being employed
by you for my living ; that nothing but absolute necessity
should make me enter the ordinary service ; and that it
was highly improbable that I should ever feel myself at
liberty to enter any Government Expedition, which would
employ me more than ten or twelve months. I have no
wish to be a drag on the service by remaining in it and not
serving ; and when I explained this to him, he answered,
* it would be a piece of great injustice in the Navy to employ
me in any way but Natl. Hist.,' and said a great many
flattering things which I divided by two, and appropriated
one half (perhaps the better). He also told me that he
would apply for a sum of money to defray the publica-
tion of the Natl. Hist., the Botany of which should be
recommended to me ; and that I ought to be employed
still on pay (perhaps half -pay), in the service, till they were
done, as very inadequate compensation for my trouble ;
to this, of course, I had no objections, except on the grounds
of passing the boards. On this head I am told the regulations
are altered, and that having a diploma from Edinbro'. I
am not required to pass anywhere but before Sir William
Burnett ; such was not the case when we sailed, but I am
told is now ; a matter of very great consequence, as I have
no notion of working up to pass Edinbro' again, which would
cost three to five months' study in classes.

The long and short of the matter "being— that Capt.
Boss must either apply for my promotion, or write home
and state that I would not take it if offered me, I of course
(having no competency of my own) took the promotion
offer, being at liberty to decline it on my arrival in England,
without giving him offence for having put him to trouble
for nothing. I took two days to think over the matter
before giving him a final answer, and hope you will approve
of what I have done. I weighed the question in all its

VOL. I

166 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEBSONAL

bearings, and my only objection is that I should like to
leave the service, as I entered it, for the Expedition, and
not for any benefit the service would give me in return.
However, as you know, I am not independent, and must
not be too proud ; if I cannot be a Naturalist with a fortune,
I must not be too vain to take honourable compensation for
my trouble.

You, to whom I owe everything, and on whom I am
entirely dependent out of the service, are the best judge
as to whether I should accept the commission and the half-
p ay of 5s. a day ; at any rate, until the plants be published.
Were an Expedition to go (like Parry's last) for eight or nine
months to the North ; or the more especially any land one,
for about the same time, and offer to take me as Naturalist,
it is my present expectation to avail myself of it. It
must be something very good which would put me off
doing so.

You have above a full, true, and particular account of
my Navy prospects, and have nothing to add on the subject
but the hope that you will not have any reason to find fault
with the course I have taken.

This letter is endorsed by Lady Hooker :

I do hope I am thankful for Joseph's good sense and
modest appreciation of himself, even more than for his
Captain's praise, or than the sweet prospect of his preference
of his father's roof and employment at home (July 1, 1843).

These plans met Sir William's full approval. Two years'
leave on half-pay must surely be granted him for bringing
out his scientific results.

' Were I still in Glasgow,' he writes, ' and Professor of
Botany, I might* have had the means of securing for you my
Chair or of resigning it in your favour ere long. But I am of
opinion you would not like the drudgery of lecturing.' But
* Merit is generally sure to secure interest,' and the alternative
suggestion is to come to Kew, to help in the Herbarium, and
by dint of his publications and botanical studies establish in
course of time a claim to succeed to the post of Director.

Such work would be congenial and would bring him into

SCIENTIFIC FUTUKE 167

contact with men of science ; moreover, its scope was elastic,
and could easily admit the schemes for further travel which
he had formed.

You wish [he writes to Bentham * in a letter of
November 27, 1842] that I should see a little of Tropical
Vegetation after my Antarctic herborizations, and I am
much obliged to you for your kind desire, which I doubt
not is good ; but, please Sir, I would rather go home, and
have no notion of jumping from cold to hot, and cracking
like a glass tumbler. Have not you Botanists killed col-
lectors a-plenty in the Tropics ? And I have payed dear
enough for the little I have got in a healthy climate.

On my return to England I shall have plenty to do,
working in my father's herbarium, and when I can get
enough money I should like to visit the capital continents
and especially N. America. If entirely my own master, I
would not object to embark once more for a distant climate
for the purpose of Botany, and to explore the Islands of the
South Seas, especially the Society and Sandwich groups.
I might prefer the Himalaya regions ; but these ought to
be investigated and are in progress, by the officers of the
Hon. E. India Company : besides the expense of travelling
there is dreadful. The only circumstance which has dis-
appointed me is the not having visited the S. Seas.
Poor Western Africa remains still unknown, and the Niger
Expedition worse than a total failure.

1 George Bentham (1800-84) was the youngest son of Sir Samuel Bentham,
the naval architect and engineer, and nephew of Jeremy Bentham, the writer
on jurisprudence. His facility in learning languages was stimulated by early
residence in Russia, Sweden, and France (1814-27), and in later life he was
able to read botanical works in fourteen modern languages, as well as Latin.
His pursuit of natural history, especially scientific botany, took second place
to his work in philosophy, logic and law, until set free from other ties by the
death of his father and uncle (1831-2). Then he devoted himself to botany,
becoming, with his legal and philosophic mind, one of our greatest systematists.
It will be seen later in this volume how in 1854, when certain difficulties
made him contemplate retirement from his work, the Hookers and Lindley
saved him for botany. He was given the run of Kew, and co-operated in the
newly started Colonial Floras, undertaking those of Hongkong and Australia,
and later projected and wrote with Joseph Hooker the monumental Genera
Plantarum. He was President of the Linnean Society 1861-74.

CHAPTER VIII

RETURN TO ENGLAND I AND VISIT TO PARIS

THE ships reached Woolwich on September 7 and were paid
off on the 23rd, after a commission of four years and five months.
Captain Koss had landed at Folkestone and hurried to London.
For some days the Hookers had to be content with his news
that all was well ; Joseph, as a junior officer, could not get
away from his ship, and it was not till the evening of the 9th
that he reached home on a week's leave ' in high health and
spirits.' ' He is not stouter,' writes Sir William to Dawson
Turner, * than when he left us, and very unaltered — more
manly — broader in the shoulder. He is badly off for clothes,
and we had to assist him from my wardrobe to enable him to
go to church yesterday.'

Soon he settled down to a six months' spell of hard work,
enjoying everything at home and about Kew, and working at
his father's side on his plants, ' when not impeded by frequent
calls to London and numerous engagements ' ; working, as
his mother puts it, ' like a dragon, like a grandson of my dear
Father's, and always happy when so employed.'

First came the Antarctic Flora. But though Koss had
made formal application for a grant towards publication, the
official wheels moved with discouraging slowness.

I have no heart [he exclaims to Bentham, February 10,
1844] to do much at my Antarctic plants, having been
five years more or less working at them, and my prospects
of publishing in a nice form are waning very fast indeed.
I most heartily wish that I had at first published a rough

168

GALAPAGOS FLORA 169

short synopsis of all the new species with terse diagnoses
and nothing more, it would have been printed in the Journal
and no one would have known of it at the Admiralty ; while
it would secure the priority of discovery. It is not having
my name at the tail of a specific one that I care about,
but I do want our Expedition and country to have the
merit.

Next is the Species Filicum, in which he was helping his
father, working ' as the man does who blows the Organist's
bellows, at the rougher part,' a work among the lesser studied
plants profitable to the student, though one of the most difficult
and laborious that could be picked out in all Botany.

Then came a task suggested by Darwin ; he continues to
Bentham :

I am also working up very slowly a paper on Galapagos
Island plants, from Mr. Darwin's and Macrae's collections.
I find it a very slow job indeed, as there are very few species
of a genus or Nat. Ord. and so dissecting one plant is no
help to another. There are more new species than I expected,
but then I have begun at the small orders and Cryptogamia ;
I have done the Ferns, twenty-eight in number, and am now
amongst the grasses, which are terrible. Fancy two new
Panicums ; I cannot make them agree with any others,
and yet every one will say I only made them new species
to save the trouble of finding out their proper names —then
there is a vile Eragrostis Poa identical with an Afghanistan
one ! but undescribed, and another group of the genus
Eutriana whose spikelets vary in a most instructive manner,
some abortive, some ?, some <J, some §, some with two
flowers, some with more, and altogether the most unsatis-
factory thing possible to describe.

Finally the long accumulations of his father's Herbarium
were clamouring to be set in order, ' probably by arranging
together all the loose bundles, thus making a grand total
of all the Herbarium, and then going through the whole,
taking each Nat. Ord. by itself, taking from it what is wanted
for the Herbarium, and putting the rest aside as duplicates.
Would not this be a grand work ? '

170 KETUKN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAKIS

It is already October when he 'reports to Dr. Harvey, who
had earlier shared in some of the sorting, a quasi-final descent
upon the ' Augean stables ' of the Indian and Australian
collections, — 'stable occupation,' as he calls it next spring
when picking out duplicates for his Paris friends, in continuation
of the same familiar jest, for in default of proper accommodation
these things were housed above the stable at West Park,1 where
* Elizabeth's pony makes Jenkins sweetly damp ' (i.e. Colonel
Jenkins' Assam collection), and their favourite ' little Catty !
Catty ! Meaw ! * sometimes ' kicked dreadful bobbery among
the things,' until, pleasant reminder though she was of Harvey's
visit, she was convicted of ' eating hens and chickens without
salt, wherefore she is to be expelled the domains. Will you
have your old darling ? '

By March 1844 the official wheels had revolved, and the
sum of £1000 was promised for publishing the Botany of the
Antarctic voyage. This money was to be spent upon making
500 plates of illustrations, * which there are ample materials
for in the Floras of V. D. Land, N. Zealand, Fuegia, and other
Antarctic Latitudes.' For his support whilst he was working
at the book, Sir William would have liked him to continue
receiving the double pay of £250 a year which had been allowed
on the expedition ; Joseph himself, who did not even wish
to be passed for full surgeon and draw the higher pay attached
to a rank in which he never meant to serve, was content to
ask for the ordinary pay of assistant surgeon, £118. This
was more than granted, with an appointment to one of the
Queen's yachts, without duty ; the pay was about £136, 10s.,
without living allowance. Through Lord Minto, however,
who was warmly interested as having been First Lord of the
Admiralty when the Expedition was sent out, Sir William urged
the precedent of the allowance to Eobert Brown ; there were
further precedents in the case of Naval surveyors who received
a small allowance for living on shore while they worked out
their results. Thus the pay finally allowed was raised to
£200 a year.

1 West Park was Sir William Hooker's house, until in 1852 he was given
an official residence in the Gardens.

PLAN OF FLOEA ANTAECTICA 171

To find a publisher for the book was a matter, Sir William
confesses to Dawson Turner, of very great difficulty. But at
last a young publisher in King William Street, named Lovell
Eeeve, undertook it on condition of receiving all the material
of drawings, plates, and text without further payment, and
that not one copy should be given away to a person likely to
buy it.

Coupled with this news of the book Sir William gave another
piece of news scarcely less interesting to Dawson Turner. On
the following day, April 2, 1844, Joseph was to be received
into the Linnean Society, to which he had been elected during his
absence from England. His grandfather had been a member
since 1797.

A fortnight later : ' Joseph is very hard at work on his
Flora and three or four plates are prepared. But I do not
think he is yet aware of the great labour in store for him — eight
plates a month and two sheets of letterpress.' No one was
more aware of this than Sir William, with his long experience
of botanical books and journals ; and Dawson Turner, to whom
he submitted the proofs for notes and suggestions, knew some-
thing of it also.

The work was to appear in three parts : the first, or Antarctic
portion, to be dedicated to Koss ; the second (Flora of New
Zealand) to Prince Albert, and the third (Flora of Van Diemen's
Land) either to Sir Eobert Peel or to Eobert Brown. Sir
William asked Dawson Turner to draw up the dedication to
Eoss. The publication of the first instalment early in June
calls forth congratulations from Mr. Lyell of Kinnordy on
Joseph's debut as an author.

At the same time he furnished Eoss with various material
for his account of the Antarctic Voyage. On the one hand
were short botanical sketches of such places as Eoss desired,
with the full identifications of plants now possible. Thus ' the
liliaceous plant' mentioned in his first account of the Auckland
and Campbell Islands (he trounces the French botanists for
calling it a Veratrum in the account of D'Urville's voyage) is
now individualised as Chrysobactron Eossii. These islands he
found to be 'the richest spots we visited anywhere for new

172 KETUKN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAKIS

and beautiful plants, and the number of species I collected,
on examination far exceeds my most sanguine expectations —
330 in all ' (September 1844). Sending his notes to Koss in
November 1844 he writes :

These have been drawn up in the rough for some time,
but the most important parts, concerning the proportional
amount of the different orders, present such curious results,
that I was anxious to go over all the figuring again, which
is (as you may perhaps remember) to me very laborious
and slow work. As it is I do not know whether they are
too short, but the vegetation was so very remarkable and
so unlike any other flora to compare with it, that I feared
making so prosy a thing longer. On the other hand they
may be too long, but I did not know how to say less. All
I can do is to repeat my hopes that you will use your
discretion with it. My Father has looked it over and
approved it, but says with me that the Flora is too novel
to say less of; and by being so, too unintelligible to
most to render much more readable. So I hope I have
steered a middle course. Certainly no spot on the globe
has, so large a proportion of new plants and far less of
such beauties.

The last of these botanical sketches asked for by Eoss
was that of Cockburn Island. This took some time, for
(December 15, 1845) he had to compare the species with the
Polar ones before venturing to write anything definite upon
them.

As the book went through the press he saw proofs of the
earlier part, and to his horror found that Eoss had reproduced
his account of the Fossil Tree which had appeared without
his wish or knowledge in the Tasmanian Journal. It had not
been written for publication, and with Eonald Gunn's con-
jectural emendations, was in places unintelligible. The great
Eobert Brown on seeing this had dubbed it ' a very careless
production.' He at once begged Eoss (January 30, 1847)
to correct the unintelligible words, offering as an alternative
to rewrite the whole thing.

On the other hand, he helped Eoss materially by lending

ANTAKCTIC ALGAE 178

him his Journal, writing an account of the cattle-hunting
in the Falklands at John Murray the publisher's suggestion
— the subject being only scantily referred to in the Journal
— and supplying a number of illustrations (see p. 86). These
were vignetted for wood-cutting from Hooker's original
sketches by Walter Fitch, the Kew draughtsman. Fitch was
accuracy itself when drawing plants ; but in landscape Hooker
found that he * refined upon Mount Sabine without improving
it,' and soberly pencilled above it a more faithful outline of
the mountain.

Of the specialists who lent their aid in working out certain
sections of the Cryptogams, Dr. Harvey was the most valued
helper as well as intimate friend, to whom he could write with
entire freedom. One of his other helpers indeed ' describes
by steam, and all I can say is, I hope I shall not have so many
remarks upon yours as his ; remarks is an uncommon modest
word here I assure you.' In fact, Hooker had to do that work
all over again. But as to Harvey, no one should touch the
many seaweeds until he had a fair chance. ' I send,' writes
Hooker (May 21, 1844), ' everything on which I can lay my
hands — because you must see whole suites of things to judge
of them.' His intention was to keep the Antarctic Algae
from Cape Horn, Falkland Islands, Southern Ocean, and
Kerguelen's Land ' distinct from the Auckland and Campbell
Isld. ones, as the phenogamic Floras of those regions are
very distinct.'

... I think the sets of Macrocystis will prove that too
many species have been made of the genus— but I should
like all the forms, made by Bory l into species, to be acknow-
ledged under some form or other, as my great anxiety
throughout will be by my book to show that the English
have done as much for Crypt. Bot. as the French [apropos
of Montagne's brochure on the subject], and I wish par-
ticularly always to state who was the first discoverer of
a species. ... I am also particularly anxious that the

1 Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint Vincent (1780-1846), naturalist, soldier, and
geographer. He sailed in 1800 with Baudius, the geographer and naturalist,
to explore the Australian coasts. Owing to illness he was left at Bourbon,
and proceeded to study its natural history.

174 EETUKN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS

Geog. district of the species should be mentioned under
each. I am sure you can give me vast help in this.
My Father thinks they should be published under our joint
names, but I expect your kindness will lead you to do so
much before I can begin that I scarce see how I shall be
entitled to further credit than as a collector ; should you
not think my name too presuming, I beg you to under-
stand, that I am quite ready to swear to anything you say,
to stand Godfather to any names you may insert, and to
believe anything except that the French have made better
collections than the English.

As to the question of making new species, he remarks :

Generally speaking the plants (Jungermanniae) are very
distinct from the European ones, though externally, like
all creeping Crypts., they look like them. The fact is that
all those who now have continued the study of Hepaticae
for many years, find that besides the Europ; species
having wide ranges, there are plenty more with as wide
elsewhere and others that are local too. Taylor has dis-
criminated well, but not compared well with other dis-
criminators.

But:

I am proving all or most of the Lycopod: to be the same.
As to mere changes of nomenclature :

I am not the least frightened at your changes of names.
I always liked to call you a slicked algologist, but that is
only in comparison with myself. The changes being for
the better are signs of your improving ! The greatest men
'change their minds oftenest, e.g. Brougham, Stanley,
Graham,1 and your own dear Don,2 who is a trump in my
opinion.

1 Graham, the Home Secretary of 1845 (see p. 204), was a lesser political
luminary than Lord Brougham and Stanley, ' the Rupert of Debate.'

2 David Don (1800-41), botanist, son of George Don, for some time
Curator of the Edinburgh Botanical Garden. Through Robert Brown he was
employed at the Apothecaries' Garden, Chelsea, where he became Librarian,
and in 1822 succeeded Brown as Librarian at the Linnean Society. In 1836
he was appointed Professor of Botany at King's College, London.

SPECIES-MAKING .AT SECOND-HAND 175

But excessive or ignorant species-making is to be dealt
with relentlessly, especially when made at second-hand, as in
a given case by Montagne, resting himself upon the supposed
infallibility of a certain observer. And he adds :

My dear friend, I want no enlightenment or refresh-
ment about Ballia Hombroniana ; I examined them native
hundreds of times ; it is one of the most common southern
Algae, and I often tried if that state was a different species ;
Brown would not make me believe it a good one.

I shall give Montagne a rap over the knuckles if he does
not look out ; we are not all fools because he is so double-
barrelled knowing ; it is childish of him to insist against the
testimony we have and which he has no grounds whatever
to disprove ; it is silly of him to adduce as an argument
that an unbotanical man pronounced them distinct.1

Against Montagne there was another score to be chalked
up. He was bringing out a book on the Algae himself, and
Hooker had sent him a copy of his best plate of Alga drawings.
With this Montagne was so much delighted that he promptly
incorporated it in his book, a most undesirable form of com-
pliment. To Harvey, who was much upset by the incident,
Hooker writes :

With regard to your cher confrere, I have had a hearty
laugh at your distress. I am wholly to blame for being so
weak as to send him it ; feeling as I did at the time how
dangerous a thing I was doing. . . . However, I try to
laugh off my disappointment at being chiselled so dirtily
out of my pet plate amongst the Algae. Confound his

1 A little later, the same point is amusingly exemplified in the description
of Planchon, the Kew assistant, given to Bentham, September 25, 1846 :

* Planchon thrives, i.e. grows leaner and looks yellower and hungrier. He
is getting up his geography with a vengeance, and now no two plants can be
the same, if gathered two miles apart : he is hammering away at the Compositae
splendidly, and after having abused D. C. for making infinitely too many
species on other genera he now wants to make more of Senecio ! even of the
S. American, all except the Antarctic of which he says I have made too
many. There never was such a compound of contradictions. I benefited
enormously by his views and " 9a tourhe's " on genera and orders, but on
species he fairly drives me mad. We are capital friends, however, only bicker
a bit. He is now trying to get some friend's picture of a water-lily exhibited
at the R.A. next year ; I tell him he might as well try to get himself into the
Book of Beauty.' Cp. p. 344.

176 KETUKN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS

impudence to ask for Hepat. etc. in the same letter as he
so coolly boasts his guilt and shame. I have promised,
however, and shall send them, ' sans lettre ' however. I shall
drop cher confrere quietly, as our friend Berkeley has H.; and
place him * inter eos maxime vitandos.' . . .

One of these Southern Algae, contributed by Darwin, was
difficult to identify, and called forth the following to Harvey,
November 11, 1844.

Do not bother about Darwin's Alga till I tell you ; such
a chap as that will, after all, require some of the double-
barrelled powers here in London to solve it, and after I get
your verdict I shall ask Berkeley. I shall be amused to
know how many genera I can get it put in by a good many
observers. When you have done with it I will have a crack
at it myself, and after I get all verdicts separately, I will
acquaint you. I shall let no one know that another has
examined it.

Meantime Sir William was keeping a prudent eye on the
possibilities of any permanent post that might suit Joseph,
whose own views on the subject are shown in a letter to Dr.
Harvey (March 10, 1844), when, speaking of Harvey's candida-
ture for the Dublin chair, he says :

For my own part I should have preferred the Curatorship
with half the salary, to the Professorship, which would
have obliged me to give two courses of Botany, besides
having the fear of being obliged to take Medical duties
(i.e. Clinical lectures), for which I am neither competent nor
inclined. I could not be a good Botanist and Medical man
too.

For a moment there seemed a chance of the Curatorship of
the Dublin Herbarium, left vacant by the death of Dr. Coulter,
till it was resolved that this be attached to the professorship
of Botany, which would be given elsewhere. Kobert Brown's
health was failing, but succession to his important post at
the British Museum was out of the question. ' We must never
think of Brown's situation for Joseph ' (writes Sir William

VISIT TO PARIS 177

on December 14, 1843), for ' Bennett1 [his assistant] would in
all human probability outlive and succeed him.' In November
1844 came news of a vacant Curatorship of the Botanical
Gardens at Sydney, but this would hardly suit his views, even
even if the salary were better. In the course of the winter
came the proposal to lecture for Professor Graham at Edinburgh,
with a fair prospect of succeeding him in the Botanical chair.
The story of this is told in the next chapter.

In the meanwhile, Hooker proceeded to fulfil his intention
of seeing the chief Continental botanists, and comparing their
Gardens and collections with those of Kew. He hoped also to
effect exchanges of specimens and living plants.

Midwinter certainly was not the ideal season for such a visit,
but Schomburgk,2 another distinguished traveller, was going to
Germany, and promised to act as his ' chaperon ' there ; more-
over, any permanent appointment at home might interfere
for a long time with further travel, which in itself was one
passport to good society in such a place as Edinburgh. And
at this moment it would involve no delay in his book ; the next
two monthly parts were ready for press. He planned an
extensive journey, including a visit to ' a man of the name of
Alexander Braun, who has written on the development of
leaves and branches in a spiral direction, and who has developed
the laws of their development and future directions on the plant.
Mr. Brown thinks Braun a very first rate man, though a little
known one, and considers him as well worth my seeing as any
man abroad.' (To D. Turner, January 26, 1845. Cf. p. 425rc).

But Sir William warned him that all the time at his dis-
posal would be taken up with seeing what was to be seen at

1 John Joseph Bennett (1801-76), botanist, was Robert Brown's assistant
in charge of the Banksian Herbarium and Library on its transfer to the
British Museum in 1827, succeeding him as keeper in 1858. He was secre-
tary to the Linnean Society, 1840-60; F.R.S. 1841 ; and published various
botanical papers.

1 Probably Sir Robert Schomburgk (1804-65), discoverer of the Victoria
Regia lily, who was knighted at the end of 1844 on his return from his three
years' travel delimiting the frontiers of British Guiana. His brother Richard,
who had accompanied him as botanist, had returned to Germany in 1842.
After the political troubles of 1848, he fled to Australia, where he cultivated the
vine with great success, and in 1866 became director of the botanical gardens
at Adelaide. He survived till 1890.

178 EETUKN TO ENGLAND: AND VISIT TO PAEIS

Paris and Berlin, and he gave up the idea of a longer journey.
Finally, time growing short, he contented himself with Brussels
and the Dutch towns instead of Berlin.

He reached Paris on January 30, travelling by way of
Southampton and Havre.

This route takes me through Eouen, which I should hope
to be able to see a little of, though the object of my journey
is so entirely to see men more than things, that I cannot
afford to delay much.

His promised fellow-travellers did not make their appear-
ance ; but he scraped acquaintance with other travellers,
including one Eeimers from St. Domingo, whose brother he
had met at Eio, and a Frenchman from Eio, who could not
speak a word of English ; ' a very shrewd fellow and liked
everything English but Sundays, which were quite insupport-
able, there being no innocent amusements in which he could
take part on that day.' Leaving at 2.30, they reached Havre
at 1.30 A.M., when

we were immediately roused out of our beds, no one,
according to Customs Laws, being allowed to remain on
board after arrival. . . . Havre is very dirty, the houses
very narrow and tall ; those along the quays are composed
of sundry bits of all the (rotten ?) vessels that ever were
stranded ; the air of the whole place was that of Greenock,
though not quite so noisome.

The Customs next morning had troubles of their own.

My things were overhauled in a house and turned out
for me to repack in the street. . . . They charged for Brown's
Eafflesia books, against my earnest remonstrances, — I
showed them the names of the illustrious Bobby himself, of
Humboldt, Ehrenberg, &c., &c., written in one or other, but
they were inexorable ; it was the plates they charged for,
and if I had told them that I deserved a premium for im-
porting the works of Bauer, they would not, I expect, have
regarded it.

[On the diligence to Eouen.] The stages are about three
leagues long on an average, and a new driver to every one.

A CALL ON HUMBOLDT 179

The same guard goes throughout dressed in a magnificent
silver-lace uniform, covered with a blue blouse. Altogether
he was an ill-conditioned dog, and fitted his garments like
a hog in armour. The drag is curious, being a sort of com-
pressor, worked by this guard who sits in this Phaeton with
me and others, turning a thing like a coffee-mill handle,
which produces a pressure on the axle of one wheel, aiding
the diligence in turning and taking the pressure off the
horses in descent.

By dark they reached Kouen ; thence by rail to Paris ;
' 100 miles for 16 francs, 14 stoppages, 4 hours in passage,
3 tunnels, one 3 miles long.'

Thanks to Baron Delessert, a wealthy amateur, to whose
collection alone Sir William's took second place, he was able
to move from his first hotel, where * last night I had some of
my Erebus friends in bed,' for clean rooms at the Hotel de
Londres in the Kue des Petits Augustins, ' but and ben with
Baron Humboldt.' One or two impressions of Paris in 1845
may be quoted from a letter to his mother (February 2).

My way led through the Champs Elysees, which are
very dirty indeed, and I soon got terribly splashed with
mud. I do not think these town avenues at all in good
keeping ; they are half rural and that is all ; the broad
nagged pavements and macadamised roads, covered with
carts and coaches, do not suit the noble trees at all, so that
I could not in any way compare the Champs Elysees with
the avenue at Bushey Park or at Inverary— the trees look
much more to advantage in our parks, where we have not
rows of shops at their backs and restaurateurs under their
shade. [Apart from the individual beauties of such build-
ings as the Louvre] there is here nothing so good as Eegent
Street, though a little bit of the rue Eivoli and the rue
Eoyale are better than any equal portion taken out of that
London thoroughfare. [Going to the rue St. Honore to
call upon Lord Howden] the street is very narrow, so
that two can scarcely walk abreast upon the pavement,
and the stoppages of carriages and carts are ten times
worse and more numerpus than (i» the) Strand at Temple
Bar.

180 EETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PARIS

His first meeting with the famous Humboldt is thus
described : .

On putting up here I sent in my card with Mr. Brown's
books to Baron Humboldt ; he was not at home, but
sent his flunkey (Scotice Footman) to my bedroom at
8 o'clock yesterday morning to say his master wished to
see me at 9. Ten minutes after his Lord had grown
impatient and sent to say he was all ready, so I went in
and saw to my horror a punchy little German, instead of a
Humboldt. There was no mistaking his head, however, which
is exceedingly like all the portraits, though now powdered
with white. I expected to see a fine fellow 6 feet without
his boots, who would make as few steps to get up Chimborazo
as thoughts to solve a problem. I cannot now at all fancy
his trotting along the Cordillera as I once supposed he
would have stalked. However, he received me most kindly
and made a great many enquiries about all at Kew and in
England, particularly about Mr. Brown and my father.

In a letter of the same date to his sister Maria he draws
a keenly etched picture of several distinguished botanists then
in Paris, a companion picture to his careful comparison of
the Jardin des Plantes, the libraries, collections, and glass
houses with the establishment at Kew.

I have seen a great many men here, but they are so
swallowed up, in general, with self-conceit that the only
way to make oneself agreeable is to hold your own tongue
and allow them to rattle away ; each begins by telling you
literally of the magnitude of their works, whilst of those
of their neighbours they seem to know very little indeed.
To this there are exceptions, of course. There are truly
a large concourse of Botanists here, but they do not appear
to me such sterling men as we have by any means. There
are six Botanists at the Jardin des Plantes, three heads
and three subs of the heads. Only one loves Botany for
its own sake, who is M. Mirbel,1 who was out when I

1 Charles Francois Brisseau de Mirbel (1776-1854), artist and botanist,
deserted science for ten years in favour of civil administration, but returned
in 1827 to a professorship at the Paris Museum of Natural History. He was
one of the pioneers in microscopic anatomy and vegetable physiology. Of the
friends Sir William had made among the French botanists when he visited Paris
in 1814, Mirbel and Bory were the only survivors.

THE PAKIS HERBAKIUM 181

called. M. de Jussieu, son of the mighty Jussieu,1 does
not really love Botany, but wears his father's shoes
though they pinch him. Being clever, all that he does
is good, but that is not much ; he is extremely kind and
amiable, but close, and buys no books. He took me for
five hours round the garden in the kindest manner, but
never once opened his lips to ask about Botany in English
gardens or plants ; he is the teacher of Botany. M. Brong-
niart, a clever youngish man (he looks twenty-eight and
is forty-eight), is the second head, and his department is
to name the garden plants ; he is considered hardly a
Botanist at all, but is fond of fossils though there he has
done nothing lately. Mirbel is the third head, who cultivates
, the plants, and a pretty mess he makes of it, I assure you,
for worse grown things I never saw ; in their best houses
they look like our smoke stoves exactly.

Now the great aim of every French man of Science is
to become a member of the Institute, of whom there are but
very few, and only added to by the death of one of the
original members ; all having one aim and that being
ambition, they quarrel like cat and dog, and excepting
Brongniart and Jussieu there is not one who has not many
enemies, as it is said these two would have did they study
Botany and were they not members already, very much
because they were their fathers' sons.

To his Father

February 13, 1845.

I have been very busy since I wrote last, chiefly in
the Herbarium of the Jardin des Plantes, which grows in
magnitude under my eyes [' though it must be confessed,
he adds four days later, 'that the want of space and pro-
portion of paper are enormous '] ; its riches are very great,
and the persons connected with it are all so extremely kind
to me that I can hardly thank them enough ; they have
given me 300 species of New Zealand plants, chiefly from
the Middle Island, and where they have duplicates of

1 Adrien de Jussieu (1797-1853) succeeded his father as Professor of
Botany at the Paris Botanical Garden in 1826. In addition to several
important botanical memoirs, he wrote a very successful Cours Elementaire
de Botanique, while many botanists of all nations were trained by him.
His father, Antoine, Sir William's friend, wrote the Genera Plantarum, the
principles of which were adopted and enlarged by Be Candolle.

VOL. i N

182 EETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PARIS

other things are quite willing to send the first set to your
Herbarium.

I spent a whole day with Deca-isne [the third aide] over >
his drawings, &c. ; they are most beautiful, masterly, and
truly botanical ; he is too a most amiable and excellent
fellow, is modest and well informed, by far the best Botanist
here on all points. He sent to Normandy on purpose for
Seaweed to show me his marvellous discovery of the animal-
cules in the organs of Fuci ; I suppose it is the most curious
of recent discoveries and opens the widest field for discovery.
I am quite astonished with what he has shown me. He has
arranged the Fuci of the Herbarium most beautifully. . . .
His whole pay is £62 per annum, and yet he takes my book ;
but every one here considers him a model of generosity.

The question of buying Lenormand's collection of Algae
when so small a proportion were new, prompts the reluctant
advice to his father to * give up purchasing for the present
wholly. We have far more plants than we know how to keep
in order, far more expenses, which are annually increasing,
than we have the means to cover,' not to mention the growing
expense of books, for ' plants without books are useless.' His
fortune was not, as the Paris botanists fondly imagined, equal
to that of Delessert, his only rival in purchasing in Europe,
and ' I do feel quite sure that you cannot on your own means
support a Herbarium which is, as you wish, to keep pace with
the progress of Botany.'

The following passages from a long letter to Harvey towards
the end of his stay in Paris deserve quotation as illustrating
not only the kindness of his hosts and their respect for his
father, but his own readiness to readjust his personal pre-
conceptions.

February 25th, or thereabouts.

I ought to have written to you before, from this great
mother of Babylons, but have been too busy enjoying
myself selfishly, to think much of my neighbours. This is
indeed a wonderful place, and the natives are most uncommon
polite, not only in word but in deed, for they pour upon
me such loads of pamphlets and little presents as obliges

PAKIS BOTANISTS 183

me to make up a parcel for England, to go without me, to
the land of my Fathers. . . . (All thanks to my father's name,
for I have done nothing to please the French ; but his name
carries me everywhere.)

My great allies here are Montagne and Decaisne, both
of whom are extremely kind to me, and very remarkable
persons in their way ; they have both fairly gammoned me
into liking them, by force of good words and good offices,
and the latter particularly I find to be an exceedingly good
fellow, of whom I had formed a very wrong notion. My
Hotel being close by Montagne, I see him every day for
an hour ; he is a clever, active, little old man, who took up
Cryptog. Bot. when nearly 50 years old, and has continued
it ever since ; his knowledge of species is very great, and
his collections kept in beautiful order ; of structural Botany
he knows nothing, and is much too old to learn at 6l (as
he calls himself). I have had sad work with the Antarctic
Algae ; you never saw such specimens. Montagne very fairly
says that he does not hope that his work is at all to be
depended upon !

You know well how apt I am to form uncharitable
opinions of people ; I hope I may prove as ready to make
the amende honorable as I know them better, for now I
must confess Decaisne to be the most remarkable Botanist
for his age I have ever seen. In structural, anatomical, and
physiological Botany, better judges than I say he is deep,
nay profound, and his descriptive knowledge is very great,
as is that of the Nat. Ords., and that of both live and dead
plants specifically. His drawings are also very talented,
and every one likes him but Montagne. The latter I have
always found a most excellent and warm friend, truly
anxious and willing to go to any trouble to serve me, never
tired of showing me his beautifully kept and named speci-
mens and atrociously vile drawings ; he is always pleasant
and agreeable, but has the character of a tricky temper,
with £100 a year as retired army surgeon, in which capacity
he served with Napoleon in Egypt ; he keeps both house,
library, and collection up, and subscribes to sundry concerts,
the delight of his old age, for he is passionately fond of
music ; he is also very generous and kind, a warm friend
and generous.

184 KETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS

Happily Hooker was able to maintain friendship with both
these men, though they were of opposite temperaments and
at personal variance with one another.

The fact is that poor Montagne does make awful mistakes
from neglecting structural Botany, and is very obstinate
too ; Decaisne, on the contrary, owns a fault on the spot,
and is both frank and generous ; his indifference to Montagne
certainly does not mend matters. The latter is infinitely
the most careful observer, though the more ignorant, his
faults arise from giving over value to trivial characters and
from misunderstanding the relation and structures of plants ;
the faults of the other are owing to carelessness. Montagne
works slowly, steadily, carefully, and by a fixed method,
examining a plant piece by piece, never making any great
discovery, and but few remarks characterised by originality.
Decaisne works like a horse, till his strength is exhausted
and he is fairly ill, for he works himself to death ; takes
wide general views of things, appreciates an organic change,
and comprehends it in all its bearings at once, but instead
of thinking upon his discovery, jumps at a conclusion right
or wrong.

Thus, returning to the question of the animalcules in the
antheridia, which Decaisne showed him in the specimens of
seaweed specially brought up from Normandy, he adds :

They were all perfectly simple and easy to be seen. The
vegetable origin of these, which have hitherto been con-
sidered animalcules, is very positive, though it may still
be doubted whether they are a sex of the plant, which the
dioecious, monoecious, or hermaphrodite nature of the several
species would argue, as also their analogy to the so-called
sexes of mosses — on the other hand, they may have more
analogy to the motive spores of Vaucheria and of Protococcus ;
be that as it may, Decaisne not only believes them sexes,
but forthwith cuts old Fucus up into three genera, depending
on the monoecious, dioecious, or hermaph. state of the
species ! ! You will no doubt agree with me that this is
heinous and needs no proof of absurdity to any reasoning
mind, and how so talented a man as Decaisne can behave so
is a puzzle to me, for I know no Botanist but Brown so skilled

PAKIS FEIENDSHIPS 185

as he is in all that concerns Botany. I think I have reasoned
him out of this or shall have before long, for he is both modest
and open to reason.

His drawings of the genera of Algae are wonderfully
numerous and beautiful ; I often thought how numerous
your exclamations of come bella would have been, had you
seen them.

The Botanists here have not ceased being kind to me, and
such a three weeks of being lionised I never at all expected.
I am quite aware that this is owing to my bearing your name,
but so far out of sight as you are, it was very unexpected.
Were it not that the style of living— (or rather killing one-
self) here is very prejudicial, I should wish you to come here
one spring, but I am sure you would be made ill, as I have
been, and only recovered by dint of sticking to Seine water
and letting vin ordinaire alone. This was a fortnight ago,
and my poisoner was M. Gay, who eternally complained of
the badness of his dinner, and made Webb 1 and me eat and
especially drink more than we liked by dint of a similar
pressing to what you underwent in Ireland. The poor man
evidently thought us great guests, and that we were too
proud for his table perhaps. . . .

(February 27.) . . . Humboldt I saw very often, some-
times three times a day, for he was never tired of coming to
ask me questions about my voyage ; he certainly is still a
most wonderful man, with a sagacity and memory and
capability for generalising that are quite marvellous. I
gave him my book, which delighted him much ; he read
through the first three numbers, and I suppose noted down
thirty or forty things which he asked me particulars about.
I left him at the third number, and as he paid me two visits
whilst I was out on the morning I left, he has doubtless not
digested it all. I bade him three goodbyes the day before

1 Philip Barker Webb (1793-1854) of Milford House, Surrey, early came into
a fortune which enabled him to travel and pursue his studies in geology and
botany. His observations on the Troad and his Iter Hispaniense were followed
by his work on Madeira and the Canaries, where he spent 1828-30 with Berthe-
lot, a young Frenchman who had already been eight years studying the islands.
In 1833 they established themselves in Paris, where their great work, Histoire
naturelle des lies Canaries took fourteen years to produce (1836-50). The
years 1848-50 he spent botanising in Italy, as a sequel to which he left his large
collections and herbarium to the museum at Florence, then under his friend
Parlatore.

186 EETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS

and the next day ; he, as I said before, came twice for me in
my absence. He talked in the warmest manner of Mr. Brown,
Murchison,1 and yourself, also of Darwin and Herschell. . . .

His plan was now to visit the botanists at Brussels, and
to bring back the plants that Blume and Siebold 2 had promised
his father by taking Leyden and The Hague on his way home
(with a digression, if possible, to Haarlem to hear the organ,
and to Amsterdam to see Linnaeus' Lapland dress), and he adds
later, * I have seen such fine things lately from Blume and
especially from Siebold that my regret is not so great at missing
sight of Germany as it was a week ago.'

But one or two difficulties loom ahead on this Netherland
visit, though the kindly French botanists gave him no less than
twenty-six letters of introduction. Siebold and Blume, to
whom he wishes one of the four remaining copies of the ' Genera
Filicum ' to be given as a return for gifts of plants, ' are on
dreadful terms ; I must manage between them.' More per-
sonal to himself is the result of an outspoken review in the
' London Journal of Botany.'

Hombron is in very bad odour ; I want to see him, but
Decaisne and Jussieu say he is boiling with rage at us, and
that I must not go or there will be a row. I find that that
critique was well received here by those whose opinions are
best worth having. At the Jardin the critique is considered
quite fair as his work is a disgrace to France indeed, and that
it is well to scold bad books as that gives a character to the
Journal, and the latter is very well thought of here, especially
the review part.

1 Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871) took up the study of geology
after his marriage and retirement from the army. His chief studies lay among
the ancient rocks of Wales and the Highlands of Scandinavia and Russia, where
he assisted in the geological survey. His fame was sedured by the establish-
ment of the Silurian system. As President of the Geological Society twice,
and of the Geographical for fifteen years, and director of the Geological Survey
from 1855, he possessed large influence, enhanced by his wealth and social
position.

2 Philip Franz Siebold (1796-1866) spent six years from 1823 in Japan as
doctor to a Dutch embassy, and became an authority on Japanese language,
literature, and natural history. Then till 1859 he lived in Holland ; revisited
Japan 1859-62, arid thereafter settled in his native city, Wurzburg. Besides
introducing many Japanese plants into Europe, he introduced the tea plant
into Java.

IN THE NETHEKLANDS 187

However, Hooker's natural tact brought him safely through.

The formalities of travel on the Continent in the forties
were exasperating, his passport having to be signed by the
Belgian and English Ambassadors in Paris and twice counter-
signed by the Prefect of Police. Ten days were filled with
fruitless errands, and to crown matters, diligence and train
failed to make connection at Valenciennes.

Brussels, where he stayed a second day to make acquaint-
ance with Quetelet,1 at a meeting of the Brussels Academy,
is summed up as ' a very interesting city, but not strong in
Botanists,' though in the Garden ' the collection of Palms was
excellent ; ... of other things they have no great store/

At Ghent, where he did not fail to see the Kubens pictures,
he went over Van Houtte's nursery gardens, ' most extra-
ordinary, both for the number of species of Botanical plants
and of Camellias and other such.' After arranging for exchanges
of plants, he was invited to dinner by Van Houtte, who was
as hospitable as he was liberal. One point especially in his
botanical interests struck his visitor : ' he takes the Magazine
and is going to have the Journal and the Flora Antarctica.'

Meantime the discomforts and difficulties of travel in such
an Arctic winter are worth recording. March 4 saw delay
of trains, the missing of diligence connexions, and consequent
midnight journeys. ' I began to think,' he writes, * that I
should never get to Holland at all.' March 5 was worse than
ever ;

the roads and rivers were so bad that several passengers were
frightened and went round by some place South. Such a
cruise I never had by land : the cold was intense, the thermo-
meter at 7° with a keen wind. We crossed three rivers, one
all frozen and covered with Hummocks and piles of ice, the
second, the Maes, 1 \ miles broadv, loaded with huge masses of
Pack and Berg ice, rushing down to the sea ; the navigation

1 Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874), a Belgian statistician
and astronomer, Director of the Brussels Observatory 1828, and Professor of
Astronomy 1836, and from 1834 Perpetual Secretary of the Belgian Royal
Academy. Apart from mathematical treatises, his most important work was
the book Sur Vhomme et le developpement de ses facultes (1835), and later he
turned his mathematical mind to the study of anthropometry.

188 EETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS

was very bad and performed in boats, which were shot
down from a bank on to the stream and pulled up and down
the river, working many diagonals, at times fixed in the Pack
and at others free again. In about 1J hours we were across
in safety, but wet and cold enough. As, however, all the little
Cabarets have hot coffee, the cold did not much matter.
The third river was half fixed Ice with great holes of water,
and the boats were dragged or pushed or rowed according to
circumstances. We arrived late at Eotterdam.

On the way home, a week later, all this had to be
traversed again, it being impracticable to pick up the mail
boat in the Eotterdam direction.

I went the first thing next morning (March 6) to Miquel,
an intelligent and agreeable man, full of Botany, and who
will prove an acquisition to us. I spent the day with him. . . .

Ley den, March 7.— Blume received me most warmly,
and has shown me such wonders in the Museum and at his
house as are almost incredible ; he has all the Japan things.
Blume promises me much, but he says I must take them
myself, as he has no aid and no time to make selections.

. . . You have no idea of the richness of this place,
such beautiful drawings, as good as Fitch's or very nearly ;
they beat the Paris ones, as Decaisne acknowledges. The
Bird collection is superb, specimens, stuffing and attitudes.
Here is a Penguin perfect, such a specimen I never saw alive ;
it is a truly wonderful place.

The Jardin des Plantes and this place are truly two
epochs in my life. I must work very hard when I get home.
I do not fear the lectures, but I am backward in British
Botany.

Next day, the 8th, he writes :

Of all the Botanists I have seen, except Decaisne, Miquel
is the one I like best and think the most promising ; he has
an excellent and rare knowledge of structure and of exotic
genera and species, and his respect for you is very great. . . .
Next to yourself and Mr. Brown I think I am asked more
for Darwin than anyone ; his book * has made him so many

1 The Voyage of the ' Beagle.'

VICISSITUDES OP THE FLOEA ANTARCTICA 189

friends where he is not personally known. Beinwardt is
in raptures with it.

Once back in England, he was busily engaged throughout
the spring in sorting out plants as return gifts to his French
hosts, in preparing for his Edinburgh lectures, in working
at his Flora Antarctica and at the Niger Flora, based on the
specimens brought back by the Expedition of 1841 under
Captain A. D. Trotter. All these things, and especially the
progress of the Flora, and detestation of mere species-mongering,
are reflected in frequent letters to Harvey — a correspondence
continued all through his stay at Edinburgh, for Harvey,
who had recently stayed at Kew and worked there before
being elected to the Dublin chair, was busily working out the
Antarctic Algae, both Hooker's and D'Urville's from Paris, and
was moreover a friend to whom he could scribble with the
careless freedom of intimacy, now chaffing his friend, now
poking fun at his own efforts as a lecturer, when lecturing
turned out to be a less terrible ordeal than he had expected ; for,
as his mother said, * Joseph is not a sanguine or hopeful person :
but he becomes attached to his work : thus we trust he will
take interest in lecturing and warm towards it, as he proceeds.'

The book suffered many vicissitudes ; Harvey took up
lithography and drew his own plates ; occasionally carefully
drawn plates were spoiled by the engraver or colourist, and a
monthly part was delayed ; so that the disheartened author
exclaims, ' Never will I undertake such a work again. The
Icones is the only model for what a Botanical work should be.
I wish they would have let me publish in that form, and yet
I sighed for glory too' (April 29, 1845). Then for a time
Hooker, lacking the necessary books of reference at Edinburgh,
resolved to end the publication with Part X. But the work
was approved by those whose approval was worth having.
His Edinburgh lectures over, he took it up again, and in
October, being rejected for the Edinburgh chair, he was left
free to complete it on the original scale, taking care that
Smith's, Davis', Lyall's, Crozier's and Boss's names should
be attached to five of the fine Algae that required figuring.

190 EETUEN TO ENGLAND : AND VISIT TO PAEIS

Such scrubs as that Pol[ysiphonia] [he declares to Harvey]
are rather infra dig. for an ' officer and a gentleman.' Cannot
you spare some of those dandy Delesseria, or some showy
things that will require a whole red plate ? I do hate too
much of this sort of thing, but I think they ought to come
in. (April 14, 1845.)

Harvey carried out his wishes, for not only is there a
Polysiphonia Davisii, but two Delesserias are named D.
Davisii and D. Lyallii.

Meantime details are scrutinised ; carelessness about species
ruthlessly exposed. D'Urville's collection assigns a certain
Alga to Lord Auckland's Island, where it was inconceivable
that Hooker and Lyall should have overlooked it. He reminds
Harvey how he proved in Paris that specimens were wrongly
ticketed, and as for the so-called species itself (Ehodomenia
ornata), which Brown enters as Ballia Hombroniana, ' I am
convinced,' he writes, ' of its being no species at all, and long
to restore the name callitricha, but " am not game " ! '
Similarly, in an undated letter of 1845 :

I am now hammer and tongs at my Lichens, which are
an Augean stable. The British species are humbugged by
the introduction of varieties ; if ever I publish an Ed. of
Eng. Bot. I shall not hesitate to cut down Usnea and
Kamalina to one species, all the intermediate forms of every-
day occurrence.

CHAPTEK IX

EDINBUBGH

ON October 17, 1844, appears the first reference to the
Edinburgh Professorship of Botany,1 which takes definite
shape by Christmas Eve. Dr. Graham's health was very
precarious ; he was likely to resign his Chair soon, and as
a first step, perhaps, require a substitute to deliver a course
of lectures in the following spring. This substitute, if he
did well, would be a strong candidate for the Chair with the
backing of the retiring Professor. The Professor of Botany
generally united two appointments in his single person,
the College professorship, in the gift of the Town Council,
and the less lucrative but more important Kegius professor-
ship attached to the Curatorship of the Botanical Gardens.
This latter, being a Crown appointment, was in the gift of
Sir James Graham, then Home Secretary, with whom Sir
William's official friends would naturally have considerable
influence. Acceptable as the prospect of £100 for the course
of lectures would be to the young botanist, to interrupt his
more serious work on the Flora without aiming at the permanent
post would be against his best interests. * It is indeed not easy

1 J. D. H. to W. H. Harvey. October 17, 1844.

' I am not much nearer my fortune now than when you were here, and am
getting very anxious to be doing something that will pay me — on dit that poor
Dr. Graham of Edinbro' is on his last legs, and my friends want me, should he
go off the hooks (which I from my heart say heaven forefend), to stand for the
chair of Botany there (don't laugh). I suppose you like my impudence.
I should not be sanguine, as the opposition would be very strong, and if Forbes
stands he will be by far the most eligible : I have no great notion of lecturing,
but I must pick up a livelihood somehow. How I shall quaque at my first
lecture. You must not say anything about this, at present, visionary subject.'

191

192 EDINBURGH

for a Botanist to obtain a situation altogether agreeable to him,
and that will afford him means of support.' Sir William
might have said this with equal truth of any branch of science,
and not at that time only.

At the same time Hooker fully realised the importance of
completing his magnum opus. The arrangements for its pub-
lication in parts, month after month, rendered it impossible
to carry out the scheme anywhere but at Kew. * The value
of my library and Herbarium/ writes Sir William, ' was never
more fully evinced than in his preparation for his work. The
British Museum, though invaluable in some respects, does not
afford him a tythe of the information that my collections
do.' With his usual generosity, Sir William hoped to make
over the Herbarium to his son once he was established in
Edinburgh, when it could be kept either at the Garden or in
the College.

As it soon appeared, there was no question of payment for
this course of lectures. Professor Graham had just suffered
severe money losses, and was fatally ill. Indeed his increasing
weakness prevented him from helping at all in the lecturing
as he first hoped ; and although he offered rooms at his own
house, the good prospect of the succession to the professorship
was regarded by the Hookers as sufficient material reward. To
undertake the temporary course was both to make a trial of
lecturing and to do his old friend a service, ' and I think,' writes
his father, ' that alone will go a great way with Joseph.'

After Professor Graham's death, however, when his affairs
had been wound up, Mrs. Graham wrote begging him to accept
£100 for his great services. Hooker writes to Dawson Turner
(April 25, 1846) :

She says it was only a portion of what her husband would
have done, and entreats me to accept it if only to gratify
her and all the rest of it, in such a strain as you can well
understand without my repeating. I believe that no one
could be more grateful for real services on my part than Mrs.
Graham is for supposed ones. But if she would not add
these testimonies of the sincerity of her regard, I should be
much better pleased. To have felt as I did, that I had the

SUBSTITUTED FOE DE. GEAHAM 193

confidence of all the family under circumstances very trying
to both parties, was reward in full for me. However, after
due pondering on the affair and casting up the pros and cons,
I determined to write and accept it, gratefully, for to accept
it as if I really did not want money, would have been implying
a falsehood on my part, and appearing proud to her. After
all her feelings ought more to be regarded than mine, much
tried as she has been, poor thing, and it will be a gratifica-
tion to her to suppose that she has repaid me in part at
any rate.

The matter was set in train ; Eobert Brown gave him
a strong recommendation, and Professor Graham privately
invited his help for the forthcoming course of lectures, with
promise of support for the succession to the chair. The invita-
tion was forwarded to him, for he was then in Paris, on February
3. It seemed the first and sure step to the professorship.
' The " Golden Durham " of Botany,' exclaims Lady Hooker
to her father, ' the object for twenty years of his father's
aspirations, is now, without Joseph's seeking, apparently
put within his reach.' It would be very hard work to lecture
for three months in addition to writing at the Antarctic Flora,
but * he loves labour,' she adds, ' and can turn off much work,
and really takes such a pleasure in strenuous exertion, as a
descendant of yours ought to do ; to say nothing of his dear
father and of my beloved mother's share in his parentage.'
The Admiralty letter granting a month's leave of absence for
travel abroad enjoined him ' not to enter the service of any
foreign Power : this will not apply, 'tis to be hoped, to the
service of Professor of Botany in Edinburgh ! '

At the advice of his father and Eobert Brown, and especially
of his grandfather, he accepted the proposal, albeit lecturing
was not to his taste, though he might 'like it better upon trial.'
He was by no means inclined to become a botanical or any
other professor, and but for Dawson Turner's advice would
have declined the Edinburgh chair if it came his way. There
was more in this reluctance than mere dislike : and he took
his grandfather into his confidence before resolving to proceed
and overcome it as best he might.

194 EDINBURGH

To Dawson Turner

January 16, 1845.

As to lecturing in London, there is at present no opening
for it, nor should I like it except it was surely profitable.
You do not know, nor do I like to tell my Parents, how wholly
unfitted I am to be a Lecturer, constitutionally in particular.
I am really nervous to a degree, and though I joined debating
societies on purpose and studied speeches and stood up too
to deliver them, I never could get two sentences on — I have
earnestly endeavoured to conquer this, but without avail.
I have consulted medical men, who tell me I have irritability
in the action of the heart, which some have pronounced a
slight disease of that organ ; and this I know well, that I
could never even stand up before my fellow scholars to say
my lesson at school or college without violent palpitation.
Yon know me too well to think me a coward, or, still less,
to accuse me of affectation, but this I do certainly think,
that I am naturally unfitted for any situation calling for a
public exhibition of myself. My case is not as if I never
had to parse or construe before a body of fellow mortals, for
surely if this feeling was ever to be overcome, it would have
been in eight years of college-life and with my efforts at
debating, where I have always had to sit down in shame
and confusion, however carefully I had conned my speech.
This, and this alone, has led me always to hope that I should
pick up some situation where hard work and good manners
were all that should be required of me, though in leaving
the public path I should not so soon rise into notoriety.

Of course I should forego all this dislike, or, as I believe,-
physical incapacity for lecturing, were anything so tempting
as Edinbro' offered, and even then one's own students would
form a more private body than the miscellaneous assembly
of a London institution. Do not think that I am frightening
myself with any such bugbear as a Heartdisease, for I assure
you I give no thought to the matter, though I cannot help
feeling, from the frequency and pain of my palpitations, that
I have a nervous affection there. I have no idea of its
calling me away, early, though I shall probably not live to
your age in the ordinary course of things, but even if I did,
I should not alter my opinion or be alarmed, knowing by
experience that I could, though ill-prepared, face my end

PHYSICAL DISTASTE FOE LECTUKING 195

with more calmness than I should a miscellaneous assembly
of students. . . .

MY DEAR GRANDFATHER, — Your kindness has tempted
me to lay my heart open in a way I have done to no other
person. What I say here is not the result of a month's or
a year's opinion, but of the experience of the greater part
of my lifetime — I would not for the world that my Father
or Mother knew that I had ever been to a Medical man
about myself, which I have done both before my voyage
and after my return, and received a very similar verdict
which, though it contained nothing to alarm me, was
sufficient to prove that I need not expect ever to attain a
freedom in public delivery.

Pray do not hint on this subject in your letter here, it
would only vex and do no good. I think my father rather
inclines to keep me here, and though 1 do not want to be a
burthen to him, I hope I am not altogether useless. My
aim is not, however, to live always in this house, if I could
only get some situation elsewhere. That some opening
will come I cannot doubt, in the meantime my income is
not much under £300 a year as long as this work lasts.

Hotel de Londres,

Rue des petits Augustins, Paris :
February 5, 1845.

MY DEAR GRANDFATHER, — I cannot let this post go with-
out a letter, however short, to tell you that I have accepted
the office of Lecturer for Graham, unconditionally for
itself and its consequences. Though it is an expensive
procedure, I would prefer commencing as assistant without
the onus of being the Professor ; as being more advantageous
towards so young a lecturer and one so unfitted for lecturing
as I shall at first be. I shall hope to get over my nervous-
ness in time. There appears no doubt of my future success,
when a candidate for the chair, in the meantime I only do
a kind office for my poor friend, without emolument and
indeed with great expense to some one or other, for he says
that he has nothing whatever to give to the assistant. I
hope he will not ask me to live in his house, which I should
most decidedly refuse to do.

However little suited to my taste and my habits a Scotch
Professorship is, and however much I shall regret giving up

196 EDINBUKGH

my book (the aim of the last twelve years of my life), all
that shall not interfere with my determination, in whatever
situation in life God may place me, therein to excel. I
shall not only use every exertion to be Graham's best
assistant, but also to raise the Botanical chair to Botanical
excellence, and to have it a useful appendage to the College ;
and no longer a burthen to students' pockets, without
Museum or any advantages for making men Botanists ; I
should also like to raise the standard of that lowest of all
classes of students, the medical ; but that shall be a secondary
object.

I do feel a deep regret in having to desert my book,
which I have lived so long for. Money, time, and labour, all
my preliminary education, all my holidays from the first
day I entered college, were devoted to laying myself out for
making a voyage and publishing the results. Except, that
this chair allows me to continue a Botanist, I would just
as soon turn to the law or to business as anything else that
took me off the travail of so many years. I shall, however,
hope for better times, and though the Government will
take (and properly take) my pay and perhaps grant away, I
shall live one day to finish my book. If I do get the chair,
I shall commence laying up money to enable me to house
my father's plants, whenever they may come to me, for I
am determined no one but myself shall have them.

Here is Humboldt often speaking of you ; he wants
me to write the distribution of Plants for his grand work
' Cosmos ' ; pray say nothing of this to anyone. I can but
live and hope, but Humboldt is so old that it may never
appear.

Of the impending lectures, he writes to Harvey (April 2,
1845) :

Graham tells me he has not a single lecture written out !
and that I must dwell much on physiology, chemistry, and
morphology, in which my Father's lectures are particularly
poor. This is no joke to me ; what with Cryptog., Paris
duplicates, and these lectures my hands are full indeed.
Graham's lectures are always considered useless by and to
his students, and so I am in a regular fix, nor have I cheek
enough for an audience. I would rather go to the S. Pole

DIFFICULTIES OF THE COUESE 197

again by far than to Edinbro', but it is no use growling. . . .
[And later] I am in a stew already, but must trust to provi-
dence and my middling good fates.

Harvey, who on the 9th had written, * My letters come
as quickly as events in the life of Solomon Grundy," replied
on the 10th with good advice :

I pity you the mess you are in about Edinburgh, knowing
well what a fuss I should be in, in your case — but I expect
you will wriggle out of it bravely. Be provided with written
lectures for the parts you are not glib in, and skeletons for
the rest — plenty of pictures — and talk much about these.
Hand about specimens, and 'twill all get on right well.
Here we had Allman x last year taking half a dozen lectures
to describe the cellular and vascular tissue alone ! and by
the time he got to the end of the structure and physiology
the course was expended, and he had to sum up arrangement
&c., in a few words. Very convenient for him, but query,
what for his Class ?

Hooker's response on April 14 asks :

Who is Solomon Grundy ? — but I am very behindhand
in polite literature ; how do you find time to read what a
gentleman should know? I have given up all hopes and
intentions of being accomplished,

and proceeds to set forth the difficulties of the situation, which
left him sometimes, as he told his father in June, ' in a pretty
fix between my own mind, my master, and my men.'

Graham has not one lecture written out and he has given
me a syllabus of the course ; you never saw such a thing ; he
goes through with no order, introduces his subjects higgledy
piggledy every day, and does not give one really instructive
lesson throughout the course. I have no idea what I am
to do, I heartily wish he would leave it all in my hands or
write me lectures ; I sincerely say that no human being
could lecture for him as he desires, certainly no student

1 George James Allman (1812-98), was Professor of Botany at Dublin 1844-
54, and of Natural History at Edinburgh 1854-70, and President of the Linnean
Society 1874-83. His special branch of science was marine zoology.

VOL. i o

198 EDINBURGH

could follow him through such a medley of subjects, intro-
duced wholly without method and order, and with no relation
to one another, he follows neither -a book nor his subject.
He says he finds the students will not follow a regular course.
I am in a deplorable state of uncertainty : nor can I write
out a lecture to include, as each and all his seventy do, a
little of all branches of Botanical Science, including the
original production of species ! in some.

He also presses me, disagreeably hard, to take up my
quarters with him, which I have fifty reasons for not doing
and not wishing to do. I never more heartily wished a
man well in my life.

To this Harvey replied on April 17 :

I pity your lot about Graham — to me it seems absolutely
impossible to follow the course of such a Sun — and there-
fore I would cut out a new line for myself — were I you —
digest my subject into seventy discourses (if there be that
fearful number) and write out at least the heads — with a
grand oratorical first lecture — in which you should talk
of matters and things in general — and, like a friend of
mine on a similar occasion, mention ' Oscillatoria trembling
on the borders of animal and vegetable life,' or like the old
gentleman formerly, looking two ways at once.
The Professor of polite literature sends you the following :

Solomon Grundy was born on Monday,

Was christened on Tuesday

Was married on Wednesday '

Took sick upon Thursday

Died upon Friday

And waked on Saturday

And buried on Sunday —

And this was the life of Solomon Grundy.

By the beginning of May he was settled in lodgings in
Edinburgh at 20 Abercromby Place. For personal reasons,
and wishing above all to be quite independent in his movements,
he declined Professor Graham's urgent invitation to be his
guest, though painfully conscious that he might be accounted
churlish in thus refusing the only form of return which, as
has been said, was possible on the part of his old friend.

THE OPENING LECTUEE 199

As regards the lectures, the arrangement was that he should
deliver Professor Graham's own course. As has already ap-
peared, he early felt some doubt of their complete sufficiency,
and even while still in France he contemplated using some
of his father's Glasgow Jectures, as well as writing others
of his own. But the event outran expectation ; Graham's
syllabus was unsuitable. Some even of the most recent dis-
courses were on budding and grafting, composed at a period
when the appointment of a Professor of Horticulture was
threatened. Thus he was compelled at the shortest notice
to write new ones of his own in the scanty hours left by a
multiplicity of occupations. He was slowly at work — with
little progress for want of time and special books — on the Mora
Antarctica ; was following a course of lectures on Organic
Chemistry ; straightening out Professor Graham's affairs, pre-
paring the campaign for the election to the chair of Botany.
If the professors, for the most part, seemed to take little trouble
to seek him out, Edinburgh society overwhelmed him with
attentions. Some account of these things is taken from letters
of the day, beginning with the first lecture on May 5, and
Graham's extraordinary effort in presenting him to the students.

MY DEAR FATHER, — The weather being fine there was
a tolerable attendance at the class this morning of about
120 people, who came with itching ears to see a reed shaken
by the wind. I plucked up courage enough to get through
without any outward or visible signs of my own want of
confidence in the treat I had prepared for them.

It was my own composition, and I read it so fast that
no one could follow me and find out the mistakes.

And on the following day he continues the story to
Harvey :

I am lecturing away like a house on fire. I was not
in the funk I expected, though I had every reason to be
in a far greater one.

On my arrival here I found Graham very bad in bed, he
had not been out of his room for weeks and did not expect
ever to be again. The day before my 1st he took the deter-
mination of going down to introduce me to the students,

200 EDINBURGH

though no better and wholly unfit for the task. We all
opposed it most strongly but unavailingly. A Fly was
hired and Mrs. G. went too and sat in the back room. On
the road we passed Principal Faith going down to hear me
go off, and him Dr. Graham enlisted too. At the door we fell
foul of Arnott, and he and his brother also were impressed.
We all went into the class-room together, myself like a
candidate amongst his constituents. Graham first intro-
duced me, he could hardly stand but did not faint ; the
Principal did the same, myself looking like a fool and mutter-
ing angry words to myself. After which I read them a
screed on the influence of vegetation on creation, wholly
opposed to Graham's teaching and doctrines, for he holds
that plants and animals are in all functions precisely the
same, and I that they are diametrically opposite. Altogether
the being shown up as I was, and having Brown's far too
flattering testimonial of my attainments and moral character
read by the Principal, was hateful to me.

The class is small apparently ; the room, holds 160,
but has never yet been full. I do not expect there will be
much over 100 altogether. All hands are very friendly to
me, and I suppose that I stand a good chance of being
booked for exactly half my life in Edinburgh, for I shall
never stay here more than half of each year if I can help it.

Forbes 1 does not think of the chair ; he told me so the
other day voluntarily, but that he would like that of Nat. Hist.
Jameson's 2 — who has long been in most precarious health.

1 Edward Forbes (1815-54) was a brilliant worker in botany, geology,
marine zoology, and palaeontology, who travelled widely in Europe as well as
in Syria and Algeria, and was naturalist on board tho Beacon in 1841. After
holding the chair of Botany at King's College, London, from 1842, he was
appointed Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey in 1844, leaving this for
the chair of Natural History at Edinburgh in 1854. In 1853 he became Presi-
dent of the Geological Society at the unprecedentedly early age of thirty-eight.
His important paper ' On the Connection between the Distribution of the
existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles and the Geological Changes
which have affected their Area ' (1846) dealt with a subject in which both
Darwin and Hooker were then at work. Forbes was 'not only a witty writer
and the genial founder of the Red Lion Club, but a personality equally beloved
and admired.

2 Robert Jameson (1774-1854) was appointed Regius Professor of Natural
History and Keeper of the University Museum at Edinburgh in 1804. His
main work was in mineralogy, but he also wrote on geography, ornithology,
and travel. With Sir David Brewster he was the joint founder in 1819 of the
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, and for the last twenty-five years of his life
sole editor.

PEOGKESS IN LECTURING 201

May 9, 1845.

MY DEAB HAEVEY,— 999,999 congratulations on Van
Voorst's happy appreciation of your algological properties : x
10,000 I reserve for myself alone, some day : when I have
as much reason to be as thankful as I sometimes tried to
be for mercies vouchsafed in the old Erebus. I have
positively nothing to say but to congratulate you. For
my own part you may also extend to me a little gratulation
on my beginning to feel the truest and most heartfelt pleasure
in having come here, and in having come with no selfish
object in view ; and in having overcome my modesty, i.e.
metamorphosed it into modest assurance. ... I never
felt so happy in being able to be useful, for Graham is as
nearly helpless as possible, and though surrounded by friends,
there are none who can help him in his class, garden business,
examinations, and many other little things.

To the Same

May 30, 1845.

As to lecturing, that now comes perfectly easy and
natural to me, and I can spout an hour of gas, without notes
even, by dint of desperate cramming : the fact is I found
that human nature, i.e. my nature, could not stand the
drudgery of writing out an hour's reading from day to day,
so I took to the extempore preaching, and find that it answers
to the students even better than to myself : they do seem
here to delight in generalities however false, if attractively
delivered [i.e. without being read], and by dint of never
losing an opportunity of comparing the vital phenomena
of animals with those of vegetables (right or wrong) I can
rivet their attention au merveille. I often think how I
should blush to see what I speak in print. I often think
how you would laugh to see and hear me gull the multitude,
for they are like all other crowds.

... I have picked up acquaintance here with a funny
old fish who devotes himself to fossil Botany and has splendid
specimens marvellously cut for the microscope, Nicoll, the
great fossil cutter, who has a splendid cabinet of specimens
of wood etc. I am really anxious to form a fossil Herb., it suits
my generalities about the floras of byegone ages, so pray do*

1 I.e. in undertaking publication of his book.

202 EDINBUEGH

not lose sight of any you can beg, buy, borrow or steal
for me.

I am always up at 6 and go to the garden at 7. At 9|
I go up to Graham's and breakfast and then down to the
garden again, where his Herb. is. I work at it the rest of
the day or when able go to Gregory's 1 lectures on Organic
Chemistry from 3-4 ; then return and dress for dinner and
call to see how Graham is. (I am rather heavily ironed
with Society here, and have not paid for one dinner since
my arrival— even with a headache.) I generally get home
about 11 and cram for lectures like a dragon till 1 or 2— you
see I must dine out for two reasons, first because the good
people must know me before they elect me (do not say the
safest plan would be to stay at home !), and secondly because
I hear a great deal of excellent music in this town which is
irresistible. Balfour 2 is exerting himself to the utmost
with the townspeople and I should not wonder to see
him carry the chair : I assure you I shall be quite con-
tent to go back without the Professorship if I could only
see these unfortunate Grahams safe through their sea of
troubles.

No wonder that by the end of June he says :

I get very tired of it towards the end of the week.
Wednesday is my favourite day, as three lectures or the half
is over ; Thursday I get weary in, but the knowledge of
Friday being the last lifts me through that hour.

1 William Gregory (1803-58) was the fifth in lineal descent of his family
to hold a professorship at Edinburgh, the first of mathematics, three of medicine,
William himself of chemistry. He was a pupil of Liebig, whose works he
edited in English, as well as publishing successful handbooks of his own on
Organic and Inorganic Chemistry.

a John Hutton Balfour (1808-84) gradually gave up a successful medical
practice in Edinburgh in favour of botany, to which he had been devoted
since his student days under Graham, helping in 1836 to found the Edinburgh
Botanical Society, whose library and herbarium were eventually acquired by
the Crown as the basis of the collections at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.
In 1842 he succeeded Sir W. Hooker at Glasgow, and three years later was
elected to the Edinburgh chair on the death of Graham, defeating J. D. Hooker.
This chair he held till 1879, writing successful text-books, developing the
Gardens and the museum, and proving himself an inspiring teacher. He not
only extended the field work already established, but was the pioneer in
Edinburgh of practical laboratory work with the microscope. But though
stimulating his pupils to consider the wider problems of botany, his religious
views led to his opposing the Darwinian movement.

LETTEK TO F. T. PALGEAVE 203

A letter of June 27 to his cousin, Francis Turner Palgrave,1
whose inherited interest in art and art- criticism had displayed
itself very early, deserves passing reference as showing Hooker's
sustained interest in pictures as well as music. The letter is
too long to quote save for a few personal passages. Palgrave,
the younger by seven years, had won a scholarship at Balliol
in 1842. Now * the reappearance of some quondam Scotch-
men, who return hitherward with good Scotch seriously
damaged through long continued unsuccessful attempts to
speak English,' reminds him that Francis is to be congratulated
on the beginning of the summer vacation ; but it was Francis
who had the credit of ' breaking the ice that has frozen up the
current (ever sluggish) of correspondence that runs (creeps)
between us.'

I heartily wish that you would come down to this place
before I go. You would I am sure enjoy it extremely, for
it is a most liveable place, with plenty to see and admire
in the neighbourhood. The only exhibition that I have
seen was one of Scotch artists, open, or rather which shut
on the day of my arrival ; it was very bad as far as Scotch
performances were concerned ; some Stanfields, Turners,
Landseers, and young Phillip's ' Borrow ' were far the
best things in the room.

Next he speaks of ten of the prize cartoons for the decoration
of the Houses of Parliament, which had been shown two years
before in Westminster Hall. These were now exhibited in
Edinburgh in connection with a proposed book of lithographs.
He criticises then} as if Francis remembered all about them,
which very likely is not the case ; noting the relation of the
best among them to the Hampton Court cartoons, of which no
one in Edinburgh knew anything ; and quoting the story of
the best picture if the least original, Caractacus led through
Eome, namely, that the artist studied a lion's head to pourtray
the British Captive's from.

Of Old Masters he could show his cousin the collection at
Dalkeith, where ' the place is very badly kept, but the scenery

1 See family pedigree; p: 18.

204 EDINBUBGH

%is exquisitely beautiful.' And so of the recent adornments
of Edinburgh :

Certainly these modern Athenians have not improved
their Athens lately ; the much-vaunted ' Scott Monument '
is, to my mind, vile, bad in composition, situation, and in
all other particulars, saving the handycraft. It is very like
the top of the steeple of a Belgian Hotel de Ville, taken
down and placed on the side of a road. Here it is thought
perfection, and Scott is conceived to be unspeakably honored,
both in the design and execution.

I do wish you would come here and let me talk you into
my likings and dislikes. Have you seen Cennini's book
on old Fresco paintings ? I think you would care to look
at it, as you were once addicted to frescoing stables and
outhouses ; there are also some few graceful little outlines
in it. I often think that a nice book of lithographed
outlines of good pictures would sell well. I am sure
that you and I, who could not afford better, would buy
such things. . . .

To return to the Botanical Professorship — canvassing for
which he found ' detestable work:'

As has been explained, the Crown appointed to the less
valuable Eegius Professorship and the Botanic Garden, the
Town to the valuable College Professorship. The Town Council
felt aggrieved that, without consulting them, Sir James Graham,
the Home Secretary, had decided on Hooker as the Crown
nominee ; and indeed gratuitously aggrieved, as there was a
large majority for him at their first meeting, the Edinburgh
candidate, Balfour, having refused to stand if the two appoint-
ments were separated.

The Provost cannily tried to better the situation by pro-
posing a bargain. The Natural History chair was under the
same dual control, the Crown appointing to the Museum, the
Town to the chair. Let the Crown take over the whole of
the former and relinquish the latter entirely to the Town,
who would on this occasion bestow it on the Crown nominee,
Hooker. The Crown, however, could hardly look on such a
proposal with favour, having spent full £20,000 on the Garden

A MATTEK OF POLITICS 205

and more on the Professorship, while the Town had done
nothing for either.

At this juncture Balfour revoked his refusal to take the
Chair without the Garden. The Town Council were put on
their mettle to show the Crown that they had a power, and
as they truly said, they wanted a lecturer rather than a
botanist pure and simple, however overwhelming his testimo-
nials might be.

Tactically, had Hooker wished to push his claims, this move
would have left him in a strong, if rather absurd position.
Suppose the two chairs separated ; it was the Eegius Professor
with his £150 a year whose ticket must be accepted by all the
faculties for the University degree, and the College professor
would be * dished.' But for all reasons, including Government
goodwill, it was preferable to conciliate the Town Council, and
far preferable indeed, were it only possible, to have the Garden
alone with £300 a year than a Professorship at twice the salary
and College troubles and Town Council odium.

One councillor, unaware of the great difference in attractive-
ness between the two posts, proposed that the Edinburgh
man should stay in Edinburgh, while Hooker received the
Glasgow chair, thus keeping both in Scotland. Hooker un-
deceived him ; this consummation was only possible by electing
him to Edinburgh.

Finally the election became wholly a matter of politics,
even with the Provost, and local interests prevailed.

CHAPTEK X

THE GEOLOGICAL STJBVEY

EDINBURGH failing, Sir J. Graham offered Hooker the Glasgow
chair.

Sir William felt it his unwilling duty to point out such
advantages as attached to this offer ; he was unfeignedly
glad when Joseph's own decision kept him at Kew. Father
and son were equally attached and equally generous one to
the other ; this time it is Joseph who, from a chance word
dropped about finances, is suspected of ' having paid something
to my account ' for his share in Fitch's artistic services.
Sir William protests ; after all he is paying Fitch no more than
before ; no wonder Joseph has little or nothing in the bank if
he makes such a use of his money !

His hopes that some opening might be found for Joseph
at Kew itself were revived when in November Bentham told
him that having just made his will, he had appointed Joseph
one of his executors and had left his fine Herbarium to the
Boyal Gardens, if proper accommodation were provided for it.
The Kew establishment even now was being enlarged, and here
was the prospect of further material for the projected Museum.
If the Commissioners were not likely to require more than one
Director, at least an assistant would be wanted, and, so far as
qualifications go, he confidently asserts, ' if his life be spared,
there are few men that will rank higher as a Botanist than
Joseph.'

Through the winter Joseph Hooker continued at work on
the Niger Flora as well as the Antarctic Flora, remarking of
the former to Harvey (December 30, 1845) :

206

ADVANTAGES OF THE POST 207

I am doing my utmost to the Niger Flora and
hope to succeed, but it is a terrible task from the badness
of the specimens, the worseness of the published descrip-
tions, and the necessity of comparing everything with both
American and Asiatic species ; you will be surprised at the
quantity of species in common these countries possess.

But in February a post was found for him. Sir Henry de la
Beche,1 head of the Geological Survey, was in search of a botanist
to work out the British Flora, extant and fossil, in relation to
Geology, and consulted Sir William. After brief consideration,
the latter proposed the name of his son, who was instantly
accepted. The salary was £150 with travelling allowances for
the local research to be carried out from time to time ; the
work, much of which could be done at home, would not prevent
him from continuing the Antarctic Flora with its contingent
allowances from the Admiralty, while not only would fossil
research widen his botanical outlook, but with such an intimate
local knowledge as he could acquire of Great Britain and
Ireland, he would be able to carry on his father's book on
the British Flora. Nor did his father forget that the Survey
was under the same Department, the Woods and Forests,
as Kew, and the official connexion might well help to bring
him as assistant to Kew when the projected extensions were
carried and the Museum established, possibly within a year.

The work was agreeable, moreover, it threw him very much
into a new world and class of society in London, such as the
Lyells, Owen,2 and Horner, as well as brought him into touch

1 Sir Henry Thomas De La Beche (1796-1835), the geologist whose enter-
prise in making the new ordnance survey the basis of a geological map of each
county led to the establishment of the Geological Survey in 1832, under his
directorship. To him also were due the Jermyn Street Museum of Geology
and the School of Mines (1851).

2 Sir Richard Owen (1804-92), the famous anatomist. He was assistant
to Clift at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1827,
succeeding him as conservator in 1842 till 1856, when he was appointed
superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum,
retiring in 1883. Unrivalled though be was in the amount and general value
of his work in comparative anatomy and palaeontology, it was different when
he came to speculative theory. His doctrine of the Archetype was founded un-
stably on Oken's transcendentalism, and his proposed division of the mammalia
into four sub-classes, according to the difference of their brains, was unsatis-
factory, while very little of the classification in his great work, The Anatomy

208 THE GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY

with Eobert Hunt, Keeper of Mining Piecords ; Lyon Playfair,
the chemist (afterwards Lord Playfair) ; John Phillips, Professor
of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin ; and Edward Forbes,
the naturalist, his colleagues in the Geological Survey.

The new appointment and its relation to his outstanding
work are discussed in the following :

To Sir James Ross

The object [of the Geological Survey] is to have the con-
nection between the plants and the geological formation
they occupy investigated, and the Fossil plants arranged
as they are collected. The first object will require my
visiting the ground they are surveying once or twice a year,
probably with Sir H. De la Beche and Prof. Forbes (who
are the Geologist and Palaeontologist to the Survey), and the
arrangement of my observations for publication, as well as
the directing what vegetables should be gathered for analysis.
The duties will leave me more than enough of time to carry
on my Flora as fast as the plates can possibly appear, but
I do not know what the Admiralty will say to my taking the
duty. My work has in many ways cost me already nearly
£100, and I believe I have never made 6d. by it and never
shall. If the new duty were to interfere with my Flora,
or were my salary so good as to make me independent
of the Admiralty, I should not think about drawing any
further Admiralty pay, but as that is not the case and as
I have never made a farthing by my Botany work, I think
of making a push for the continuance of my pay when I
enter upon my new duties. I should feel very much obliged
for your opinion of how their Lordships are likely to regard
my views. As the new appointment is a most honorable
one, and one worth to me twice the income it offers, I have
made up my mind to accept it at all hazards, even if it
should entail the leaving the Service. Had I gained the
Edinburgh Chair I would have gone on with my Flora on
my own resources and have given up the Admiralty pay
without waiting to be asked, as a point of honor. And

and Physiology of the Vertebrates, 1866-8, was accepted by other zoologists. His
bitterness against any possible scientific rival and his disingenuous attitude
towards Darwin and his \vork ended by leaving him isolated in the scientific
world.

ADMIRALTY CLAIMS 209

were my expected pay sufficient to justify me in carrying
on so expensive a publication on my own resources, I should
equally be now ready to act in the same manner. Nor need
I conceal from yourself that the Flora Antarctica portion
shall be carried on as hitherto whether my request is granted
or not, though I should not think it very generous of their
Lordships to expect me to continue the work without some
reward, even did it cost me nothing.

[He explains that publishing at the extreme limit of eight
plates a month, the work would last another four years, and
adduces precedents for Naval pay being continued till it was
finished.]

I am quite sorry to trouble you about this, but should not
wish to act without your sanction, and feel it a duty at any
rate to lay before you my prospects. My hope is that, before
my present work is over, other national voyages may have
brought home stores worthy of publication, and that as long
as I can be usefully employed and busily too on works of
that sort, I may also draw pay for it, but no longer.
With respectful compliments to Lady Eoss,
Believe me ever,

Yours most respectfully and truly,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

The two sets of work fitted in well together : * Happily
my duties at the Geol. Survey,' he tells Eoss in an undated
letter, probably 1846, * are (like the pay) very light ; they
employ me first of all to draw up a catalogue of the known
British fossil plants previous to my arranging those of the
Geolog. Survey Museum, and corresponding for more. My
work never went on so fast, having appeared unremittingly
for five months and will for two more ; but then the struggle
must cease for one month, to get up the Cryptogamia plates,
which are very heavy work.'

Kew at this time was two hours' distant from London
by omnibus, for the railway had not yet reached it, and riding
presented itself as a speedier alternative, especially as his
delicate sister Elizabeth could also use the horse for the exercise
prescribed by the doctors. In the winter he found it convenient

210 THE GEOLOGICAL SUKVEY

to take rooms for some time at 8 Great Byder Street, near the
temporary quarters of the Survey, and Jermyn Street, where
the Museum of Practical Geology was being built for its
accommodation.

Of his occupations at this time he writes to Dawson Turner
(April 31, 1846) :

At present I am worked rather hard, having to go into
town every day to study fossil Botany, until the proposed
Museum is built in Piccadilly. The apartments now filling
up are thus only temporary, and are granted by the Dean
of Westminster in the shape of servants' rooms over his
stable. Though small, they are neat and quite suitable,
looking into Dean's Yard and entering by a respectable
little doorway on the courtyard. The Dean is very civil
and busy in his improvements of the badly dilapidated
yard ; he is giving us a fine lamp opposite our door and
otherwise takes a great interest in all that is going on.

The great difference between my father's and all other
Government employments* evidently .consists in his not
being supplied with tools, as I am in my humble capacity,
and as Brown and all other public officers whose real income
is thus apparently not so good as my father's ; but it is
apparently only, for if they had to purchase their books
and plants they would all be ruined.

In May and June his work took him into South Wales, to
examine the coal-beds for fossil plants in situ ; in August and
September to the Bristol coalfield. In South Wales, where
' De la Beche appears very pleased with what I have done,'
his headquarters were near Swansea, with his grandfather's
old friends the Dillwyns,1 whom he delighted by discovering
the Lesser Wintergreen (Pyrola minor), which had not been
found in the neighbourhood before. Their son, Lewis Dillwyn,

1 Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778-1855), botanist, conchologist, and potter,
was born at Ipswich, within touch of the Turner-Hooker circle. It was not
till 1803 that he moved to Swansea to take charge of the pottery bought by
his father. He had already begun his Natural History of British Confervae,
and collaborated with Dawson Turner in the Botanist's Guide through England
and Wales, 1805. At Swansea he wrote on the local flora and fauna and the
history of the city, as well as sharing in civic affairs. He was M.P. from
1832-7.

SWANSEA LECTUKE 211

who * worked the old family pottery in Swansea/ had married
De la Beche's daughter. He was Hooker's special companion,
being a good ornithologist and fond of Natural History in
general. Another good companion was Mr. Dillwyn's son-
in-law, Moggridge, whose hobby was British Botany. An
additional attraction of the house, which appeals to Dawson
Turner, is the collection of pictures, and specially Cuyp's
Burgomaster of Haarlem.

Lecturing was still a trial to him, but wishing to make some
return for the great kindness with which he had been received
in Swansea, he offered to give a lecture on the Antarctic Voyage.
This was duly delivered with great success at the Koyal Institu-
tion of South Wales on June 17. The advertisement of the
lecture makes the interesting announcement that in addition
to members of the Institution and affiliated societies, who
were admitted free, * Thirty free admissions to the back seats
will be distributed by the Council to persons of the working class
not connected with the above Societies.'

He writes to his grandfather, June 21, 1846 :

You will be surprised to hear of my lecturing here, but I
not only could not get off the task, but hating it as I do, I
felt a real pleasure in gratifying my many friends in Swansea.
The lecture has added seven new subscribers to the Swansea
Institution, and I have had thanks and innumerable requests
for another, which however I cannot comply with. You
can have no idea how easily these people are pleased with
my compliance with their wishes in lecturing, nor how good-
naturedly attentive they were to the lecture itself.

I have been travelling about a great deal in South Wales,
visiting the Collieries, collecting fossil plants, and gaining
information on all subjects connected with the ancient
Botany of our globe. The subject is a deeply interesting
one, and though it decidedly interferes with the progress of
my studies in recent Botany, it will, I hope, in the long run,
turn to good account. The work is very hard in this hot
weather, especially when the coal-dust and other annoyances
attendant on my investigations in these dirty districts are
almost insupportable. Still I like the work and my master,
and hope to get on with this accessory £o my pursuits.

212 THE GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY

His visit to the Forest of Dean, in company with the brother
of his old friend Thomas Thomson, whom he picked up at
Bath, invalided from India, precluded a pleasant ' touch at
recent botany in W. Ireland ' with Harvey and Ward, who
had been making various * finds ' ; and he writes to the former
(August 7, 1846) :

I do long intensely to go to the field with you and
especially to take the water. Well done, Ward, but I
won't knock under, having youth on my side and better
eyes. I look forward to no greater pleasure in British
Botany than to see the Delesserias growing in Ireland as
they did at Cape Horn, and under such perfectly similar
conditions. I want to see how the Antarctic seaweeds are
replaced on the British coast ; and no one can do it to my
satisfaction but myself. (Pretty well that for a Tyro.)

However, a future visit to Dublin seemed possible if an
Irish collector should have to be appointed in connexion with
the Geological Survey scheme to form a complete British
Herbarium with special reference to the distribution of species.

I have persuaded Sir H. that no results can be obtained
as to dependence of plants on soil,, till a good many complete
floras of counties with different formations are formed ;
he and I draw well [together], by reason of his profound
ignorance of Botany. He has an idea that the difference
of the vegetations of the sandstone and limestone is some-
thing more marked than between Lat. 0 and Lat. 90 or the
top of Ben Nevis and low water at Eoundstone.

To Mr. Bentham he writes (September 13-25) of his re-
searches in fossil botany, the interest of which grew

as the impossibility of relating all but the Ferns of the coal
strata to any existing Nat. Ord. becomes more evident.
Hitherto the collections formed are not large, as such are
only to be obtained to any extent by employing men about
the pits, but I have been grounding myself underground
in the elements of the study by noting the conditions of
their preservation and their association, so as to know
what of the various broken pieces belong to the same genus

FOSSIL AND RECENT BOTANY 218

or species, for the majority of the genera of some of the
tribes of coal plants are merely names applied to individual
plants, sometimes of the same plant ; thus Calamites are
all stems, Lepidodendron all branches, Lepidostrobus all
cones.

[After this] I took to recent Botany, crossing and re-
crossing from the village to the heart of the forest, to observe
what difference in the native vegetation may occur in
progressing from New to Old red sandstone, then Mt. Lime-
stone, and lastly the sandstone of the coal ; all these rocks
lie here in parallel stripes as it were. The scenery was
most beautiful, and from some of the hills I caught sights
of the Sugar Loaf, Garway, Graig 1 and the long back of
the Black Mountains.

One enjoys so much the sight of familiar objects in the
new aspect they wear when viewed from other points than
those we have been accustomed to. Another year I hope
to take your part of the country, though I do not expect
there are many rare plants there, still as my Master wants
the Botanical features of each soil, I will condescend to
accommodate him when my other interests suit my duties.
This will appear possibly a curious way of doing duty, but
Forbes and I try to drum into Sir H. the dogma, that all
scientific work is duty, whether he may be able to appreciate
the immediate bearing of its results on the Geol. Survey
or no.

But this British Botany had to give way to the Fossil
Botany at the Geological Survey ; it was impossible to deal
with both. However, the latter had the greater attraction
in the novelty and interest of the field, and the need for per-
fecting a knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Still there
was plenty to be done in British Botany, and later he fulfilled
Bentham's word that the work ought to be done, despite the
opposition which might be expected from those who already
occupied the field.

The winter and early spring of 1846-7 are filled up in part
with arranging the autumn's collection of fossils and preparing

1 These hills, familiar points in the landscape around Pontrilas, called up
many recollections of the Benthams.

VOL. I * P

214 THE GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY

three essays on the Coal plants, which involved both the draw-
ing of woodcuts and personal superintendence of slicing and
polishing fossils. These essays were printed in the * Memoirs '
of the Geological Survey for 1848 ; two dealt with the structure
of Stigmaria and Lepidostrobus ; the third drew a general
comparison between the plants of the Coal and of the present
day. Here microscopic examination of these sections of
* coal-balls ' was made fruitful by his great knowledge of living
forms ; he was able to demonstrate the actual structure of the
fossils, and as Professor W. W. Watts remarks in his Anniversary
Address to the Geological Society, 1912, * these memoirs differ
from all others on the subject published at the time — or, indeed,
long afterwards — in receiving unstinted praise alike from
geologists and from botanists.'

Except for a return in the eighties to the * enigmatic '
Pachytheca, on which he first published in 1853, Hooker's short
but brilliant work on fossil botany ended with his explanation
of Trigonocarpon, a fossil fruit of the Coal measures (in 1854-5).
India and Kew absorbed his energies, though his early interest
was not quenched. True that for many years the rashness of
geological identifications led him to dub Fossil Botany * the
most unreliable of sciences ' ; ' but,' adds Professor Watts,
' when, in recent years, the study of Carboniferous, Jurassic,
and Cretaceous plants yielded such new and startling results
to investigators in this country, France, Germany, and the
United States, all his old enthusiasm returned.'

The other part of his winter occupations in 1846-7 included
completion of the Antarctic Flora and the Niger Flora, which
had grown too bulky for printing more than the opening part
in the * Journal of Botany.' * I have had,' he complains, * to
write something rather " Flowery, Bowery " for a Botanist,
to please the " Emancipators," but it is not very much, happily.'
The Galapagos Florula was to appear in the Linnean Society
Transactions, and to be followed with notes on the botanical
distribution of the flora. Another task was the naming of
all his own and K. Gunn's Tasmanian Compositae and Coni-
ferae, with publication of diagnoses of the many new species
in the Journal, for the prospects of bringing out the Tasmanian

THE PATRONAGE OF KEW 215

Flora were for the moment visionary. Indeed, it did not appear
until 1859.

During 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, 01*
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

216 THE GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY

publications and a big travel book in two volumes, ' Journals
of a Naturalist on the Erebus and Terror,1 which the John
Murray of that day, meeting Sir William at dinner, declared
his readiness to publish as a companion to Darwin's famous
1 Voyage of the Beagle.' But a year botanising abroad was
worth five of study at home. The Admiralty were planning
a scientific voyage to Borneo, and might appoint him as
naturalist ; again, ' If I could only get the W. and F. to pay
expenses and Admiralty to give leave, I would go to India and
collect fruits, woods, and seeds, &c. &c. The E.I.C. superin-
tendent of W. and F., Dr. Gibson,1 in the Indian Peninsula
offers me a cruise with him to province of Cannar (S. of Goa)
at a very cheap rate, and I have a huge yearning that way ;
his is only a four or five months' trip or tour of inspection.
I wish I had a private fortune.' Again, in July, he writes
to his grandfather :

I shall be ready to make any sacrifice to get to the tropics
for a year, so convinced am I that it will give me the lift
I want, in acquiring a knowledge of exotic Botany. My
friend, Falconer, goes out on December 20, to the charge
of Calcutta Bot. Gard., and I hope to be ready to share
his cabin. I shall then spend some months at Calcutta
and the neighbourhood (Gurney,2 &c., &c.), get up to the
Himalaya betimes, and return the following winter via
Bombay.

He had strong hope of joining the Tibet mission, which
'was to go from Ladak to Yarkand and Kashgar over wholly
unexplored country north of the Himalaya, and in September
1847 was in active correspondence about this. The work
already in hand would not suffer, for as he wrote to Boss :

Kew : September 7, 1847.

MY DEAR CAPT. Boss,— I have delayed answering your
letter till I should know something more definite regard-

1 Alexander Gibson (1800-67), went to India in the medical service of the
Company, and became superintendent of the Botanical Garden of Dapuri in
1838, and Conservator of Forests in Bombay 1847-60.

* Gurney Turner, his cousin, in the medical service of the E.I.C.

INDIAN PLANS AND CUKEENT WOEK 217

ing my plans. TJjie Woods and Forests seem very desirous
of sending me out, and as I do not see any other prospect
of my doing better, and being extremely anxious to under-
take any exploratory expedition, I need hardly say that
I do hope they will employ me.

The last J sheet of the Flora Ant. is in the press, and
it contains a vast amount more matter than I had ever con-
templated bringing in ; it has cost me out of pocket upwards
of £100, and Lord Auckland has not yet had his copy, which
will cost me £8 10s. I feel it to be now quite time that I
were looking out for a livelihood, and as my future hopes
and prospects all will be with the Woods and Forests I feel
that in justice to myself I ought not to throw away the
present opportunity of improving myself, and the science
to which I am attached, and of establishing a claim upon
them in the proper quarter.

Neither the Flora of New Zealand nor of Van Diemen's
Land will suffer by the delay, as Mr. Gunn and Colenso are
still employed in making collections in all parts of these
islands and are paid by my Father and self for doing so,
from our private pockets. Under any circumstances I
did not think of beginning the publication of either Flora
before some months, when their latest collections shall have
arrived.

Failing anything else, he was even ready to go out and
report on the nature of the Island of Ascension, a barren rock,
in connexion with the Admiralty plan of improving the vege-
tation there. Unexpected encouragement of the Indian plan
came from De la Beche, who desired to retain him on the
Survey staff, while taking the fossils he might collect for the
Geological Museum, and letting the plants go to Kew.

The first point then was to secure a Government grant for
the Indian expedition, and the support of the East India Com-
pany. The latter was easier to win than the former, finance
at the moment being unpropitious. The Admiralty, moreover,
to whom Hooker owed allegiance, thought India out of their
proper sphere, and suggested that if he wanted botanical travel
he should join the official expedition to the Malay Islands,
planned for 1848, though this would not be a very well paid

218 THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

post. Difficulties, however, evaporated in personal discussion,
when at the beginning of October Hooker met Lord Auckland,
then First Lord of the Admiralty, during a visit in the Isle
of Man to his brother the Bishop. Then it was arranged that
if he went to India first, he should go on to join the frigate
Mceander at Borneo during the healthier season and prepare
a botanical report on the British possessions there, keeping his
half pay till he arrived and then being put on full pay, with
botanical allowances of £300 during his term of service.1 This
paved the way for an appeal to the Treasury for a grant of
£400 a year for two years on behalf of the Gardens to cover
their botanist's expenses in collecting.

The Eastern Himalayas were practically unknown. Lord
Auckland and Dr. Falconer 2 alike proposed that he should
explore the Sikkim valley up to the snows on the Tibetan
frontier. It was under our protectorate, and Hooker, on his
official mission, would be accredited to the British Eesident.

Keinforced by a striking letter from the veteran Humboldt

pointing out to Hooker what could be done by him in the

Himalaya for science, Lord Morpeth, of the Woods and Forests,

prevailed on the Treasury at the eleventh hour to give the

grant. On October 20 came an official intimation that the

Chancellor of the Exchequer had given his hearty consent

to the Indian Mission, and the Admiralty proposed that a free

passage should be granted as far as Alexandria at least in the

Sidon, which was to sail on November 9, conveying Lord

Dalhousie, the new Governor- General, to India. This proposal

was made subject to Lord Dalhousie 's consent. Sir William

immediately called upon him, when so far from raising

objections, he insisted that Joseph should continue the whole

journey with him to India, thus overcoming the various

difficulties raised by the East India Company in regard to the

journey from Aden to Calcutta. Indeed, he enjoyed Hooker's

1 When the Borneo expedition was abandoned, the £300 was allotted to
a third year in India.

2 Hugh Falconer (1808-65), Palaeontologist and Botanist; M.A. Aberdeen
1826, M.B. Edinburgh 1829. Assistant Surgeon on the East India Co.'s estab-
lishment 1830, and Superintendent of the Saharanpur Botanical Gardens 1832.
Superintended the manufacture of the first Indian tea 1834 ; Professor of
Botany at Calcutta Medical College ; Vice-President of the Royal Society.

ENGAGEMENT 219

society so much that on reaching Suez he took him into his
suite.

With this another early ambition was realised. It has
already been told how Cook's Voyages, with the picture of
Kerguelen's Land, was one of his earliest recollections in reading.
The other was Turner's * Travels in Tibet.' Here his imagina-
tion was gripped by the description of Lama worship and the
great mountain Chumalari. There he notes, 'It is singular
that K. Land should have been the first strange country I
ever visited, and that in the first King's ship which has touched
there since Cook's voyage/ and that later * I have been nearly
the first European who has approached Chumalari since Turner's
embassy ' (in 1783).

The disappointment at Edinburgh, despite the fatigue and
momentary sense of failure, had never gone very deep.. The
years of steady work since returning from the Antarctic,
though not bringing him an important appointment, had done
more by preparing him for the new venture, which had un-
expectedly created the long-desired link between his scientific
work and official Kew. Now his second great scientific ambition
was fulfilled, following but a few months after a more intimate
felicity. No wonder that during these last days in England
his father could write, * I think I never saw him so cheerful
and happy.' For in the beginning of July he became engaged
to Frances Henslow, eldest daughter of the Cambridge Professor
of Botany, so widely beloved for his personal qualities, who is
still remembered outside the circle of specialists as the man
who first made nature study a living pursuit among the school
children of his village, and the man who greatly helped to
turn Charles Darwin to a scientific career. Frances was a
close friend of his sister Elizabeth ; and now matters came
to a head during the * week's holiday and idleness/ as he
called it, at Oxford during the meeting of the British Associa-
tion, to the great joy of Elizabeth.

It is characteristic of the strict family regime of the Hookers
that in his announcement of this happy event to Dawson
Turner * no flowers ' were permissible — no approach even to
' flowers/ Joseph opines that, * as an affectionate grandfather

220 THE GEOLOGICAL SUKVEY

(and man of business), you may be glad to hear the reasons for
my preference ' — and to the man of business rather than to
the affectionate grandfather sets forth their mutual suitability,
her industry, energy, education, good principles and scientific
sympathies, her literary helpfulness, for ' she is much cleverer
than I am.' But enough of * reasons ' ; there was another
and more personal side to all this, and if he should not speak
of it, the sister friend might perhaps speak more warmly, so
* for the rest I must refer you to my sister Elizabeth.'

The high-stepping Johnsonese chosen by Sir William
for discussing ' Joseph's attachment and his prospects ' with
Dawson Turner is irresistible. ' I believe,' he writes, * Miss
Henslow to be an amiable and well-educated person of most
respectable, though not high connections, and from all that I
have Seen of her, well suited to Joseph's habits and pursuits.
He himself seems well pleased with his choice.' Formal
propriety could go no further in concealing a warm heart.

The work already mentioned on the Antarctic and Niger
Floras and travel on Survey business alternately occupy the
rest of 1846 and most of the next year. March saw him in
Ireland. From South Wales, his mother notes, he returns
brown and well, carrying out his grandfather's dictum that
six hours' sleep is enough for any healthy man. In August he
was away again ; ' busy and happy he seems.' For most of
the first three months of 1847 his father was ill ; * Joseph,'
writes Lady Hooker, ' is most helpful to me with his father ;
always glad to assist, calm and quiet. He knows too what is fit
to be done and is very handy.' He would not, however, take
the opportunity of his father's temporary absence from work
to ' put himself forward at the Garden,' as his mother inwardly
wished, with a view to the future.

On April 17 he went to Cambridge for a fortnight to see a
collection of coral plants from Australia ; then after a few
days with Berkeley1 the mycologist at Oundle, proceeded on

1 The Rev. Miles Joseph Berkeley (1803-89) as a botanist devoted himself
to the Cryptogams. He wrote the volume on Fungi in Smith's English Flora,
1836, Outlines of British Fungology, 1860, and a Handbook of British Mosses,
1863, besides an Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany, 1860. The collections of
fungi made by Darwin and other travellers came to him for description. His

ELECTED F.R.S. 221

Survey work to Wolverhampton, Manchester, Leeds, Barnsley,
and Birmingham, stealing a few days off his Survey duty
to spend at pure Botany at Warrington with Wilson the
botanist, who had been working at the mosses in his Flora
Antarctica. ' We are now pulling my Tasmanian specimens
of Dawsonia to pieces, and can hardly make out whether it be
a new species or variety ' (May 20).

On April 21 of this year he was elected to the Koyal Society,
as Wallich1 described it, * by a vast majority, ... a majority
much greater than any among the eight candidates that were
successful. He had ninety-five votes, nor was any one can-
didate's certificate so amply and gloriously filled up as his ! '

Of this scientific success he writes with his usual diffidence
in his own powers to his grandfather, to whom he owed so
much scientific encouragment.

St. John's College, Cambridge : April 26, 1847.

MY DEAR GRANDFATHER,— I thank you very much for
the kind congratulations you have sent me on my election
to the E.S. You I can thank with more ease than any one,
for you are one of the very few who can see to the full how
entirely I am indebted to those who have gone before and
stood by me, for what superiority in position over my con-
temporaries their good offices have obtained for me. My
advantages in Boss's voyage ; the procuring of the after
grant ; the launching of my book into the world in the
form it boasts and the continuation of that work in a credit-
able state up to the present day ; my testimonials for
Edinburgh ; my appointment to the Government Survey
(small though it be)— are all advantages for which I am
indebted to the position my father has gained for himself
and which has enabled him to lay my little merits before

special knowledge was of great value to the Commission on potato disease,
1845. On his retirement in 1879 he presented his herbanium of fungi and his
books to Kew. He was elected F.L.S. 1836, F.KS. 1879, receiving the Royal
Medal in 1863.

1 Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854) was a Danish surgeon at Serampore who,
when the place fell into English hands in 1813, entered the service of the E.I.C.,
and in 1815 was made superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden, a post
he held till 1850. He returned finally to England in 1847, having done immense
work as a botanical explorer, and brought back vast collections, the final
distribution of which was completed by Hooker.

222 THE GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY

the world under the most advantageous conditions. I
know myself to be deficient in education and I can feel my
abilities to be only second-rate, and so can only feel truly
thankful that I have light enough to see to whom I owe the
appreciation of my works by the public.

I have done a good deal here both with marsh and fossil
plants. From one of your letters to my Father I think you
possibly mistake the nature of my studies as connected with
the Survey. I am no Geologist : my work is fossil botany ;
as legitimately a branch of Botany as is Muscology ; fossil
plants, though imperfect, are still pure plants ; and, though
dead as species, they form and show links between existing
forms, upon which they throw a marvellous light.

Here also must be noted the beginnings of the close friend-
ship with Charles Darwin which was to be lifelong. They
had already been in close touch over botanical matters ;
Hooker had been working out Darwin's plants from the Gala-
pagos Islands ; now on October 10 he has gone to stay with
Darwin in Kent for three days, and on January 14, 1847, again
he goes for a visit of a week or ten days.

CHAPTEK XI

THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

THE Sidon left England on November 11, 1847, calling at
Lisbon, Gibraltar, and Malta on the way to Alexandria. As
a matter of course, the voyagers made the fourteen mile excur-
sion from Lisbon to Cintra. Most of the party, mounted on
jackasses, visited the Convent of Our Lady of the Kock ;
Hooker climbed a rocky hill hard by, and believed he had
the best of it, for outstretched before him were typical groves
of fruit and timber trees, and many miles of vast, grassy
undulating plains of Portugal, conspicuous upon them the
lines of Torres Vedras and many another place of note in the
Peninsular War, ' for which see Napier (a book I never could
and never shall get through).'

The botanist sees at once in ' the multitude of Lichens,
which coated the granite rocks as completely (though not
with such fine species) as in the Antarctic plains,' a proof of
the prevalent dampness of the atmosphere. The traveller;
marvelling that a nation of discoverers should have fallen so
low, reflects that it was gold alone that stirred them from
indolence, and exclaims sadly :

What is to become of them it is hard to say. The land is
rich and productive ; the climate delicious ; and they are
neither warlike nor romantic people, such as the Spaniards,
whose temperament keeps them in hot water. I have now
seen them in Madeira, the Cape Verdes, Brazil, and at home :
and they are the same all over the world. I hope never to
see them again.

223

224 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

As a world-voyager himself his one regret for taking a new
way back into Lisbon was not

to have looked once more at Belem Church, where Columbus
dreamed that an Angel directed him to the discovery of
the New World, if I remember aright ; and where especially
Vasco da Gama and his successors offered up, some their
prayers, and others their thanksgivings (to St. Nicholas,
by the way) on the occasion of their several voyages to the
Eastern Indies, or return therefrom.

Still the quarter of Lisbon by which they returned was
magnificent by night, albeit the high and handsome squares
were perhaps whited sepulchres. Night also offered another
advantage : ' After the heat of the day is over the many smells
are in a great measure dissipated ; the dogs gone to kennel ;
and little else but drunken seamen to disturb one's reveries.'

The fortified rock of Malta provokes agreeable comparison
with St. Helena and Gibraltar : for here the heat that is fervid
on the black soil of St. Helena and scorches at Gibraltar is tem-
pered by the yellow stone, which neither attracts like the one
nor reflects like the other the powerful rays of the sun. There
is a thumbnail sketch of the town with its magnificent entrance
to the harbour, its ' church and convent bell-towers innumer-
able, ringing all day long, many with good voices, some with
bad,' its rocks bare of any green save the Caper plant, and
its picturesque streets, which

form a sort of square telescope, with busy people along the
bottom, handsome yellow carved stone balconies projecting
on either side, bright blue sky above, and the sea like a
perfect jewel at the further end.

Apropos of the carved stone work everywhere (of which
he bought some for the Geological Museum) :

Stone cutting and carving is indeed the besetting employ-
ment of the Maltese ; and the facility afforded by the lime-
stone has the same effect on this, their hereditary disposition,
that a soft deal bench has on a schoolboy.

At Citta Vecchia, he tells Miss Henslow,

EAELY STEAMSHIPS 225

everything is attributed to St. Paul, and your father would
have laughed had he had presented to him for sale (as I had)
some fossil sharks' teeth, 3 inches long, as the teeth of the
Apostle himself !

At this distance of time it is curious to recapture the im-
pression made on an old naval man by the ' terrible-looking '
steamers among the white-sailed ships of all nations, the noble
line-of-battle ships, and the smart frigates ; and the same
epithet is repeated soon after when it is recorded that the
passage to Alexandria was long, ' owing to contrary winds and
a head-sea, which though slight, were sufficient to retard the
Sidon, which despite her size and terribly grand look, is a very
poor steamer or sailer, after all.'

The Alexandria of 1847 was a ' ruinous city of dirty white
houses straggling round a broad bay ' with ' outskirts horrible
to a degree,' consisting of clusters of huts, or rather mud hovels
not four feet high, grouped in squares about ten feet each way,
with a hole for the door and another to serve as a window.
Pompey's Pillar and the slave market were the two extremes
of interest for the sightseer.

But he found the Pillar, ' like all such attempts at effect,
a failure, as the mind does not perceive at once the gigantic
labour which the erection of such a single stone must have cost/
The sight of it added nothing to the impression gathered from
books. The slave market was

a small court about 30 feet square, surrounded with cells
of about 12 feet, devoted to the slaves of each nation. These
were dark and dirty, full of vermin, in spite of the smoke
of a fire in the middle of the earthen floor, which all but
suffocated the poor inmates. I saw only the Abyssinians,
two or three squalid wretches, in the most abject state of
dirt, disease, and suffering, from the smoke which inflamed
their poor eyes. They said nothing, but crouched behind
the door and up in the corner on my entering.

The most agreeable episode connected with quitting the
Sidon at Alexandria was Lord Dalhousie's expression of the
friendship he had formed on the voyage for Hooker. ' On

226 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

our arrival/ writes the latter, ' he took me on one side and
invited me to belong to his suite for the future, in the most
kind and handsome manner.' Hooker accordingly travelled
freely in the Governor- General's launch to Cairo, accompanied
him to Mehemet Ali's reception, and from Suez sailed not on
the ordinary packet-boat but on the East India Company's
frigate sent to convey the Governor. This smoothed away
many of the minor difficulties of travel, especially the refusal
of the India Board in London to give him a passage, because
the Company's naval officers disliked the ships being employed
as passage-boats.

The journey to Cairo was effected by water. A ' pretty
little steamer of the size and shape of a Woolwich boat/ be-
longing to the transit company, took the party eighty miles
to the Nile, along the Mamudieh Canal, Mehemet Ali's vast
work carried out by the forced labour of the corvee, which
drew all the unhappy fellahin from the fields unpaid and
unfed, and was followed by a disastrous famine. ' It reminded
me ' — he draws a homely comparison for his father — ' of the
canal through the Bog of Allan, if you can suppose that wholly
bare of any vegetation except around the very scattered
Egyptian or Turks' houses.' From this point Mehemet's own
steamer, the size of a Greenwich boat, took them another
twenty hours' journey to Cairo.

Cairo he found ' a most interesting place for everything but
its botany/ standing as it did ' half in the desert and half
on the alluvial deposit, so that you enter it amongst gardens,
avenues, and richly cultivated fields, and step from the gates
on the other side into utter sterility/

As for the Ehoda Gardens, originally laid out by Ali Pasha
with the oriental desire of getting shade and refreshing masses
of green, he frankly confesses to disappointment in them,

from not previously appreciating the many obstacles Egypt
presents to the formation of a real garden of Exotics. It
must be near the Nile for water ; and then it must be flooded
at one season, and burnt up the next ; a state of things to
which few plants will subject themselves, and whence it is
that on the fertile banks of the Nile there is little or no native

CAIKO: GAKDENS AND DESEET 227

vegetation beyond annuals, and the majority of these are
planted.

Still it was ' really and truly the Dropmore of Egypt,' ' a noble
project ' struggling against adverse conditions.

Everywhere you turn you are greeted by some English
or well-known exotic, struggling to accommodate itself to
Egyptian bondage, or rebelliously resenting all poor Mr.
Traill's kind attentions, and doing the worst a slave can do,
dying on the spot, and breaking his master's heart. (To
W. J. H., December 24, 1847.)

Far more interesting was a trip into the Desert to the Fossil
Forest.

Though few plants were to be had, I was anxious to make
a few observations on the temperature of the soil and dry-
ness of the desert, so that I might know how near the starving
and burning point vegetation would exist, as supplementary
to our many observations in the Ant. Expedition of how
much cold they could bear.

Completing these a few days later by other experiments at the
halfway house to Suez, he found that

even in the winter time the sun's rays give a heat of 100°
to the soil, so that the poor plants have to undergo in winter
a change of 56° every day. Here the only water they get
is by the dew forming during the night. Unhappy plants !
if their feelings are like ours, who like to drink best when
most heated.

The waste of rolled pebbles and fragments with here and
there huge trunks, heaped together in the greatest confusion,
all chalcedony and coarse agate, reddish brown against the
white of the desert sand, inspires a long disquisition on its
geological origin and a smile at Mehemet Ali, for

At this place the Pasha had sunk a pit for coal : sapiently
concluding that so much fossil wood above ground indicated
no less below : he, however, did not get through the limestone
rock, which is subjacent to the formation to which I presume
the fossil wood to belong.

228 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

As to the city of Cairo itself,

the charms of these Eastern houses are all in the abstract
and idea ; to live in they are truly odious. [Seeking a
Turkish bath], we wound through many nasty lanes and
streets of shops, which are called Bazaars, but which I should
rather y-clep Vennels, if you remember those Glasgow
holes. After all, a Cairo Bazaar is very like a Greenock
street, without the windows.

The visit to Mehemet Ali in the cortege of Lord Dalhousie
smacked of the 'Arabian Nights/ He writes to his sister
Elizabeth :

The road was long, through narrow streets and very
crowded ones ; we were preceded by two attendants, running,
with long whips, which they laid about them right and left,
to clear the way, utterly regardless of man or beast, who
scurry out of the way or cower under their Bernouse cloaks
to fend off the blows. I saw an unfortunate Egyptian, whose
cart stuck across the street, get a terrible whipping, to
which he offered not the least resistance. We were rather
late, and arrived just after the Governor [Lord Dalhousie], as
the guns were pealing forth a Koyal Salute. Passing under
the gates, through a most splendid new and half finished
alabaster Mosque (see Panorama of Cairo) [i.e. that shown
in Leicester Square], we arrived at the Quadrangle, where
the Governor was getting out of a splendid six-horse coach,
like the Lord Mayor's, with Egyptian Lancers as outriders :
the band played a sort of ' God save the Queen ' to him, and
I know not what to the second carriage, with Fane and
Courtenay ; 1 but I got the Bohemian Polka for my share
of reception outside. The gateway was crowded with tame-
looking, fiercely armed Egyptian officers, with gorgeous
sashes, diamond-hilted scymitars, and the like. Behind
were plainly dressed attendants on a dais, each with a
gold badge at his breast (the Turkish crescent and star),
who passed us on through gorgeously furnished apart-

1 Members of Lord Dalhousie's suite. Francis Fane, who succeeded to the
Earldom of Westmorland in 1851, was his A.D.G., and F. F. Courtenay, his
private secretary since 1843 at the Board of Trade, was retained in that
capacity.

MEHEMET ALI'S COUET 229

ments, sofa'd all "round the walls, and covered with rich
Turkey carpets, to the private audience-chamber. This
was splendid, surrounded by looking-glasses ; the walls
above pale satin, with worked crimson and gold flowers,
the windows some 15 feet high, with transparent blinds,
worked also with most superb groups of flowers, exquisitely
imitated. All round were sofas and cushions of satin,
worked with carnations, fuchsias, and roses. Mehemet, an
old cunning-looking man, in a plain, olive-green braided
coat, sat in the right hand corner near the window, and
received us standing. He conversed with Lord D. by means
of a Dragoman interpreter, we all being ranged round and
forming a gorgeous cortege. Behind were several other
gentlemen, who came, but took no part, including his son
and son-in-law, and many plainly attired domestics. In a
few minutes each, Lady Dalhousie included, was furnished
with a pipe 6 feet long, having amber mouthpieces full of
brilliants, the mouthpieces as thick as my arm almost, and
8 inches long. The bowl was placed in a silver dish on the
ground ; and we all whiffed away. The servants then
brought coffee in little egg cups, set in gold filagree holders,
blazing with diamonds. . . . The same attendants removed
pipes and coffee cups ; and we all retired much pleased with
all we saw.

The troubles of the old Overland route, even under
the gilding of the Viceregal segis, merit description. The
journey to Suez took nineteen hours. Hooker himself barely
escaped the hideous discomfort of doing this on a dromedary's
back. By some mistake, the disembarkation of the ordinary
Indian passengers at Alexandria had not been telegraphed
through by signal till after he had set off to visit the Pyramids.
It would have been highly inconvenient for both parties to
travel together across the desert ; accordingly the Governor-
General prepared for early departure, and when Hooker re-
turned he found all the luggage had gone on ; and he was in
consternation, having only two hours to pack, get his fossils
sent home, and go to the Consul's, whence they were to start.
* We were prohibited taking anything but a tiny carpet bag ;
so I hired a fleet Dromedary for my baggage (my very heavy

VOL. I Q

280 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

things had gone on to the Palace on arriving and went on
with Lord Dalhousie).'

All's well that ends well, however ; thanks to Lady Dal-
housie, who also had a baggage dromedary, and the members
of the Suite, who bullied the Transit officers into providing an
extra two-wheeled car, the baggage was safely taken. ' I never
was so glad in all my life,' he exclaims, * as when I got my things
all stowed away, though at the expense of relinquishing my
scanty collection, and all but a few sheets of small-sized paper,
for the Desert and Aden.'

Night had fallen, for it was 8 o'clock, and ' our departure
by cresset and torch light was very pretty, surrounded as we
were by Orientals in all costumes.' As for the vehicles, the
Dalhousies ' mounted a beautiful barouche, as good as ever
the Park saw, with six Arab horses and two outriders, and
dashed off at full speed, the cressets and torches scampering
on before, through the narrow streets, whipping everybody
and everything in the way.' The four-horse vans in which
the rest followed were exactly like short omnibuses, to hold
four each, but had only two wheels with broad tires ; ' a cad
stands on the step behind ; an Egyptian drives at a furious
gallop, with a red fez and long whip.' In the first were Dr.
Bell, an old Indian, bundled up in all imaginable clothes,
European and Oriental, to keep off the cold, and Hooker, with
a plaid for the night, and slung round his neck his two precious
barometers to save them from the breakage declared to be
inevitable in the terrible jolting of the Overland route. The
road was worst at the beginning ; in many places it became
really good, where the flats of pebbles were broad and long ;
but the Arab tribes who were heavily bribed to keep it in some
sort of order, cared little for the Pasha. So long as they were
paid, they removed the large stones from the track ; as soon
as the money stopped, they would replace all the big pieces,
and so render the track impassable.

The smooth-seeming, uninterrupted slope of eight miles
from the highest level down to the Bed Sea was indeed a
howling wilderness, and the Desert of Sinai opposite looked no
better. Amid the pebbles and rounded lumps of rock as big

THE OVEELAND EOUTE 231

as one's head the Colocynth was the only plant visible, and that
sparingly, so like the soil it straggled over, that the great yellow
apples alone betrayed its position. At Suez,

as the position of the transit of the Children of Israel, one
could not help looking about, and trying to grasp one natural
feature that should afterwards vividly recall the spot ; but
there was none ; looking N., an arm of the sea wound up to
where a canal in the more glorious days of Egypt connected
the Nile and the Eed Sea.

A score of years were still to elapse before de Lesseps
renewed that glory of the ancient empire, and incidentally
swept away these wearinesses of the old Overland route.

The Governor- General's party were comfortably installed
in the hotel long before the ordinary passengers began to arrive,
130 in all, in detachments oi six or eight vans every four hours
through the night. Next day they embarked on the Moozuffer.
This was ' a noble ship,' as large as the Sidon, but although
the captain gave up everything to Lord and Lady Dalhousie,
the Indian Government had made no proper accommodation
for the large party :

the rest of us have to pig it out in the ship's armoury, a dirty
place, next to the engine, intolerably hot and smothered
with coal-dust. We lie on mattresses on the deck, and it
is all we can do to turn out tidy for meals in the cabin.

In consequence, as he writes later from Madras,

I have lost nearly all my collections (particularly that made
at Aden) from the salt water in our wretched dormitory on
board this ship. Not only were much of my collections
destroyed, but my spare paper ; so that at Point de Galle
I could not collect a single thing.

Aden itself was ' the ugliest, blackest, most desolate and
most dislocated piece of land of its size that ever I set eyes
upon, and I have seen a good many ugly places.' Unsatis-
factory also was the Indian Ocean, * the most uninteresting
sea I ever crossed ; without birds or any fish but flying fish
to relieve the monotony of the cruise.'

232 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

Lord Dalhousie's friendship, which was built up on the
voyage, and in India showed itself in unstinted support to
Hooker and to any friend he recommended, was a personal
appreciation of the man rather than of the scientific investi-
gator. Hooker, who was no less attached to him, as a man,
during the too few years that he still had to live, wrote very
frankly of his lack of scientific interests.

I find Lord Dalhousie an extremely agreeable and
intelligent man in everything but Natural History and
Science, of which he has a lamentably low opinion, I fear.
He is a perfect specimen of the miserable system of education
pursued at Oxford, and as ignorant of the origin and working
of our most common manufacturing products and arts as he
is well informed on all matters of finance, policy, &c. I very
carefully drop a little knowledge into him now and then ;
but I cannot awaken an interest or any sympathy in my
pursuits : he is much pleased at my being busy, and especially
with my carrying on my Meteorological register three times
a day. Lady Dalhousie shares her husband's apathy, but
is otherwise a kind-hearted creature. In the Desert I brought
them the Gum Arabic Acacia, which I thought must interest
the late president of the Board of Trade ; but he chucked
it out of the carriage window : and the Kose of Jericho,
with an interest about it of a totally different character, met
no better fate.

The thought arises that ' he has so much Scotch caution
that he does not like to broach a subject he cannot talk upon ' ;
however this might be, the efforts to interest him in the veget-
able products of the East seemed to bear fruit, and later :

The Governor-General hints to me that he would like
reports on the Tea district of India ; so that I shall hope
to be made useful by him and to have an opportunity of
returning all his kindness. I need not say that I shall lay
myself out to attend to his wishes in India. Assam, how-
ever, did not enter into my calculations.

And at Point de Galle he took care to present to the
Governor- General his friend Gardner, Sir William's protege,

AEBIVAL IN INDIA 233

the representative of Botany in Ceylon. Science was likely
to benefit by official acquaintance with men of science.

Madras revealed the splendours of Oriental pageantry in
the official reception of the Governor- General. The military
display, the brilliant colour of the crowds who poured out of
the city, amply compensated for the waste of half a day on
board ship while arrangements were being completed ashore.

This was India itself ; authentic information was to be
gleaned, practical arrangements made for forthcoming travel.
An old acquaintance turned up in Major Garsten, bluff and
burly, whom he remembered as a threadpaper of a lad in
Edinburgh. He heard tall stories of the Mysore summer ; when
wineglasses snap off at the stem, untouched, and tables of teak
split across the grain. Through Gideon Thomson, the brother
of his Glasgow friend, he had hopes of securing a good plant
collector. Five servants were needed for his travels, besides
collectors ; and Madras servants were reputed better and more
faithful than Bengalis. More lessons in Hindustani were re-
quired ; ' my progress in the lingo,' he laments, ' is very slow.
I have no head for languages, especially such a cacophonous
one as this.' He spent most of his time in the Horticultural
Society Gardens, and seeing Mr. Elliott's collections of birds and
animals. But even so, when he began travelling in Bengal he
found the plants, presumably common Bengal species, new to
him, * and without books I cannot give even the generic names,
so ignorant do I find myself.'

In Calcutta, where he arrived on January 12, he first
stayed with an old friend of his father, Sir Lawrence Peel ; 1
afterwards at Government House, for

neither the Governor- General nor Lady Dalhousie will allow
me to take up my quarters anywhere but with them. [And
a little later] : Both show great friendship to me. He
is a very fine fellow, who always means what he says ; and

1 Sir Lawrence Peel (1799-1884) was a cousin of the statesman, Sir Robert.
He was knighted in 1842 when promoted from Advocate-General to Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court at Calcutta. Returning to England in 1855, he became
Indian Assessor to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The love of his
beautiful place at Calcutta was recorded in the name of his house at Ventnor,
Garden Reach.

234 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

I really believe he would be not only mortified, but hurt, if
I resided elsewhere than under his roof while I am at Calcutta.
On one occasion he turned out of his own chamber to give
it to me, because I returned from Sir Lawrence Peel's house
a day earlier than was expected.

The only drawback to their great kindness was that, though
he had entire freedom to follow his own pursuits, Government
House was five miles away from his work at the Botanic Gardens,
' and to walk there in this part of Bengal is quite out of the
question.'

Sir Lawrence Peel's house on Garden Reach was the Chats-
worth of India, with its unrivalled gardens just across the river
from the Botanic Garden, classical ground to the naturalist,
where Hooker spent most of his time with McLelland, the
indefatigable locum tenens for Hugh Falconer, then on his
way to succeed Griffith,1 a botanist distinguished alike as
draughtsman and collector.

As we see more of one another he opens out ; and I think
it not difficult to understand him. He is a persevering
Scotchman, without much ability, or powers of perception ;
blinded by Griffith's extraordinary ability, and impressed
with the belief that it is better to fail in following Griffith's
views and course, than to succeed in any other more suited
to his own powers. He has, he considers, a pious duty to
perform, imposed on him at Griffith's dying hour, to publish
his MSS. and drawings. This he has been doing with great
zeal and perseverance, on a wretched salary of £500 a year at

1 William Griffith (1810-45), a pupil of fLindley, entered the medical
service of the East India Company, and in 1835 was employed to report on the
suitability of Assam for tea planting. His botanical travels took him through
Assam and Burmah and the Khasia mountains : as surgeon he accompanied
an embassy to Bhutan, and the army which invaded Afghanistan in 1838 and
the following years. Appointed to Malacca, he was recalled to Calcutta
(1842-4) to take charge of the Botanical Gardens and lecture to the medical
students during Wallich's absence : on his return to Malacca he fell ill and
died.

In making his collections he aimed not at species hunting but at giving a
general account of the Indian flora on a geographical basis : in his botanical
studies he was more of a morphologist than a systematist, and as an accurate
and penetrating investigator of plant life, and especially of the problems of re-
production, he was expected by competent judges to have taken the highest
place as a botanist had he not been cub off at the age of thirty-five.

THE CALCUTTA GAEDEN 285

the Gardens, out of which he will be turned in a day or two,
to return to Europe (his service time having expired) or take
military duties, which are disagreeable to a man of his age
and long civil servitude. The expenses of the publications
are defrayed by the E.I.C. taking 250 copies ; the proceeds
of the sale of the remainder he generously puts by, as a fund
for the orphan boy : this is very noble ; and every one
says so.'

Of the actual MSS. and drawings on which he was at work
Hooker, who lent his help, writes more enthusiastically : * I
am perfectly amazed at Griffith's powers. His exertions were
all but superhuman and he was a far better artist than I had
supposed.' The misfortune was that they were being given to
the world as they stood, the drawings beautifully lithographed,
but with many flaws in the descriptions and unelucidated by
proper notes which the pious editor could have added.

A full description of the Garden goes to Sir William.
McLelland had improved it by clearance of jungle, road cut-
ting, and rearrangement ; but without system and judgment,
sacrificing noble trees and a thousand fine features without
satisfactory result. He failed in his endeavour to turn the
Garden into a botanical class book. Though scientifically
brilliant, Griffith before him had not the eye of a landscape
gardener nor the education of a horticulturist, and the whole
establishment had been suffered to get out of order for the
last dozen years. ' The Library is in dreadful confusion, just
as Wallich left it, and the Herbarium worse.' Still, ' Falconer
has, after all, a much easier job than you had at Kew.'

Later he tells how he had written to his friend Falconer
giving his notion of what the Garden should be, and wonder-
ing how he took it, as it amounted to the annihilation of all
Griffith and McLelland had done.

This included the laying out of a good river front, the
re-plotting of the systematically arranged garden, with pro-
vision of shade and shelter from the fierce sun for plants and
visitors alike, above all in the thirty acres outside the house,
consisting of dried up grass and red gravel paths all askew,
where to go out of the house is going out of the frying-pan

236 THE VOYAGE TO INDIA

on to the gridiron ; * I used to hop along like a bear on hot
bricks till I reached the remains of the mahogany grove, some
200 yards off or more." He winds up to his father with some
fun on the blending of the popular and the scientific.

Lastly, there is room (and to spare) around the garden
for a good arboretum and pleasure ground. McLelland
encourages Music, Dancers, fish bones, and orange peel, so
that the place looks at times more like Alger's booth at
Greenwich Fair, the Cremorne Gardens, or Baron Nathan's
Elysium at Gravesend, than a place for profit and instruction.
I am sure, if good Lord Morpeth saw what I have, it would
be a profitable sight. I declared to McLelland, he ought
either to confine this to a pleasure ground or lead the first
hops and hob and nob on gin and water himself with chocolate-
colored damsels in boots and large ankles, that ogle himself
and myself on our scientific vocations. As it is, he is often
asked to join, and bring Mrs. McLelland to the picnic and
Polka. Whatever you do, never let the Pleasure ground open
into the garden.

The rest of his time was divided between trying to finish
off the Niger Flora in time to be sent home by the February
mail, together with instructions as to the remaining illus-
trations to be drawn for the Niger Flora,1 and preparations
for his first botanical expedition.

1 These instructions are characteristic of his outlook on Distribution.
Certain orders had been assigned to Planchon, the Kew assistant, to prepare for
publication. Hooker writes : ' Please see that he r.lludes to species in too bad
a state to describe, at the end of the genus : or if the genus be unknown, of the
order to which they belong ; this is essential for Botanical Geography, and
he won't do it if not told.'

CHAPTEK XII

JOURNEY TO THE KYMOBE HILLS

TRAVEL to the Himalaya was still impossible for a couple of
months ; the interval was employed in a botanical excursion
to the little explored hills of south-west Bengal, which culminate
in the Vindhya range further west, and to the valley of the
Soane, a southern tributary of the Ganges some 300 miles
from Calcutta. This is reached by the Grand Trunk Road
to Benares, seventy miles further on, which passes on its way
from Calcutta the Burdwan coal-field and the sacred mountain
Parasnath.

Another coal-field was reported higher up the Soane river ;
Mr. Williams, of the Geological Survey, was proceeding from
Burdwan to investigate it. Hooker arranged to join his
travelling camp on January 28, after a sixty hours' journey in a
wearisome palkee, and from the upper Soane valley traverse
the Kymore or Bind Hills to Mirzapore, above Benares
(March 8-15), then to take boat down the Ganges to Bhagulpore
(April 5-8), and finally by palkee from Caragola Ghat, some
thirty miles further down the river, to Darjiling, some 140
miles, which was reached on April 16.

On the way he collected everything that the dry season
produced in an elevated district which surprised him by its
signs of constant dryness. Even when sailing down the
Ganges he experienced a gale and blinding dust-storm, swept
up from the boundless alluvial plains of the river valley.

So dry is the wind that drops of water vanish like magic.
What Cryptogamiae could stand the transition from parching

237

238 JOUENEY TO THE KYMORE HILLS

like this to the three months' flood of Midsummer, when
the country for miles will be under water ?

The specimens he so arranged as to present a good illus-
trative Flora of the whole Road, gaining finally * a knowledge
of the look of whole botanical regions which, however poor in
species, are highly instructive in other points.' From before
daylight every day, he was hard at work ; but the fatiguing
lack of a collector had its compensations.

My specimens are well dried ; this is no difficulty, with a
little trouble, at this season : three changings drying the
majority : the difficulty is to prevent their drying too fast,
yet, would you believe it ? Wallich's and Griffith's plant
driers were in the habit of pressing once in paper, and then
spreading all out in the sun : no wonder their specimens are
so contortuplicate.

Detailed letters home were deferred, but he kept a full journal,
corresponded with the Governor-General and Mr. Colvile,1
President of the Asiatic Society, to which his meteorological
observations were communicated. Of these the most remark-
able was on the night of February 14,

when, on going out at 9 P.M., I saw the finest Aurora, on
the whole, that I ever witnessed, either N. or S. This is
a phenomenon supposed to be so rare in or near the
Tropics, that it kept me up till past midnight observing and
describing.

This account met with a good deal of incredulity ; the sceptics
ascribed it to forest fires, the appearance of which would be
very different to an observer so long accustomed to the Aurora.
Grievously as he grudged the time, he wrote an immediate

1 Sir James William Colvile (1810-80), an Indian law}Ter and sociologist,
who, like Sir L. Peel, was knighted on being raised to the Bench in 1848 — he
was Chief Justice of Bengal from 1855 — and on his return to England was
appointed Indian Assessor to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He
was distinguished for his knowledge of Indian systems of law and of scientific
and economic questions affecting India, and was President of the Asiatic Society
of Bengal.

AN AUEOEA IN INDIA 239

account of the Aurora to Wheatstone.1 Eef erring to this the
following year he tells his father :

I thought I had said enough of the Aurora, and was only
afraid of troubling you with too much unbotanical matter
for the Journal ; besides I did not consider that phenomenon
to be so very wonderful as to cause surprise — much less
argument. The sceptics may content themselves with
* tant pis pour le fait ' ; it required no witchcraft to pro-
nounce upon the display which I beheld ; and, in such a
country as India, where every Englishman eats a heavy
dinner at 8 and goes to bed at 10, it is not astonishing that
these spectacles have been hitherto unobserved. I suppose
I should be snubbed for averring that I have seen others
since, and in the daytime.

Meantime he is able to assure his parents ' I am in perfect
health and enjoying myself exceedingly.* He spared them the
anxiety of knowing what he told Darwin (p. 246) that he
still felt the results of his rheumatic fever at Madeira nearly
nine years before.

His examination of the Burdwan coal fossils threw no
material light on the question of their age, a question which,
he tells Darwin, is no less perplexing there than at home.
Others boldly assigned most of them to the Lower Oolitic epoch
of England, from the prevalence of certain species, also found
in Sind and Australia. In his cautious judgment the evidence
was insufficient ; the form of the fronds alone, especially in
fossil fragments, supplied frail characters for specific identifi-
cation ; considering that * the botanical evidences which
geologists too often accept as proofs of specific identities are
such as no botanist would attach any importance to in the
investigation of existing plants.' Eecent ferns were so widely
distributed that inspection generally gave no clue to their
place of origin, and considering the wide difference in latitude
and longitude of Yorkshire, India, and Australia, the natural
conclusion is that they could not have supported a similar

1 Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-75), the famous discoverer and inventor
in the fields of acoustics, optics, and electricity, to whom we owe the practical
foundations of telegraphy.

240 JOUENEY TO THE KYMOEE HILLS

vegetation at the same epoch. And he cites the Cycads especi-
ally (Himalayan Journals, i. 8) in support of the statement that,

finding similar fossil plants at places widely different in lati-
tude, and hence in climate, is, in the present state of our
knowledge, rather an argument against than for their having
existed contemporaneously.

Later (p. 44) he insists on the point again, contrasting his own
difficulty in identifying the impressions of living leaves in
the lime- deposits of a spring, with the fact that geologists,
unskilled in botany, see no difficulty in referring equally
imperfect remains of extinct vegetables to existing genera.

The ascent of Parasnath, the sacred mountain of the Jains,
was of vivid interest :

We went thither on two elephants with a blanket cart and
some provisions ; but the jungle was so dense, the elephants
having to break away the branches of the trees with their
trunks, that we did not arrive till 2 P.M. I got many plants
on the route, the elephant getting several inaccessible species
for me. You will hardly believe that a well- wooded mountain
of (reputed) 7000 feet (but I expect only 5000) could rise out
of India all but within the Tropics, and present neither Palm,
Tree-Fern, Lycopodium, Scitamineous, Aroid, Piperaceous
plant or Orchid-epiphyte of any consequence. No moss or
Hepatica below 4000 feet, on trunk or rock, no foliaceous
Lichen below that, and scarcely above, and not one fleshy
Fungus. Such, however, is the parching effect of the N.W.
dry winds, that the soil throughout is crumbly and the
Cryptogs. at top, consisting of a few crust-Lichens and mosses
(no Hepaticae seen), are withered and brown and covered
with a Selaginella equally dead.

There are six tops to Paras-nath, rising from a curved
ridge, all very steep and rocky, and each crowned with a
platform and little white Temple, of the size of your Temple
of Victory. There is, besides, a large temple, a little below
the ridge on the N. face, sunk in a hollow, very picturesque,
square with a large dome and four spires at the angles. All
are neatly covered with white lime. In the little apical ones
I was surprised to find a slab of stone with the feet of Boodh
engraved in relief, whilst the larger had many marble slabs,

PAKASNATH 241

each with multitudes of little cross-legged Boodhs. My mind
was at once carried back to Adam's Peak in Ceylon, and the
high places of the N. of India, where Boodhism and not
Hinduism prevails, where the less impure form of Heathen
worship has taken refuge. Idol worship as it is, it was
gratifying to find it taking possession of this lovely spot, to
the exclusion of the abominations of Brahminism, which
shock the eye as much as the senses.

The three weeks' leisurely sail down the river had a double ad-
vantage. He could stop where he would to see things of interest,
such as the manufacture of rose-water at Ghazipore or the opium
works at Patna ; and he had time, most grievously needed,
to write up his notes, journal, and correspondence, though
the boat, externally very like a floating haystack or thatched
cottage, internally became too much of a Noah's Ark for his
liking, what with rats that mounted the table and stared him
in the face, cockroaches of indomitable courage which ' take
the crumbs off the side of my plate with the familiarity of Eobin
Kedbreast, withdrawing but not retreating on my remon-
strating,' and insects in swarms from mosquitos to the flying
bug, which is no better than a winged skunk in petto, not to
mention centipedes and monstrous spiders, a hand's spread
across, darting about as if they had seven-leagued boots on
each of their eight legs.

For the Kew Museum he was indefatigable in collecting
vegetable products used in the arts, notably a pair of smelting
bellows made entirely of leaves, and all the gums and drugs
procurable, with the Hindu name transliterated, whenever
possible, in English and Persian characters. With 250 of
these already in hand he exclaims :

The number of things still to be got at every market is
infinite : and I shall go on amassing ; but I have been only
two months here now, and cannot bargain properly — it also
takes a great deal of time.

This was not merely the passion for collecting ; it had a
very practical bearing, and the view of Hooker's work is incom-
plete without remembering that the practical applications of
his science were as interesting to him as pure research. And

242 JOUKNEY TO THE KYMOEE HILLS

/•.

even the forthcoming expedition to the rich botanical fields
of Sikkim included the hope of discovering a trade route to
Tibet if the result of war with China were to be the opening
up of direct relations with the Forbidden Land, still under
Chinese suzerainty.

At the same time the personal friendship with Lord Dal-
housie enabled him to send in a memorial regarding the ex-
cessive cost of postage and travel, the destruction of timber,
and the need of drawing up a good Indian Materia Medica.

Further extracts from letters to his aunt Ellen (Mrs.
Jacobson), and to his sister Elizabeth, give some lively impres-
sions of Oriental travel.

To Mrs. Jacobson

I often think of my cousins, little Willie and Mary, when
perched on the top of my elephant ; or when I am struck by
the peculiarities of this far foreign land. Many things are
interesting, through their novelty : others are of a deeply
melancholy nature, too much so to be pleasing. The elephant
is always an agreeable animal ; he is so docile and gentle,
when properly tamed ; and though to ride on a pad on his
back is somewhat akin to being tossed in a blanket, one soon
becomes accustomed to the motion. Every morning, after
he has breakfasted heartily on a stone and a half, or two
stone, of boiled rice, relished with large boughs of Fig-trees,
the elephant is led to my tent to be mounted. A little active
Mohammedan driver sits on his broad neck, and directs his
movements by poking his own toes behind either ear, accord-
ing to the way he desires to turn the beast. He carries a
goad, a short spear of iron, which he sticks into the poor
elephant's head, if lazy, or inflicts a pat with it which would
lay Willy's skull open. When the order is issued to * butt,1
elephant drops on his knees ; and I climb up, by getting on a
hoof and holding by the tail, or with ropes. Or I accom-
plish the ascent by stepping upon a tusk and gripping at the
broad ear. At the word of command, he rises, and walks
off, at the rate of 6-8 miles an hour, his broad hoofs crushing
the soft soil as he boldly tramps along. If the road be
stony, he picks his way with great care, placing the hind
hooHn the exact place from which he has lifted the fore one :
he is^a tender -footed beast, and cannot travel far or fast upon

AN ELEPHANT STOEY 243

rocky ground. As the heat of the day increases, he drinks
at every stream ; drawing up the water in his trunk and then
putting his long proboscis down his throat, he deposits the
fluid in a bag near the stomach, which it takes ten minutes
to fill. When this natural water bottle is replenished, the
elephant walks on, — every quarter of an hour or thereabouts,
poking his trunk down his throat, drawing it out and squirting
its contents all over his body to cool himself, for the hot sun
beats strongly on his black carcase. Of course I come in
for an ample share of his shower-bath, which, as it sprinkles
my spectacles, is not desirable. So much for the elephant's
fashion of cooling himself by day, and he is not a whit less
clever at expedients for retaining his warmth during the
' chill dewy night ' : he scrapes up, with this view, all the dust
he can collect with his foot and trunk, and aided by the
curious crozier-like coil at the end of the latter, he dexterously
jerks the earth all over himself, so preventing the evaporation
from his skin which would make him too cold at night. When
crossing rivers, he pulls some carts across and pushes others
through the deep sand with his broad forehead. After one
morning's work my poor beast had a lump on his brow, as large
as a child's head, raw and bloody at top ; but all of us had to
work so hard that we could not excuse him, and it was
touching to see the docile creature lay his expansive brow
obliquely to the back of the waggon, first by one temple
then by the other, stoop and try with his soft trunk to move
the load and avoid the sore place — till, finding all was useless,
he gallantly planted the sore bump, and with a short cry of
pain, he thrust on, and persevered till all the waggons were
fairly over, though aware that every time he lifted his head
and set it to the work again, the same suffering must be
endured. So, when he has to remove a thorny tree from the
path, if he cannot find a smooth part of the trunk, he boldly
grasps it, thorns and all, tears it up and lays it on one side.
If I drop anything, hat or book, he picks it up with his trunk
and adroitly tosses it over his head into my lap. The other
day I went to a fair, in the heart of a remote district, and dis-
mounting, went through the whole show. Ifc was just like
Glasgow or Greenwich Fair, except that, as in all Eastern
and some Western countries, the trades were drawn together
in lines. There were children, with trumpets and squeaks,
merry-go-rounds and rocking-chairs. The little girls were

244 JOUENEY TO THE KYMOKE HILLS

decking themselves with trinkets and patches of gold leaf
for the forehead and pieces of bone thrust through the ear, —
the greedy boys were twitching their mothers to the lollipop
sellers, and the bigger ones eyeing the ponies on the outskirts.
Old men were chaffering for graven gods, and the sick folks
were waiting round the doctors' stalls. I was looking on,
followed by an immense trail of people whom my presence
had diverted from their traffic, when I suddenly heard a
fearful yell, which proceeded from the direction of the spot
where I had left my elephant, and casting my eyes thither,
I saw all about him in an uproar. The men were swearing
and flourishing their sticks, the women and children were in
full flight, the driver on his neck was banging him with the
goad till his skull rang again, or digging it into his forehead
till the blood sprang. As to Elephas himself, he would not
stir from the place, but kept laying about him with his
trunk, bellowing through mouth and nose, retreating or
advancing a step or two with fearful violence and continu-
ally darting his proboscis at some object, — what I knew not,
in the crowd. You may guess my terror : I felt sure he was
enraged and wreaking his violence on some of the poor
creatures from whom proceeded the dismal shrieks which I
heard ! I rushed through the throng, overturning some of
the stalls in my hurry to reach the place, — when I found —
what do you think, Willy ! now, guess, Mary ! — why my
elephant was clearing out a sweetmeat booth : he was eating
barley sugar by the pound, and comfits by the peck. I had
another anecdote for my cousins about a crocodile which I
saw caught, just as he had devoured a poor woman's child
who was standing by and looking at the odious brute ; but
my time is up and I must break off.

Meantime, his scientific and personal standing in India
was greatly enhanced by the publication of Ross's account of
the Antarctic Voyage.

You have no idea how many people in this country have
been reading Boss's work ; I am better received in India
for having accompanied that voyage, than ever I was on
that account in England. Every individual with whom
I have stayed, on my way up and down the Ganges, has
read it ! and knows me through it ! ... On this table in
this house [of Dr. Grant of Bhagulpore] lies the N. British

INFOEMATION FOE DAEWIN 245

Review, containing an article on Eoss's Voyage, written, I
suspect, by Sir D. Brewster. There is the most flaming
flattery in it of my share in the book — especially the chapter
on Cattle Hunting. Pray tell my mother of this : (I suspect
I must be a sort of humbug after all). My Journal shall be
copied and sent, as soon as I can get settled : for I know you
want it. You may easily suppose that, surrounded with
plants to dry, information of every kind to secure, &c., a
Griffin, like myself, has his hands sufficiently full of occupa-
tion. I try hard to understand everything as I go on, —
but I am sorry to find the attempt is hopeless !

But people were not to be persuaded that an Indian hill
storm which he describes to his sister Elizabeth could be inferior
to an Antarctic storm.

Though more tremendous looking from the thunder and
lightning, it was not so strong as many S. Polar squalls
I have felt. People won't believe that here, and so I say
nothing about it.

A double letter to Darwin (February 20, and March 4 and 16,
1848) which opens with the words, ' Though our correspondence
has not ebbed so low for full four years, you have been so
constantly in my thoughts that it appears far from strange to
be writing to you,' and ends with * love to the children/ is too
long to quote in full. It answers many questions on which
«Darwin had asked him to obtain information ; e.g. on the habits
of the Cheetah and the way in which it is used in hunting and
its curious refusal to hunt more than one season ; on the exten-
sion of different species, where he finds an apparently undefined
rule ; the Soane, for instance, in the case of the antelopes and
the gaur, in providing a line of demarcation, like the Obi in
Siberia, which Humboldt, when Hooker visited him in 1845,
adduced as * dividing two Botanical regions, and (being) one
of the strong arguments against the migration of plants, as
large rivers do not in other cases prevent what is considered
migration.' So of elephants, dogs, cattle, squirrels, swallows,
saurians ; the desiccation by destruction of forests ; local
geology : in short, ' I am perfectly bewildered by the facts
hourly thrown before me, whose importance I can scarce
appreciate from my ignorance of Indian natural history ;

VOL. i . R

246 JOUENEY TO THE KYMORE HILLS

all I can do now is to attempt to collect those relating to the
larger or more common animals.'
However,

As in other parts > of the world, so here, almost all the
animals of the plains will descend ; this is a common observa-
tion, but it never struck me before coming to India, that in
this respect height is not analogous to Latitude ; for most of
the animals and man himself accommodate themselves rather
to an increase of temperature than a diminution. Thus the
Englishman, horse, dog, sheep, &c. &c., all thrive in India ;
but the monkey, man, Bhil, and all the other common
tropical animals, are incapable of supporting colder climate,
dependent on latitude.

I will give you but one botanical fact, and that is re-
garding the vegetation of heights. You have often asked
if Mts., especially isolated ones, in the tropical and S.
lat., had closely allied representations of Asiatic or N.
temperate forms ; now I have been up but one eminence,
and that of no more than some 5000 feet, and there I found
a Barberry in abundance, and one not unlike our English
and (I may say) one smaller Cape Horn species ; but one
more fact of a different value — do you remember the allusion
to Vallisneria in your grandfather's ' Bot. Gard.' ? I have
found what I take to be a second or new species of the genus
in the waters of the Soane, with the same wonderful habits :
without books, however, and a limited memory, I rather
talk at random about new species.

With regard to my health, it is exactly the same : I am
still troubled at times with those bothering pains on the left
side and palpitations, aching in the axilla and occasionally
down the arm. The motions of the heart are on these
occasions very irregular, but I have no ringing in the ears,
shortness of breath, or any symptoms that alarmed me.
Hot or cold days make no difference, and indeed I had a
long cessation of all pains for three weeks after my arrival,
that I thought the hot weather had cured me. Whatever
it is I am none the worse of being here, otherwise I never had
better health, am thinking of getting fat, and hardly know
what a headache is. Please do not show this part of my
letter, as this refers to a subject of which my friends know
nothing.

CHAPTEK XIII

TO DARJILING I THE FIRST HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

IT was a weary journey by palki from the Ganges to Darjiling.
Whole days were wasted in trying to secure bearers. Fre-
quently none were ready though arranged for with the Post,
and those who had already come a stage were obdurate to
' praying, promising, and protesting, bribing and bullying.'
Once Hooker had to walk while the men carried the empty
palki till they met certain return bearers of a previous party.
' People may say what they like/ he exclaims feelingly to Miss
Henslow (April 9, 1848), ' about the " mild Hindoo " and all
that sort of thing ; they have their good points, but being led
by kindness or generous treatment is not amongst them ; they
never thank you and, overpay as much as you like, they growl.
Highlanders cannot be worse.'

At Darjiling began a new phase of life in India, and with it
a deep and lifelong friendship with a very remarkable character.
Brian Hodgson, administrator and scholar, had won equal fame
as Eesident at the court of Nepal and as a student of Oriental
lore. Known to English science as the best Indian zoologist
and the donor of the Hodgson natural history collection at the
British Museum, he was yet ' far better known as an Oriental
linguist, Ethnologist, and Geographer/ Dismissed from his
responsible post against the wish alike of the Nepalese and the
Government officials by the petulance of Lord Ellenborough,1

xThe Earl of Ellenborough (1790-1871) was Governor- General of India
1842-44, in succession to Lord Auckland, after twice being President of the
Board of Control. By the irony of fate, his purpose being ' to restore peace
to Asia,' he spent his time waging wars of punishment against China and
Afghanistan and of annexation against Scinde. His unpopularity with all
classes except the army was due to his vast self-sufficiency and disregard for
others' feelings and interests.

247

248 TO DAEJILING: FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

' in one of that nobleman's absurd fits of determination
to undo everything, good or bad, which Lord Auckland
had done,' he had retired in bad health to this lonely eyrie
on the edge of the mountain world he knew so well, in close
touch with the Asiatic travellers from the Buddhist cities of
Tibet.

In Hooker he found a kindred spirit, a personality that
inspired confidence, and he placed himself under Hooker's
medical care as well as admitting him to his intimacy. From
June 1848 Hodgson's house was his home. It stood a good
800 feet above Hooker's first residence, Mr. Barnes' house,
' and like Olympian Jove, I am daily surrounded with the
clouds,' for the rains had * fairly set in, and it sometimes pours
for eight, ten, and, I am assured it will, for fifty or sixty hours
consecutively.' 1 He enjoyed its retirement, the opportunities
for uninterrupted scientific work, the personal charm of his
host, and the mine of information on all things Indian ever at
his disposal.

We are working together every evening [he tells his
mother on June 23] at Himalayan and Thibetan Geography
and Nat. Hist., and though I say it myself, it is true that
I ought in a month or two to have a better knowledge
of these aspects of India than any man, having every
advantage that an excellent library and tutor can afford.
We are now arranging a sketch by which to divide the
range into natural sections [i.e. divided into districts by the
watersheds from the Monster peaks], each of which will bear
some illustrations from personal experience and books, and
this ground plan will do for others to work upon. ... I am
determined I will not leave off working till I have gained a
thorough knowledge of the subject. [And again] : Hodgson
' is a capital helper,' and this stay with him ' the very best
chance for me that could have occurred.'

1 ' Hodgson's house is on a hill and amongst many other hills all heavily
timbered, with plants through the wood and lots of new plants close to the
door. It is a one-storied house with a broad verandah all round, facing North
and the Snowy Mountains. I have two good rooms besides the run of the
dining-room and parlour. There are lots of servants to go and come as I
please to call or send, cats innumerable, and more " Bishop Barnabees " than at
Kew, and exactly like them. (To his sister Elizabeth, August 9, 1848.)

BEIAN HODGSON 249

Experience of such friendship inspires him to write home
of * Hodgson, who shows me all the attachment and affection
of a brother, and whom I shall always regard as one of my
dearest friends on earth,' and later, hoping that his friend
would leave Darjiling, which did not agree with him, and
go to England in the autumn of 1849, exclaims, * I am
so anxious you should all know him.' He allows that
Hodgson was too proud and haughty, but never towards
himself. He had lived too long with the power of a prince
in his hand not to acquire something of a prince's out-
look. The sensitiveness of ill-health, added to absorption
in keen intellectual interests, helped to render him impa-
tient of the chatter of a small station, and thus he was not
disposed to suffer pettinesses gladly.

He is said to quarrel with every one, and in truth is as
proud a man as I ever met, but we have always got on
comfortably, and as we live like brothers our quarrelling
would be absurd. We have a tiff now and then, but very
rarely. [And July 19 ]: He and I live like hermits, and
hardly ever see anybody but Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and the
Miiller brothers.1

But he opened out at once to a kindred spirit, forestalling
every wish before it could be uttered, and what is more, seeing
to it that every promised arrangement should be carried out,
to Hooker's great relief, during the privations of his journey in
Sikkim. Like a prince he gave ; with a prince's pride he shrank
from any appearance of a return for friendship's favours. In
this mood indeed at first he even declined to let Hooker name
after him the finest of the new rhododendrons discovered in
Sikkim.

If the friendship with Lord Dalhousie provided the key that
opened official barriers and made Hooker's journeyings possible,
the friendship with Hodgson more than anything else made them
a practical success.

i These bachelor brothers were here for their health ; one being the head of
the opium factory at Patna, and both interested in science. They gave Hooker
every help in their power, and in particular reduced all his meteorological
observations for him.

250 TO DARJILING : FIKST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

The other friendship here cemented was with Dr. Campbell,
the Political Agent to Sikkim.

He is well versed in all Tibetan and Frontier affairs ;
he has given me much information on these subjects, and
on the vegetations of the countries beyond the snow, which
he has learned from the Thibetans who came hither through
the snowy passes (April 28).

Warm, hearty, and helpful as he was, he was not the grand
seigneur or professed scholar like Hodgson, nor did he equally
possess that fine imagination which would outrun an ordinary
welcome, or ensure perfect diplomatic goodwill in the Sikkimese
representatives with whom he had to deal. Moreover in his
official dealings he had had many small rubs from the Calcutta
Government, so that he was at first shy of pushing Hooker's
wishes as he for his own part would willingly have done. Thus
friendship with him took longer to establish, but was drawn
close long before their joint experience of travel and captivity
in Sikkim.

The charm of his home at Darjiling was completed by Mrs.
Campbell and ' her beautiful children ; for the little creatures
have taken a vast fancy for " Hooker doctor," who gives them
sweetmeats, and who rides " the naughty pony." To them
Hooker was devoted, and to Josephine, born while he and Dr.
Campbell were still prisoners in Sikkim, he stood godfather.
This friendship also was lifelong, and is prettily illustrated
in a letter to Sir William Hooker dated July 19, 1848 :

I wrote and told him this morning that I would ask you
to confirm the name of a Khododendron on his wife, a little
compliment that has touched him to the quick ; he is very
much attached to his wife, and I really never saw a man so
heartily appreciate a trifling favor. Now pray don't forget
to attach the name to one of the species sent if the one I
have given it to be not new. With regard to all the names,
pray alter them as you please or name the plants yourself
altogether. I have no ambition that way now, and would
indeed rather see your initial at their tails than my own,
but, I beseech you, don't forget this MacCallum Morae [for
Mrs. Campbell].

THE HIMALAYAN OBJECTIVE 251 •

The supreme objective of the Himalayan journey was to
reach the snows. Between these and the deep, humid valleys
of the lower Sikkim lay a whole botanical world, with a range
equal to that from the tropics to the pole. There also lay the
secret of the Himalayan geography. It was still generally
believed that the vast line of snow peaks on the northern
horizon formed a continuous ridge, the axis of the chain and
the water-parting between India and the Tibetan plateau, in-
stead of being but bastions at the southern end of cross ridges
projecting from the true dividing range. From one of the
icy passes in this region traversed by the traders from Lhassa
there would be the possibility perhaps of entering, at least of
surveying, the forbidden land and determining in this quarter
the elevation of the great central plateau.

Travel itself would not be easy. The rude paths, alter-
nately plunging into deep valleys and scaling precipitous moun-
tain spurs 5000 feet or more, only to descend again, were con-
stantly liable to destruction by torrential rains and mile-long
landslides ; rushing streams had to be forded or crossed on
frail bridges of swinging bamboo. Forests where a way had
to be pushed or hacked through dense vegetation pestilent
with leeches and noxious insects, would be exchanged for
bare rocky denies at breathless altitudes where only a few
poverty-stricken herdsmen lived and where the Indian carriers
suffered from the fierce winds and freezing nights. But the
greatest difficulty arose from the political situation. No place
could be better than Darjiling for acquiring information from
native travellers, but as regards permission for a European
to travel, he writes on April 28 :

I fear that even Lord Dalhousie's influence will not enable
me to accomplish my wish of visiting the snows. I have
written to him, however, on the subject.

The much involved situation is set forth in a letter to Lady
Hooker, June 10, 1848 :

My prospects of visiting the snow are somewhat faint.
The Sikkim Eajah, whose territories were once the prey of
the Nepalese, was replaced on his throne by us, who thus

252 TO DAEJILING : FIRST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

kept the warlike Ghurkas from over-running Bhotan ;
unluckily we did not demand even a nominal tribute from
the Eajah, who at once fell under the influence of China,
whose policy it is to rule the Councils and hearts, but not the
people, of these three Border powers ; and by teaching them
a wholesome dread of the English, they exclude the latter
from these several States and prevent our interfering with
the Chinese Trade from the East into Thibet. Darjeeling
is a narrow slip of land, running north into the heart of
Sikkim, about halfway to the snow. It was bought from the
Eajah to be a Sanatorium for sick Europeans (as Simla,
Mussoorie, Nainee-Tal, Almorah, &c. &c.). We paid 3000
rupees for the freehold, stipulating also that merchants
should have a right to trade to Sikkim, but made no agree-
ment of the sort for travellers, surveyors, or any other class
of people, whom the saucy Eajah excludes from his kingdom.
Had we acted with any vigour in our policy, we might still
have retained our power over the Eajah ; but I look upon
the conduct of the local Government of Calcutta and the
Political Eesident here as weak to a degree and prejudicial
to the interest of the country. The Eajah, who has not a
soldier to his name, refused to allow the Survey or- General
(a man whose Indian power and appointments would astonish
an Englishman) to visit a mountain twenty miles from
hence, and not only the Survey or- General J3ut the Govern-
ment who applied for him, 6nly granting it when Col. Waugh,1
disgusted with both the Eajah and Government, went (as
I did a few days ago) without* the permission of either.
I have explained all this to Lord Dalhousie and asked
him to send me to the snow, whether the Eajah likes it or
not ; offering to be the means of making any overtures to
that Prince, which may render my mission less unacceptable
than the appearance of any Eeringhi must be. Dr. Campbell,
the Political Eesident, recommended that the Eajah should
be asked, knowing as well as I and Lord D. do that, though
the Eajah dares not refuse, he does dare to withhold an

i Sir Andrew Scott Waugh (1810-78), knighted 1861, reached India in 1829
as a lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers, and in 1832 joined the great trigono-
metrical survey, in which he distinguished himself so much that the surveyor-
general, Everest, when he retired in 1843, obtained his nomination as successor
to that important office, though still only a subaltern. Waugh gave the name
of his old chief to the Himalayan peak Devidanga, which proved to be the
highest in the world.

SIKKIM POLITICS 253

answer, and thus place our Government in the quandary of
putting up with an insult or sending me with an armed
force. Such is the Eajah's dread of 'the English, that he
declined receiving an Ambassador, laden with English
presents ; and when the hot-headed Colonel Lloyd (who
bargained for Darjeeling) hunted him like a hare to strike
the bargain in person, he would only meet him with a river
between. In pushing my own way there is nothing to
apprehend but the lack of provisions ; the Eajah is too weak
even to put a traveller in confinement as China does, and
too much afraid of England ; but he can withhold supplies
and frighten your servants. Hence all my wanderings have
been hitherto only so far distances as I could carry provender
for myself and the men, and through the least inhabited
parts of the country. Towards the snow the country is
more populous, the convents, nunneries, and villages are
numerous (though small), and the people (Bhoteas) are a
disagreeable and morose race, immigrants from the East
into Sikkim. What Lord Dalhousie may do I know not.
Elliot,1 the Secretary to Government, proposes the using
* douce violence ' with the Eajah, and insisting that he
shall behave like a friendly power, but this view cannot be
supported in Council. My own conviction is that, if the
Eajah allowed me to visit the snowy Passes, China would
punish him, not ostensibly but indirectly, and the only
profitable part of his revenue is derived from Darjeeling
(which did not yield him 200 rupees when we bought it),
and a property called Chumbi in Thibet, which he rents
from China, and which is a fruitful place yielding turnips,
radishes, and Pine-wood ! To proceed with Oriental crooked
policy, Sir Herbert Haddock, Governor of Bengal during
Lord Hardinge's 2 absence, in a fit of spleen assumed that
the rent which the Eajah received for Darjeeling, 3000

1 Sir Henry Miers Elliot (1808-53) entered the E.I.C. service in 1826,
and became Secretary to the Governor-General in Council for Foreign Affairs in
1847. With Lord Dalhousie, after the Sikh War, he negotiated the treaty with
the Sikh chiefs for the settlement of the Punjaub and Gujerat, receiving the
K.C.B. (1849). His valuable historical work dealt especially with India in
Mohammedan times.

2 Sir Henry Hardinge (1785-1856) was the Peninsular veteran and later
Secretary at War, so highly esteemed by Wellington, and was Governor-
General of India between ElleDborough and Dalhousie (1844-8). At the
conclusion of the First Sikh War, he was created Viscount Hardinge of
Lahore.

254 TO DAEJILING : PIEST HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

rupees, was too little. He attacked Dr. Campbell, the
Political •. Resident, for allowing the poor Prince to be so
shabbily" treated by England, voted the 3000 to be doubled,
without any sufficient reason, and did this without even
stipulating that the Rajah shall behave more civilly to
Europeans. Campbell, who ought to have flung the repri-
mand back in the Governor's teeth and complained of the
unjust treatment to the Board, took it all quietly, doubled
the Rajah's revenue, and thus threw away a fulcrum which
would have moved the Himalayan to within our reach.
The Rajah is consequently more persuaded than ever of our
foolishness and desire to take over his valued kingdom (of
which we would not accept the gift). Is it not incredible
that a man can be so weak as to fear the very power which
placed him on his throne and to this day maintains him
thereon from the being trisected, as Poland was, by the
Goorkhas, Bhotanese, and Thibetans, any one of which would
swallow him up in an hour ? Lord D. has plenty of time now
to think "of the affair as I cannot go till October, the
rains;; and the unhealthiness of the intervening valleys both
precluding the attempt.

Six months passed before Sikkirn, after repeated refusals,
conceded a reluctant assent to the direct demands of the
Governor- General. The chief expedition through Sikkim
took place in the following year, albeit hampered by the
obstructive devices of the Rajah's Dewan, which were suc-
cessively overcome by Hooker's good-humoured firmness and
amusing bluff.

But the partial permission for the autumn of 1848, followed
by efforts to take away with the left hand what had been
granted by the right, brought indirectly a still greater triumph.
Thanks to the goodwill of the famous Jung Bahadur, Nepaul
opened her eastern valleys to the traveller, and the Ghurka
escort, disgusted by the petty machinations of the Sikkimese
to prevent Hooker from ever reaching the northerly point at
which he was to enter Nepaul, undertook to lead him the whole
way through their own territory to the Tibetan Passes on
the west of the Kinchinjunga group, through country never
before and never since traversed by any European.

NO TEAVEL BOOK IN PEOSPECT 255

In the meantime Hooker was busy in other directions.
' If it were not for the Greenock-like climate/ he writes on
April 28, ' this would be a very fine place, and I enjoy it much,
for the vegetation is truly superb.' His new occupations were
at first hindered by the necessity of completing the piece of
unfinished work for his father, which he had brought with him
from England.

This was the Niger Flora, of which he sent home the first
part on May 18, the remainder on July 19. This was the only
piece of work outstanding in regard to which he felt a personal
claim ; the rest could fairly be completed after his return,
and so, when the way seemed clear for his journey to the
Himalayan snows, he writes (September 12) with perfect
unconcern :

I saw that Lindley gave me a touch for travelling on my
own pleasure while my Flora Antarctica is unfinished ; to
which I can say Pooh !

Indeed, to the end of his stay in India; he had no
thought of writing a book of travels or working out his non-
botanical observations. This he repeats to Wallich in 1850
as he had written to his father in February 1849, when
sending him the Ehododendron notes and specimens he had
brought back from the Sikkim-Nepal expedition. The future
decided otherwise.

Of them and of all my plants; MSS., and drawings, I
beg you to make whatever use you think proper. The
Flora Antarctica nearly broke my back ; and except the
Floras of New Zealand and Van Diemen's Land, I do not
contemplate any other such great work. My present
notion is to publish in the form of Icones, confining any
large and costly illustrations to a few Natural Orders or
Genera.1

In May, however, he took such opportunities as offered
during the early part of the rains for botanical excursions
near Darjilirig. Without awaiting formal leave, he made

1 For the success of the Rhododendron book, especially in India, see p. 326.

256 TO DARJILING : FIRST HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

' a very favourite and interesting trip ' by way of the cane
bridge over the Great Rungeet, eleven miles away, into a
deep, steamy valley admirably illustrating the successive
zones of vegetation from temperate to tropical, that clothed
the steep hillsides. The bridge itself was the British boundary ;
beyond lay Sikkim proper, where the Rajah somewhat ineffec-
tively threatened punishment to any who guided a European,
and where later Hooker's collectors going alone were maltreated
by the Dewan's orders. But the inhabitants and even the
Lamas, whose hostility had been represented as certain, were
in reality most friendly. Indeed, on his second trip seven
months later, the people brought supplies in embarrassing
superabundance.

In this direction Hooker went as far as the junction of the
Rungeet with the Teesta, and saw the mountains of Bhotan
towering up over against him.

The journey was, though not distant, a very difficult one,
from the impracticable nature of the country, and had been
accomplished by but one individual before ; which is, how-
ever, mainly owing to the laziness and want of curiosity of
the people, and the fact of the Rajah of Sikkim forbidding all
crossing the narrow bounds of Darjiling. [Among his spoils
were] three Bhododendrons, one scarlet, one white with superb
foliage, and one, the most lovely thing you can imagine ; a
parasite on gigantic trees, three yards high, with whorls of
branches, and 3-6 immense white, deliciously sweet-scented
flowers, at the apex of each branch. It is the most splendid
thing of the kind I have ever seen, and more delicate than
the others.

... I draw as many things as I possibly can, and send
them to Falconer for transmission to you : the three first
Magnolias, he tells me, are all new : two others I have not
sent down : the 3 Rhododendrons are all drawn, and about
40 other plants, somewhat rudely ; but they may give you
some idea of the plants.

As to his various collectors :

The Lepchas or mountaineers of Sikkim I like extremely.
I have two men who collect fairly and climb trees a merveille,

TO TONGLO 257

and to-day have added two boys of 8 and 14 or thereabouts ;
one a very fine little fellow. Falconer has sent me up every-
thing I asked for, including 3 Bengal collectors, regular Hay-
makers. I dislike the Bengalees very much ; and these are
lazy dogs, as all are. I shall astonish them to-morrow, when
they will have to travel some 15 miles through these woods.
One actually objected to carry the vasculum 6 miles, whilst a
Lepcha carries 80-100 Ibs. 16 miles on a stretch, and laughs
all day long.

In the same month, May 19, he went further afield with his
friend Mr. Barnes on what he considered the most interesting
trip to be made from Darjiling. This was to Tonglo, a mountain
10,000 feet high, in the long subsidiary range dividing Sikkim
from Nepaul, that runs south from Kinchin junga, the then
loftiest known peak in the world. Tonglo fronts Darjiling
on the west, a dozen miles away as the crow flies, thirty by
the path. The district was full of botanical treasures, the
extra 1000 feet ascended presenting a total change in the Mora,
but in the valley of the Little Kungeet the glories of the scarlet
vaccinium parasitic on the trees, of the great white rhododendron
named later after Lady Dalhousie, and of the tall magnolia
with shining foliage that was to bear Hodgson's name, were
sadly .dimmed by the swarms of the large tick from the bamboos
— ' a more hateful insect I have never encountered ' — and
the persistent leeches such as had already been met with
on the way up.

Unfortunately the bulkier things collected had to be left
behind. Owing to the ceaseless torrents of rain, five of his
fifteen men fell sick. Even the hardy Lepchas could not stand
wet and cold together, especially on their poor fare of fern-
tops, maize, rice, and whatever else they could get, from leaves
of Solanum and nettles to fungi, * which would give Klotzsch
or Berkeley *• the stomach-ache ' : in fact ' a vegetable must
be very bad to be acknowledged poisonous by .these people,
who may come under Sambo's definition of the genus Homo,
" an omnivorous tripod who [devours] all he can get." *

Still, what remained was ' a glorious collection,' making

1 These were both distinguished mycologists.

258 TO -DAKJILING : FIKST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

a pile six feet high in the drying papers. ' If I can only suc-
ceed/ he cries, ' in getting these glorious things to Kew, how
happy I shall be/

As to the^distribution of plants, these Himalayan valleys
presented a striking parallel to the Antarctic. In the humid
and equable climate of the latter, botanical orders which only
reached lat. 30° or 40° in the northern hemisphere, reached
Tasmania and New Zealand and even Cape Horn in 55° S.
So in Sikkim, where it was not dry enough for the Skimmia
in its native home to ripen the scarlet berries which light up our
English gardens, some tropical genera pushed abundantly into
the temperate zone, fostered by the damp and equable climate.

The general features of Himalayan botany he sums up
as follows (May 18, 1848) :

In travelling N. you come upon genus replacing genus,
Natural Order replacing Natural Order. In travelling E.
or W. (i.e. N.W. or S.E. along the ridges) you find species
replacing species, and this whether of animals or plants.
Don't forget to send this to Darwin.

On July 24 (the extracts being given in brackets) and
August 9 he writes :

The rapidity with which the flowering season is advancing
is quite wonderful, and I have accordingly doubled my estab-
lishment of collectors. I pay very liberally, often for trash,
and they all like to bring me things. They are capricious and
apt to run away if offended, but mine like me and I them,
and such fellows will do anything for a master. I have
always a horde of them in pay, at 8s. to 16s. a month. I
have 18 at this present moment, for the plants are flowering
and dying so rapidly that it takes all my energy to keep a good
collection up. The papers too have all to be changed daily
and dried individually over the fire — the rooms are so damp
that hanging up to dry is no use. Everything moulds which
is not kept at the fire. All my plants are on a circle of chairs
immediately round the fender, inside which two Lepchas
squat and dry papers all day long, in two rooms. [I am
dreadfully badly off for paper, having used all that Falconer
sent me up and all the newspapers (do you remember the

EARLY COLLECTIONS 259

Bengal Hurkarus 1 in which Mrs. Mack's collections came ?)
I can lay my hands on. This last fortnight I have got
a glorious lot of things, such fine Cyrtandreae especially,
and a good gale of wind helped me to many of the
trees. Campbell too is as active as ever he can be, and
I generally get two instalments, sometimes four, daily. I
cannot possibly draw all I ought though I do my best to, and
the poor Fungi are gone to the wall altogether. I cannot go
100 yards from the door without getting new things, to-day
a new Balanophora 2 close behind the house, actually within
a stone's-throw.

August 30 : — The rain it raineth every day, and the
whole country between the foot of the hills and the Ganges
is under water. . . . Such lots of rain was never seen nearer
than the West of Scotland. Plants seem to enjoy it, for
they are coming out and flowering faster than ever.

Besides the strictly geographical map already mentioned,
a local chart was under preparation to show geographically
the distribution of plants, ' a Carte Geognostique of the vegetation
of this place from the plains to 10,000 feet (like Humboldt's
of Chimborazo).' Notes on the agriculture of the Himalaya
were being made for Professor Henslow. Loads of living
plants for despatch to Kew were being sent down to Calcutta,
where Dr. Falconer forwarded correspondence and repacked
plants for the voyage. Many of these plants perished .in the
plains before reaching Calcutta ; the safety of the rest was
threatened by the severe illness of Falconer at this juncture.
But the supply was endless. ' The richness of this Flora is
most remarkable and new things are brought to me every
day. I dissect and sketch roughly the most important,
including all the Orchideae.'

A great drawback during the first months was the absence
of books of reference. In July, Falconer, in despair of an
opportunity of forwarding them, took to sending them in
small packages by post.

1 A Calcutta newspaper.

2 A curious root parasite of simple structure, without leaves or petals,
related to the mistletoe, formerly thought to be allied to the Fungi. Hooker's
paper on this order appeared in the Linn. Soc. Trans, for 1856.

260 TO DAEJILING : FIKST HIMALAYAN JOUKNEY
A better opportunity, however, came before long (August 9) :

Falconer has kindly sent me four cases of books, soldered
in tin, by 'Post free I This is the only way of getting them
safely now. They are De Candolle, Walpers, Kunth, and
Koyle. This week of books and plants has been perfect
revelry. I find that my Khododendrons are nearly all
(perhaps they all are) new.

' My life here,' he tells his sister (September 28), ' is suffi-
ciently monotonous to hear of, but far from so to me, my
collections increasing very fast indeed, and never having a
moment to spare/ Except for recording barometer, ther-
mometer, wind and weather every hour, all the daylight
hours were spent in writing and drawing and arranging plants.
The plants generally came in at eight or nine in large baskets
on men's backs. These Hooker always ticketed himself with
the native name and any known quality or use, laying aside
those he wished to draw and examine, and giving the rest
over to be dried and the roots to be packed in moss. The
perpetual wet forbade much going out. A recorded rainfall of
twenty-one inches in July was perhaps nothing much for India,

but it is like the difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh
which I could never make Papa believe, that Edinburgh has
more rain than Glasgow, though in the latter it is expended
in a constant drizzle, in the former in a few downright showers.

Yet his health was perfect, ' living so regular a life in so
salubrious a vile climate, far worse than Glasgow,' and ' here,
in this dear delightful double- distilled Greenock fog, we know
not what a headache is.'

Scottish recollections happily fill in the picture of Sunday
morning at Darjiling which he draws for his sister Elizabeth
(August 9, 1848):

There is a church here but out of repair and the Parson,
who is a visitor, gives service in a large room. This reminds
me of Helensburgh, the majority of the congregation being
made up of salt water looking people with faded bonnets
and thick shoes ; very few people attend, including a school

A SCOTTISH PAEALLEL 261

of five children who really behave very well. What puts
me most in mind of Helensburgh is the open doors and
windows, the universality of fine weather on Sundays, the
insects humming through the room, the stray bird, the
leaves waving across the windows, and the irresistible
attraction I feel to look out on the open valleys with huge
mountains all round, the clouds chasing one another across
the forest, and sunbeams dancing on the heavy masses of
mist that keep floating along some thousand feet below
us. The wind sighs the same sigh through the leaves that
it used through the Limes at Kow and these rustle in the
same note. I see ripe blackberries too and small children
gathering them, but don't see the Gare Loch and its boats,
or smell the sea-weeds, no nor the tansy and peppermint,
nor peat smoke of the new washed mutches and red cloaks —
and above all, the Eev. Mr. Winchester, though a sober man
enough, is far from a powerful preacher, indeed he may be
called a powerless one, for you can't hear him three benches
off, and his sermons, though better than Mr. Byam's, cannot
keep my mind off the new trees and new weeds that grow
up to the very doorstep.

In the same vein he wishes that Miss Henslow had ever
been in Scotland so as to realise at a word that this rainy season
was just like the climate of Dreepdaily, * except that all the
features are infinitely grander, the rains last longer, the mists
are thicker, the fogs are more choking and the damp is more
provocative of colds.' He gets up at six, but hates it, and
equally hates going to bed at nights.

I have resumed my kitchen plan at Kew, of warming my
back at the fire when writing and my feet when reading,
during ' the sma' hours, ilka night.' Mr. Hodgson, who is
in poor health, often sits up and reads with me, wrapped
in a fur Koquelaure ; now he is perusing Darwin's Journal,
which I procured for him, and ever and anon he leaves off
and battles with me upon some of the dogmas in Lyell's
Geology, anent which we pooh-pooh one another's opinions
very freely. Then we get to disputing on the course of a
river, may be in High Thibet, and fight it out with old
Chinese Charts and notes from various bad authorities. As
VOL. i s

262 TO DAKJILING : FIRST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

the countries and rivers are utterly unknown to Europeans,
it little signifies whether the latter debouche in the Arctic
Ocean or the Bay of Bengal. Hodgson is a particularly
gentlemanly and agreeable person, but he looks sickly ; he
is handsome, with a grand forehead and delicate, finely-cut
features ; when arrayed in his furs and wearing the Scotch
bonnet and eagle feather with which it is his pleasure to
adorn himself, he would make a striking picture. He is
a clever person and can be wickedly sarcastic ; he called
Lord Ellenborough (the haughtiest nobleman in all India)
a ' knave and coxcomb ' to his face (true enough, though
not exactly a fact to be told with impunity), and then squibbed
his lordship ; you must know that Lord E. had previously
applied to Hodgson the sobriquet of an Ornithological Hum-
bug, and had turned him out of his Eesidentship at Nepaul,
because he had (by Lord Auckland's desire) clapped the
Eajah into confinement. In short, Lord Ellenborough and
Mr. Hodgson kept up a running fire, till his Lordship left
the country. Happily, Hodgson lost no friends ; but he
lost by it his salary of £7000 a year, his Palace to live in,
and the Insignia of the British Eesident in the proudest
court in India, and then withdrew to these Hills, on £1000,
as a Eetired Civil Servant.

It will be remembered how, in the early days of the Antarctic
Expedition, botanists of the strictest school, like Sir William
Hooker and Dawson Turner and Eobert Brown, looked askance
at divagations into other branches of science. Joseph Hooker
not only possessed an energetic curiosity which overflowed by
its very abundance into every branch of Natural History, but
was convinced that the botanist as well as the traveller was in-
complete without being also something of a geologist, a geog-
rapher, a meteorologist, and a map-maker. With a journey
in utterly uncharted regions before him, he took pains to become
a competent surveyor. Yet even then, after warmly thanking
his father for ever generous help, he half apologises for spending
part of his time on anything but pure botany.

October 1, 1848.

My solace is that you will not find that Botany has suffered
by my fondness for other pursuits, without which no traveller

STUDIES SURVEYING 263

of this exacting age is thought accomplished. I have
gained great, though undeserved, credit here and no little
help, by measuring the heights of the mountains and keeping
up a good meteorological register. The Surveyor- General,
who spent last season here, would tell no one what he was
after; and the poor people who had shown him much kind-
ness are very much disgusted. I keep no secrets, and if I
cannot (and do not wish to) measure with the accuracy of
a Survej^or, I do so sufficiently accurately for all practical
purposes and at a very little outlay of time. With a pocket
sextant and compass, lent me by the Deputy Surveyor-
General (Capt. Thuillier, a most excellent fellow), I worked
out in two hours the height of Kinchin from this place and
made it 28,000 feet. Sinchul I have worked barometrically
with no trouble at all, and make it 8653. Tonglo Mr.
Miiller and I have just worked out from the observations
I took in May, and it is 10,009 feet.

So also a little earlier :

I have only seen the sun thrice this month so as to get
observations. The time here was f of an hour out, and my
watch which you gave me before I went with Ross is the only
good time-keeper here, so that all sorts of people send to me
for the time. I spent one day furbishing up my surveying
lore, so as to be ready for the Terrae incognitae, but I am
wretchedly off for instruments.

Thus the rainy summer months wore away in busy employ-
ment, with alternate hopes and fears about the great journey
to the snows in October. His plan, if this were permitted,
was to spend a month there, and then, if at all successful,
return again in May,

for I am sure [he writes on August 80] it will be better to work
one part of the Himalaya well, from the Terai up to the
Snow, than to proceed north-west towards the passes west
of Nepaul, now so much better known [accepting the invita-
tion of Major Thoresby, the Nepaulese Resident]. This, too,
is the middle of the range, it contains the highest mountain,
and so evidently differs in the Geographical Distribution of
its Vegetation, from what lies East and West, that it presents

264 TO DAKJILING: FIKST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

the most advantageous point for research. The field is
quite untrodden, and I hope to have 2000 species before I
leave this year.

Were this impossible, his alternative was to take the journey
to Assam and the Khasia Hills, which he actually carried out
in 1850, visiting the tea plantations and looking out for a
station adapted to the cultivation of guttapercha in Assam, and
pushing northwards to solve the geographical riddle as to
whether the Bramaputra was the same stream as the Tsanpo
of Tibet.

As a last resort he managed to obtain a route to take him
in five and a half days7 journey to a village on the flanks of
Kinchinjunga, and at first resolved

to attempt it with or without permission, in the latter case
with very small hopes of success, but every inch is botanising
ground, and one direction is as good as another. ... I
have no hopes of penetrating into Thibet whatever, but no
European has ever visited the snow E. of Kumaon and to
do so here will be a feather in my cap.

Again and again he reiterates his intention, afterwards
modified, of trying to reach the snows, even without per-
mission, though this would sadly hamper his travelling, for
his Lepchas would be kidnapped or fined or sold as slaves,
for showing the way. ' My only requirements,' he reflects, ' are
mountaineer servants, who have no property in Sikkim to lose.'

Should all these efforts fail, there was still a chance of
reaching the snows in Upper Assam the following year, if he
could time himself to be there in October.

The general political situation has already been sketched
out in the letter of June 10, 1848. The present difficulty
was in putting the right amount of pressure on the dependent
Eajah who played at independence. Thus (July 19) :

Campbell and the Govt. are both anxious to forward me
on ; the Govt. won't order Campbell to send me without the
Kajah's consent for fear of a war with China ; Campbell
won't run the risk of committing himself without an order !

LOED DALHOUSIE ACTS 265

He had already burned his fingers with the Government.
But after a personal appeal from Hooker, Lord Dalhousie sent
him ' an explicit statement from the Colonial Office of what
it is conceived our relations with Sikkim ought to be.' In Dr.
Campbell's hands this was a useful guide for negotiations —
finally Lord Dalhousie in September addressed a letter to the
Eajah with peremptory orders

to give me full leave to travel to the Snowy Passes and to
grant me every assistance. No one expected that his Lord-
ship would do this ; and considering how ambiguous are our
relations with that crusty imbecile, and how much caution
the carrying out of the object requires, it is the very strongest
proof Lord Dalhousie could give of his true interest in my
behalf.

To make the Government bestir themselves ' has cost me
a world of pen, ink, and paper and the backing of very powerful
friends.' Prudence, however, bids him add :

Pray say little of these projects of mine ; there are so
many slips 'twixt cup and lip, and the objects to be attained
do so fully jump with even my most sanguine expectations
that I cannot venture to hope for perfect success.

Further he reassures his mother :

No danger whatever will attend the excursion ; a little
plague and difficulty must be anticipated from the Kajah's
innumerable petty headmen, and I am quite prepared to
receive a great deal of insolence, — to put up with every-
thing short of direct opposition.

No answer had come from the Kajah by October 1, but
all was ready for a start by the end of the week, to Jongri at
least (the village on the spurs of Kinchin already mentioned)
if direct opposition were offered to the route east of the moun-
tain and the Sikkimese passes into Tibet, on the manifestly
untrue ground that Kinchin was a holy mountain, never visited
by anyone, and that the Lhassa authorities must be consulted.
It seemed certain that he must go alone, for illness or accident
had laid up the only friends whom he could trust as travelling

266 TO DARJ1LING : FIRST HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

companions .on such ticklish ground— Hodgson and Miiller,
Barnes and Campbell. Moreover, had the latter been un-
injured, Lord Dalhousie forbade his going, lest, being an official,
he should give a political aspect to the expedition. Dr. Hooker,
he said, should act on his own responsibility alone.

, To his Mother

October 13, 1848.

Everybody is solicitous to go with me ; but I have refused
all others, because I do not know them well enough to trust
them ; and having to bear all the onus myself, I should
think it imprudent to risk taking any companion who might
not be good-humoured and kind to the Natives, or willing
to put up with insolence from the Rajah's people, should we
chance to meet with them. Lord Dalhousie places great
confidence in me, and the Rajah of Nepaul no less by granting
me the first permission that any Englishman has ever received.
Under all these circumstances, I shall do nothing in the
peremptory way ; for if anything disagreeable arose, I should
be involving Lord Dalhousie in the necessity of vindicating
me and avenging my wrongs, with fifty other troubles from
which I should reap no advantage. I shall not therefore
enter Sikkim, unless the Rajah consents. He has already
committed himself ; and my interference would do no good
but harm.

To Us Father

Darjeeling : October 20, 1848.

I wish you could have been with me this morning and seen
the motley group of natives arranging with Campbell and
myself the preliminaries towards my trip to the Snows, of
various tribes, colors, and callings, such as one rarely sees any
of, and still more rarely all together. I must, however, begin
at the beginning and tell you that Campbell has at last
wrenched a reluctant assent from the Rajah of Sikkim to my
visiting his snowy mountains. In my last I informed you
of his having returned a rude and flat refusal to Lord D.'s
request in my behalf, as also of his having stationed 80 men
at one pass and 25 at two others to intercept my exit from
our territories into his, where his instructions were to capture
my servants but lay no hands on myself ; these Campbell

THE KAJAH'S EMBASSY 267

insisted on being withdrawn, under penalty of dismissing the
Kajah's representative (giving the Ambassador his letters,
in short), and they were so. Campbell also gave the Kajah
eight days to change his mind or have his conduct reported
to headquarters with recommendations for condign punish-
ment [i.e. by stopping the lease-money of Darjiling and
annexing the Kajah's property at the foot of the Hills].

Ten days past and no word, when the Eajah's Agent, or
Minister if you will (Vakeel is the technical term), was told
that should no message arrive before the evening post hour,
the letter to Lord D. should be sent. The answer was that
advices had arrived to the effect that permission was given,
provided Dr. C. would pledge his word that this should be
my only visit and that a similar request should never be
made hereafter. Such conditions were peremptorily rejected
as not only derogatory in the highest degree but ensuring me
the worst reception. They were again dismissed in disgrace
to read their advices again, which they did and returned this
morning with unconditional permission. This was followed
by a long lecture on the impropriety of their conduct, the
danger they had run in offending our Government, and
wound up with a comparison of their conduct with that of an
independent power, the Kajah of Nepaul, who had sent to
Darjeeling an officer and guard to escort me to Nepaul, with
instructions to provide me with carriage for my traps and
food for my people.

All this was a curtain affair of course, as it would not have
done to let the Goorkhas or others witness our scurvy treat-
ment by the Sikkim Kajah's emissaries. The latter no doubt
had their instructions from the first to deliver the rude
refusal and if that answered the purpose well and good, if not
to propose the other alternatives seriatim, and if defeated in
all to give in with as bad a grace as might be.

This hard and disagreeable work over, we all met in the
verandah and Salaams passed between myself and the
characters to whom I should have liked to introduce you.
First there was the Kajah's Vakeel, a portly, tall, and muscu-
lar Thibetan, clothed in a long red robe like a Cardinal's,
looped across down the middle, and round his neck and down
his shoulders hung a rosary. His face was not strongly
Chinese at all, stern, grave, and stolid, thoroughly obstinate

268 TO DABJILING : FIBST HIMALAYAN JOUBNEY

and impracticable ; thin lips, a good chin, thin arched nose
and narrow nostrils, high cheek bones and forehead, cold
grey eyes and handsome brows ; no beard or moustache, and
a nut brown, but not bronzed complexion. His years must
be above 60 and his hair was scant and grizzled. A stiff,
black, small cap, with high brim standing up all round, rather
set off the repelling look he maintained. Taken to pieces,
he might be described as a funny mixture of the old woman,
from his beardless face, the Lama priest from his dress and
rosary, and a burly, well-to-do Landamman, deputed from
some Swiss Canton to resist to the uttermost the demands
of a dangerous neighbour power, unflinching under opposi-
tion and unscrupulous in makeshifts, always the bear, often
the bully, and ever the sturdiest opponent of the overtures
of his antagonist, even when designed for his own good.
These qualities, together with an unblushing effrontery and
consummate skill in fabrication and a large interest in the
monopoly of Sikkim trade, rendered him a fit tool for the
Bajah. Beaten at all points he has to give in, and there
he stands, showing neither sulks nor smiles, just respectful
enough to avoid censure and no more.

A real character stands at his elbow, a little old withered
Thibetan, leaning on his long bamboo bow, simply clothed
in a woollen robe, his grey hair floating in the wind, bowed
with age, of mild expression, and stone blind. He is a Sene-
schal to the party, devoted to his country, and the Companion
of the Baj ah's deputations to the Political Agent of the power-
ful Government whose advances his master rejects. When he
speaks, and this is very seldom (and as it is always in his own
half Chinese tongue no Englishman can interpret it), the
burthen of his story passes from tongue to tongue ; he is
evidently the oracle of the party ; his placid looks and grey
hair would lead me to confide in him and address him as
Father, but I have a grim suspicion that his views narrow as
his years go on, that he was bereaved of his best and brightest
sense before our power showed itself in these hills, and that
his crafty companions have taken advantage of this and
done more than leave him in the dark as to our real power
to punish, but wish to reward and encourage.

The attendants upon these, the Baj ah's representatives
(and their own, for, being a large ^sharer in the monopoly of

THE NEPAULESE GUARDS 269

the Sikkim trade, the Vakeel has more interest than his
master in excluding strangers), were short, stout, thick-set
Bhoteas, clad in purple worsted dressing growns, fastened
round the middle by a belt, bare headed and footed, very
dirty and ill-favoured withal.

Next conspicuous to these are my Nepaul guards, just
arrived to accompany me to the Nepaul frontier and conduct
me from thence ; the Havildar (Corporal, I believe) is a
small, fine-boned man, with little hands and small limbs
and ankles, well-knit and active, of the Kawass tribe, who
boast descent from the Rajpoots and are generally in Nepaul
the slaves of the Rajah's body, sometimes soldiers and, more
rarely, rise to the rank of gentlemen. He looks business-
like and trusty, is very handsome, swarthy, with small
moustache, broad forehead, bright open eye, good nose,
handsome mouth, and small prominent chin. A pretty little
turban sits nattily on his head, of black, woven with silver
thread, and the number of his corps worked in silver in
front, right over a red mark on his forehead which bespeaks
his caste amongst the Hindus. His coat is a loose rover-like
jacket of purple with silk braid in front, over a white under
garment of cotton, open down the right breast and exposing
his chest and long neck. A checked cummerbund is folded
many times round his middle and over his nether garments,
which are short, loose, and broad. What with his jaunty
dress, careless air, and roving eye, he would pass for a sea
free-booter (out of Cooper's novels for instance, but less
mannered and theatrical and more real than the tricked
out coxcombs of that author, who are the prototypes of
Mr. T. P. Cooke,1 rather than real fire-eaters).

The Goorkha Sepoys are immense fellows, stout and
brawny, of curious cast of feature, heavy jowled and rather
small eyed ; they wear small linen skull caps over long care-
fully combed and jet black hair which hangs in heavy folds
down the side of the head ; they wear too scarlet loose
jackets, very bright and gaudy, with a kookry stuck in the
cummerbund and heavy iron sword at their side.

i Thomas Potter Cooke (1786-1864) served in the navy till the peace of
1802, and then took to the stage, being, as Christopher North put it, ' the best
sailor out of all sight and hearing that ever trod the stage.' His greatest
success was in the part of William in Douglas Jerrold's ' Black-Eyed Susan.'
Another famous part of his was in * Frankenstein.'

270 TO DAEJ1LING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUKNEY

It would take pages to describe the various groups of
bystanders : mild Lepchas in striped cotton, long naked
limbed Goorkhas of model muscle and saucy air, Bhoteas
of all shades of Chinese feature ; Bhotanese, or subjects of
the Dhurma Kajah, vieing with one another in rags, dirt,
hideous ugliness and quaint ornaments, some deeply scarred
with smallpox and the pits such receptacles of blackness
that their visages looked as if peppered with duck-shot.
Most have turned up eyes, very prominent cheek bones,
projecting baboon mouth and large teeth ; nearly all are
of villainous countenance, of singularly low forehead and
bad cut of head ; the predominance of the animal propensities
(fid. the phrenologists) being well displayed from the custom
of clipping close the hair.

The Cis-Himalayan Bhoteas, whether of Sikkim or, worse
still, of Bhotan, are as uncouth a race (short of savages
like the Australian or Fuegian) as I ever beheld. A little
sprinkling of Hindus and Mussulmen, chiefly our servants,
with the above comprises the oriental population. Amongst
them all were Mrs. Campbell's beautiful children, holding
by our hands and as indifferent to the wild races about them
as an English child is scared by the sight of an English
beggar-man.

And now I daresay you will be ready to ask, what con-
fidence I can expect to repose with remarkable prudence in
such a gang — and this is easily answered. I take no money,
and my plant papers and instruments are poor plunder.
The people, though so averse to foreigners, do neither rob
nor injure ; were they inclined to, the Eajah's power over
his people and his mortal dread of us would be a sufficient
protection. Further I have the Nepalese guard before
whom, for very shame, they must be polite and attentive,
and in whom, as acting under the orders of their Govern-
ment, the most implicit reliance may be reposed, for the
Goorkha, when under orders and in confidential employ,
is the soul of honor and of politesse too. Lastly, as they
will not get a rap of pay till they bring me back safe and
what they will receive then will be a fortune to each, they
will consult their own interests as well as mine. So I expect
devoted service from my guard, for it is their pride to devote
themselves under such orders and auspices, companionship

PEBSONAL INFLUENCE 271

from what Lepchas I may take, passive obedience
from such of the Eajah's men as may accompany me,
perhaps a little obstinacyTand presumptuous interference
at first] and insolence which I can better check with
ridicule and exposure before the Goorkhas than by any
other means. The Bhotea porters will keep one eye on
me and the other on the Eajah's men and serve both
masters if they can.

My great aim is so to conduct this attempt that it may
be followed by another and to avoid suspicion. This will
be difficult in Sikkim, and for the first few marches I shall
make few or no observations, excepting of the barometer
&c. in my tent, the only explanation a Bhotea can harbor
of which is my desire to take the country. In Nepaul I
may do as I like, the Goorkha having no orders to stop my
observing ; but in Sikkim I cannot knock a stone or pull a
plant without disturbing the Gods, in other words exciting
suspicion. I go, however, ostensibly as a botanist, and I
will warrant that before two days are over every man jack
of them will be collecting for me. I have always found
frankness and kindness good policy with any nation, es-
pecially if combined with a reasonable amount of personal
vanity, which I abundantly possess, and assumption of
superiority and, above all, a liberally flattering opinion of
the people openly expressed.1

The Eajah's people first offered carriers and porters,
then withdrew the offer, which I am glad of, as the latter
will be more my own people and have a double interest in
behaving well ; they, after some hesitation, give me a guide ;
he looks a good man enough and Campbell has seen him
repeatedly. He is to accompany me to Nepaul too if I
like, but this will depend on what sort of servant I find him.

1 In the end the personal imjpression left on the Sikkimese by Hooker was
remarkable. Twenty- two years later the country was again visited by a Euro-
pean, the botanist and traveller, Mr. H. J. Elwes, F.R.S. Even then, Mr. Elwes
tells me, the Lepchas almost worshipped him. The learned Hakim, so friendly
to his men and to the villagers, hale or sick, was remembered as an incarnation
of high wisdom and kindly strength ; and in 1908, after fifty-nine years, he was
still a living memory (see the illustration which follows). As an observer, also,
a high tribute is paid him by Mr. Elwes. Of all the countries in which the
latter travelled, here only, whatever he saw, he saw with his predecessor's eyes.
Hooker had noted everything that he himself found of interest : nothing was
missed ; places and objects all clearly described and promptly recognised. (See
ii. 125.)

272 TO DAEJILING : FIKST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

I have no fear of managing one and all when the Eajah's
own myrmidons are out of sight, for the natives like us and
profit by our advance.

The present plan was to go five marches due north, to
Jongri, then strike westwards over the spurs of Kinchinjunga,
and thence north-west to the Nepaulese passes into Tibet.

I cannot tell you how comfortable I feel at the prospect
of realizing the fondest dream I ever harbored as a traveller
and botanist after all my toils with Lord D., tickling Camp-
bell, bullying the Eajah. I have been pooh-poohed by one
party, looked on as a visionary by another, and a very useful
tool by a third, who say, you have not a ghost of a chance
yourself of getting Government or the Eajah's permission,
but you will prepare the way for a future. Lord Auckland,
Campbell, Falconer, Hodgson, worst of all Sir Herbert
Haddock whom Hodgson tried all his friendship (and they
are most intimate) to move, all looked on with no hope and
some of them giving me the comfortable assurance that
my efforts would do good, though not to myself. Sir H.
Haddock luckily went to Ceylon ; had he got Lord D.'s
ear it would have been all up ; he has now returned to be
President in Council in Lord D.'s absence.

Campbell has certainly wrought the battle well, with
great forbearance and firmness, and is now as thoroughly
devoted to me as it is possible to be. Hrs. Campbell is
rummaging her larder and store-room for my comfort,
making a veil for my face, providing me with fleecy hosiery,
&c. Certainly Campbell has fought behind the Ajacian
shield of the Governor- General, the tone of whose letters
shows as kind an interest in me as determination to forward
my aims, and C. has also had a heavy rowel in the shape
of your teasing son himself. However I take your good
motto and ' never look the gift horse in the mouth.'

Now I have written a famously egotistical letter ; we
bargained for unreserved correspondence and you see I
fulfil my promise. I only beg that you will make no public
use of this which holds out such bright prospects of success
towards the snow in which, if I am disappointed, much
chagrin will accompany my reverting to the contents of
this same letter.

AND THEE AT LAMTENG.

"There was an old man there who remembers you extremely well, an<i even
where you camped. He is still very hardy and active, and I send you a snapshot I
took of him. He also sends you his best salaams. His name he pronounces ' And
Thee.' " (From Mr. Charles E. Simmonds, June 12, 1908.)

i. 272]

A LEVEE AGAINST OBSTBUCTION 273

I never mention Bent ham, Harvey, Berkeley, &c., in
my letters, nor have written to them ; I still intend to,
but know that you freely communicate all such intelligence
as this is, and as from me. Also please send this to Darwin
whom, as not being a botanist, you may forget. Best love
to all.

Your most affectionate Son, Jos. D. HOOKER.

P.S. — The Sikkim authorities object to the Goorkha
guard and are silenced by being told that they are my men
and that I won't leave them in the lurch. This shows what I
expected, that the presence of the Goorkhas is a grand check.

Hooker did not mean to be deprived of this lever against
passive obstruction. Though more evasions followed, the
sequel appears in a letter to Miss Henslow, October 26, 1848.

Whatever the Kajah's reasons may be for objecting to
let these Ghoorkas enter Sikkim (and his fear may have
some good foundation), he has acted with bad faith towards
me ; and he probably did so because he was aware that he
could throw no insurmountable obstacles in my way, so 'long
as I had a party of these Hill People in my interest. It is
highly likely that the myrmidons of his Sikkim Highness
had received orders to take me two or three days' marches
by a wrong road, perhaps to where the rivers were impass-
able ; then they would have shrugged their shoulders and
said, * We are as sorry as you can be, Sir, but what can
we do ? ' And the consequent delays would cost me the
season, etc. Meanwhile the Nepalese Guard came forward,
offering to undertake the responsibility of conducting me
to the Thibet Passes through their own country, if I chose ;
after which I might return by Sikkim, or by the way I went,
according to my pleasure.

This offer was so handsome, and any intention of going
through Sikkim (even if it were desirable or feasible) without
this Nepalese Guard (which had been so promptly sent for
me) would have been to put such a slight upon them that I
instantly closed with the proposition, and am now all ready
for the journey. I go due West from hence to and across
the frontier of Nepaul, and then North to the Western shoulder
of Kinchinjunga, and the Thibetan Passes. By following
this course I shall occupy some days longer, and (what is of

274 TO DAEJILING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

more importance to me) I shall lose the familiar landmarks
of mountains etc. by which I should easily map my route,
had I gone through Sikkim. I carry, however, a good time-
keeper of my own and another chronometer lent me by Major
Crommelin, by which I shall be able to take Longitudes
with accuracy sufficient to determine my position approxi-
mately. As the day closes at 6 P.M. there is plenty of time to
observe the stars, during the clear nights which I hope are
coming ; I say ' hope,' for October is called ' Darjeeling's
Heavenly Month ' ; though it has been so rainy and cloudy
up to the present time that I could not have started for the
mountains, if permission had been granted, 4 weeks ago.
Indeed the rains are not yet over : they are singularly late
this year, which would have caused me heavy disappoint-
ment if I had been allowed sooner to travel Northward. The
double evils of want of earlier permission, and of earlier
fine weather, thus mitigate one another, on the principle,
I suppose, that two Blacks do make a White, a neutral tint,
at any rate.

On October 27 the party set out, fifty-six strong, including
body-servant, collectors, shooter, stuffer, boys to climb trees
and change the plant papers, and coolies, with Nimbo, the
sturdy headman, and a Havildar in command of the escort,
who carried additional weight of authority as being also tax-
gatherer of the district through which they were to pass ;
returning to Darjeeling on January 19. It is interesting to
note that the cost to Hooker was about £100. His friends
pressed every assistance upon him. Campbell superintended
the supplies for the men ; there were personal stores from
Hodgson, warm things from the Campbells ; while

My friends, the Miillers, have rated my timekeepers,
overhauled all my Instruments, furnished me with some
capital tin boxes, and done more useful and necessary jobs
for me than I can remember. They have also kindly
promised to work out all my observations of Longitudes,
Latitude and elevations, as I shall send them to Darjeeling.
So you see I am admirably cared for, and have only the more
to dread failure when so much kindness and trouble have
been expended upon me.

MAP OF SIKKIM 275

In fact, until the positions of the chief places and heights
were worked out so as to construct a map, he had but an
imperfect idea of where he had been.

During the greater part of my journey [he tells his father]
I saw not a single known object, and had to observe with
the sextant. No map contains the name of a single place
which I have visited ! That I was poking in and out over
the western base of Kinchin is all I can affirm.

The line of route for ninety days finally showed the average
daily distance covered to be eight miles — one mile per hour !
Yet they walked full three miles every hour, so that two-
thirds was wasted in the ups and downs and bends.

This and the similar chart made in eastern Sikkim, whence
the passes led to Phari in Tibet, formed the basis of the care-
fully drawn map a copy of which appears in the ' Journals ' :
a unique map of such value to the British officers of the
Sikkim-Tibet Boundary Commission of 1903 that they tele-
graphed their congratulations from the front to the maker
of it, who at the age of eighty-six was touched to receive this
tribute to the work he had accomplished over half a century
before.1

The first part of the journey was to follow the Tambur
river northwards and proceed in turn up its wrest and east
forks to the passes at the head of either valley, one thirty
the other twenty miles to the west of Kinchinjunga. This
great mountain, rising to 28,000 feet and continued in sub-
sidiary crests all over 20,000, presented an impassable barrier
of snowy peaks about sixty-four miles long, stretching between
the western passes at the head of the Tambur, and the eastern
passes at the head of the Lachen (Teesta), explored by Hooker
in his second expedition. It was already late in the season,

1 Khambajong, Thibet : ' Major Prain, Colonel Younghusband and officers
Thibet Mission desire to send you their felicitations by telegraph from Kham-
bajong and express their high admiration of that zeal displayed by you fifty-
five years ago, which has enabled them to follow in your steps and has inspired
them to emulate your devotion to science and to your country.' (See ii. 457.)

Major (afterwards Sir David) Prain, C.M.G., C.I.E., of the Indian Medical
Service, was then Director of the Calcutta Gardens, and in 1905 succeeded
Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer as Director of Kew.

276 TO DAEJILING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

for in the higher valleys the snow began to fall in October,
and by the beginning of December, when Hooker approached
the Wallanchoon pass, the snow lay deep on the last four miles
of the track above the 15,000 foot level. Nevertheless he
succeeded in reaching the divide, and from the col, more than
1000 feet higher than Mont Blanc, looked down into the for-
bidden land of Tibet. The still loftier sister pass of Kang-
lachem to the east, however, was more heavily snowed up, and
there the party did not ascend beyond 16,000 feet.

The next part of his plan was to return almost to the
fork of the Tambur, and strike east, still through Nepal, towards
the Kinchin group and eventually Sikkim. This involved
crossing the huge ridges and profound valleys that successively
stretch south-west and south from the Himalayan crest. But
the pass over the third of these ridges, the Kanglanamo, was
closed, and the inhabitants of the village at its foot had with-
drawn lower down the valley. Thus he had to turn south
forty or fifty miles till the alpine regions were left, and a snow-
less pass eastward into Sikkim presented itself, whence he
could turn north again to the extreme flank of Kinchinjunga.

At this middle point of the journey, before turning north
again, his solitude was most agreeably interrupted. Dr.
Campbell, putting the final touch to his long-drawn diplomatic
negotiations, was on his way to a personal interview with the
Sikkim Eajah. After the complicated falsehoods that had
been concocted to impede Dr. Campbell's progress, the friends
were greatly tickled by the droll conduct of the Rajah and
his court, who had found themselves compelled, after all,
to go forth to meet him on the river, as the sole means of
preventing his finally reaching the capital of Sikkim. On
December 23 Hooker joined him at Bhomsong, on the banks
of the Teesta, and shared in the formal interviews both with
the crafty Dewari and finally, despite the Dewan's many sub-
terfuges to delay or prevent this, with the Eajah himself, a
faineant devotee, half oblivious of mundane matters. Arrange-
ments were made for Hooker's trip through Sikkim the following
summer. The Dewan, indeed, as will appear later, organised
secret obstruction to this ; but the chief immediate result of

INTEKVIEW WITH THE EAJAH 277

the interview was the open friendship displayed by the Lamas
and people of Sikkim.

This man [the Dewan] and Campbell had become great
friends, and he also became intimate with me. He was
educated at Lhassa, and has very agreeable manners and
personal address, but is the very most consummate liar and
scoundrel in all political matters that you can imagine, and
the coolest withal. He took me for a brother spy and rogue,
and probably does so still. Next day we had an audience of
the Eajah. He is a little, old, black man, of quick manners
and eye, thoroughly Chinese in every thought and action,
and very sorry indeed to see us so far into his country. We
crossed the river on a bamboo raft ; I wore a shooting-coat
lent me by Campbell, my travelling cap and plaid ; Camp-
bell more respectable. We were received in a shed, fitted
up so as to show off the Kajah to immense advantage, accord-
ing to the taste of his poor self and people. The shed was
hung with faded China silk ; there was no furniture ; we
brought, at the Kajah's request, our own chairs ; the leg of
mine poked through the bamboo floor, and kept up a squeak-
ing in a very high key. At the upper end of the little room
was a high stage 6 feet ! also covered with tattered silk, and
over it a shabby canopy, under which the Kajah squatted,
cross-legs, a little body swathed in yellow silk, with a pink,
broad-brimmed and low-crowned hat on. Such an attempt
at display was really humiliating ! He never returned our
salutes, but looked wistfully at us, and then at his courtiers,
some dozen of very dirty fellows in silks (Kajis), ranged
against the wall as mutes. The conversation was brief and
trifling ; it related chiefly to Campbell's insisting on having
a responsible authority from the Kajah at Darjeeling. In
the middle presents were brought, and white scarfs thrown
round our necks, as a signal to depart, but we stuck to our
seats in spite of all hints, and told him of my intention to visit
again in spring the Snowy Passes to the east of Kinchin,
and of how dissatisfied I was with the permission coming so
late. He made no reply to all this.

After the interview the two friends travelled together till
January 2, when Campbell was recalled by business. After
two months' travel without a European companion, this ten

VOL. I T

278 TO DAEJ1LING : FIRST HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

days' comradeship with so good a friend stood out as a golden
time in Hooker's journeyings. On January 2, 1849, he records :

Here I bade adieu to Dr. Campbell, and toiled up the hill,
feeling very lonely. The zest with which he had entered
into all my pursuits, and the aid he had afforded me, to-
gether with the charm that always attends companionship
with one who enjoys every incident of travel, has so attracted
me to him that I found it difficult to recover my spirits. It
is quite impossible for any one who cannot from experience
realise the solitary wandering life I had been leading for
months, to appreciate the desolate feeling that follows the
parting from one who has heightened every enjoyment, and
taken far more than his share of every annoyance and dis-
comfort : the few days we had spent together appeared then,
and still, as months. (Himalayan Journals, i. 332.)

1 After parting from Campbell, he turned north again to
Jongri. This was a deserted yak post, never before visited in
winter, consisting of two rude stone huts for summer travellers
at an altitude of 13,000 feet on the great spur that runs south
from the Kinchinjunga massif and divides Sikkim from, Nepaul.
Here he was on the veritable Kinchin, some fifteen miles as
the crow flies from the actual summit * whose grand snows
rise on all sides on rugged granite precipices which have pierced
the Gneiss and Mica- slate rocks, carrying them up in shattered
peaks and cliffs to 20,000 feet.' Nearer along the massif stood
the lesser giants, Kubra and Gubroo, the saddleback with a
25,000 feet peak at either end, and to the north-east the sharp
cone of Pundeim dropping five or six thousand feet in a sheer
precipice to the sea of glaciers below : the cliff, too steep to
carry snow, showing a face of burnt red stratified rocks, so
twisted and contorted as to appear like shot silk, permeated
with broad white grains of the granite which caps the whole.
Here, till driven out by a prolonged snowstorm, he stayed
three cold January days in his gipsy-like shelter, a blanket
stretched for tent from the roof of his followers' hut, with a
little stone dyke at the sides and a fireplace in front. The
ground was frozen sixteen inches deep ; to dig holes for the
ground thermometers was a work of hours. Many of the

MOUNTAIN SICKNESS 279

mosses and lichens Hooker had last seen on the wild moun-
tains of Cape Horn and the rocks of the Antarctic islands, and
as on the Antarctic voyage, glacial terraces and erratic blocks
suggested similar problems of ice action. Marching through
snow from two to four feet deep among bushes was very difficult;
as on his second, but not his third visit to high altitudes, Hooker
was affected by mountain sickness as well as his men.

The temperature fell to zero and it was bitterly cold.
My Lepchas, several of whom had never been in the snow
before, behaved admirably and not one uttered a complaint.
At this elevation a few steps under any circumstances is
fatiguing, and the glare of the new fallen snow in so rarefied
an atmosphere gives soreness at once to unprotected eyes.
I cut the veils Mrs. Campbell made me into little pieces for
some of the party, others hung Yaks' tails over their eyes
or pieces of paper, or unloosed their queues and combed the
long hair over the forehead.

But the natives ascribed mountain sickness to another
cause ; namely, the Dwarf Ehododendrons :

The scent (of resinous leaves) was overpowering ; the Bhoteas
attribute the headaches of these regions to them and not
to the rarefied air. I think I can feel my head throb still
every time I smell the plants in my collection.

Discomforts apart, the journey to Jongri was a great
success. There was a rich botanical harvest on the way up,
above the pines, ten species of Ehododendrons, one or two of
them new ; and lower down, forty-six species of ferns. Geo-
logically it equalled in interest the Yangma valley, a remarkable
glaciated valley on the west of Kinchin. * I quite believe,'
he exclaims, ' no two such spots have ever been explored in the
whole Himalayan range.'

The trip wound up with a quaint episode. The homeward
way led Hooker again to the Changachelling convents near
Pemiongchi, the Lamas of which he knew from his visit on
the outward march.

They are re-ornamenting their temple very beautifully ;
the workmen come from Lhassa and the colors from Pekin.

280 TO DABJILING : FIBST HIMALAYAN JOUBNEY

To my amazement, I found myself on the walls, in a flowered
coat and pantaloons, hat, spectacles, beard and moustache,
drawing in a note-book, an Angel on one side offering me
flowers and a devil on the other doing homage ! I never
laughed so much in my life, and the Lamas' artists were
pleased beyond measure that I recognised the likeness.1

So, with the warm hospitality of the Lamas and four
drenching days' march to Darjiling,

ended [he writes] my journey, without slip, accident, or the
loss or hurt of a single man of my sometimes very numerous
party. In Sikkim I have not spent an unquiet hour, except
on the coolies' account, in the snow. I carried neither gun
nor pistols, arms nor keys, and lost nothing whatever. From
the simple people, Bhoteas and Lepchas, I have met every
attention and kindness, and very pleased they will be to
see me again, though, should the Bajah oppose, fear may
deter them from coming near me ; that I do not anticipate,
however. A more interesting country for tourist, artist,
naturalist, and antiquarian can scarce be found, and it was
untrodden in any walk previous to my visit, and I have
but flitted over the surface.

The only untoward incident at the outset of this march had
been the unruliness of the fourteen Bhotea coolies, who plun-
dered the stores, resisted their Sirdar and the Ghurkas, and
finally made off on the seventh day of the journey, from the
summit of Tonglo, their place being taken, after some delay,
by a few well-behaved Ghurkas from the Nepalese villages.
Then everything that could be dispensed with was sent back
to Darjiling, and the reduced party went' on its way.

This was troublesome for the moment, but not serious, and
the note of satisfaction re-appears in the words :

I have not lost or broken a single instrument during my
journey, though I have had 8 thermometers in daily use,
2 barometers, 2 chronometers, 3 compasses, a sextant, and
Artificial Horizon. I consider this quite a feat — always
remembering the roads to be of the worst, and that 50 men
were bustling about me all day long.

1 These drawings, unfortunately, are no longer extant (sec ii. 471).

IMPRESSIONS AND REMINISCENCES 281

A few passages from the Himalayan Journals may be cited
as bringing out personal impressions of the journey and the
spirit of the traveller. Mountain scenery below the snow line
is compared, as ever, to the perfection of our Scottish High-
lands. In the Tambur valley is an old lake-bed, outspread
under lofty hills. Through it

meandered the rippling stream, fringed with alder. It was
a beautiful spot, the clear, cool, murmuring river, with its
rapids and shallows, forcibly reminding me of trout-streams
in the highlands of Scotland.

Elsewhere the mountains rising out of the sea of valley
mists are like the mountains by Norwegian fiords or Scotch
salt-water lochs. A little lake, a rarity in these valleys, recalls
the tarn at the entrance of Glencoe. We realise instantly the
charm of the pool set in shining meadow greenery against the
dark precipices beyond. It was a home-like delight to espy
abundance of a common Scotch fern, Cryptogramma crispa,
growing in the clefts of a rocky moraine under the Choonjerma
pass, at 13,000 feet. High on the Wallanchoon pass, again,
the same lichens coloured the rocks as in Scotland, and the
dwarf rhododendrons and masses of a little Andromeda imitated
a heathery hill side. Here, also, the magic of the familiar in
the remote wilderness stirs the imagination :

Along the narrow path I found the two commonest of
all British weeds, a grass (Poa annua), and the shepherd's
purse ! They had evidently been imported by man and
yaks, and as they do not occur in India, I could not but
regard these little wanderers from the north with the deepest
interest. Such incidents as these give rise to trains of
reflection in the mind of the naturalist traveller ; and the
farther he may be from home and friends, the more wild
and desolate the country he is exploring, the greater the
difficulties and dangers under which he encounters these
subjects of his earliest studies in science, so much keener
is the delight with which he recognises them, and the more
lasting is the impression which they leave. At this moment
these common weeds more vividly recall to me that wild
scene than does all my journal, and remind me how I went

282 TO DAKJ1LING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUKNEY

on my way, taxing my memory for all it ever knew of
the geographical distribution of the shepherd's purse, and
musing on the probability of the plant having found its
way thither over all Central Asia, and the ages that may
have been occupied in its march. (Him. J., i. 221.)

Nor was ' imagination only stirred by Nature. It was
equally moved by the diverse expressions of human aspiration.

The temple of Wallanchoon stood close by the convent,
and had a broad low architrave : the walls sloped inwards,
as did the lintels : the doors were black, and almost covered
with a gigantic and disproportioned painting of a head,
with bloody . cheeks and huge teeth ; it was surrounded by
myriads of goggle eyes, which seemed to follow one about
everywhere ; and though in every respect rude, the effect
was somewhat imposing. The similarly proportioned gloomy
portals of Egyptian fanes naturally invite comparison ;
but the Thibetan temples lack the sublimity of these ; and
the^uncomf or table creeping sensation produced by the many
sleepless eyes of Boodh's numerous incarnations is very
different from the awe with which we contemplate the
outspread wings of the Egyptian symbol, and feel as in
the presence of the God who says : ' I am Osiris the Great :
no man hath dared to lift my veil ' (i. 228).

It is interesting to note the traveller's full and careful
method of observing on his march, and his scrupulous pains
to avoid partial generalisations or the errors of the ' personal
equation.' This method of recording observations, which left
nothing to chance or the uncertainties of memory, is set forth
almost parenthetically in the description of his descent from a
Himalayan pass 16,000 feet high, when in the magical light of
a young moon everything was bathed in beauty and imagina-
tive suggestion, but all pleasure was lost in the headache and
giddiness and bodily lassitude brought on by exertion in that
thin air.

Happily [he writes], I had noted everything on my way
up, and left nothing intentionally to be done on returning.
In making such excursions as this, it is above all things
desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on

ACCURATE OBSEEVATION 283

the way out : I always carried my note-book and pencil
tied to my jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in
my hand. It is impossible to begin observing too soon, or
to observe too much : if the excursion is long, little is ever
done on the way home ; the bodily powers being mechani-
cally exerted, the mind seeks repose, and being fevered
through over-exertion, it can endure no train of thought, or
be brought to bear on a subject. (H. J., i. 247.)

As to overhasty generalisation :

The plants gathered near the top of Wallanchoon pass
were species of Compositae, grass, and Arenaria ; the most
curious was Saussurea gossypina, which forms great clubs
of the softest white wool, six inches to a foot high, its flowers
and leaves seeming uniformly clothed with the warmest
fur that nature can devise. Generally speaking, the alpine
plants of the Himalaya are quite unprovided with any special
protection of this kind ; it is the prevalence and conspicuous
nature of the exceptions that mislead, and induce the care-
less observer to generalise hastily from solitary instances ;
for the prevailing alpine genera of the Himalaya, Arenarias,
primroses, saxifrages, fumitories, Ranunculi, gentians, grasses,
sedges, &c., have almost uniformly naked foliage. (H. J., i.
225.)

As in other matters, so he sought for accuracy in drawing
mountain scenery, with a deliberate endeavour

to overcome that tendency to exaggerate heights and in-
crease the angle of slopes, which is, I believe, the besetting
sin, not of amateurs only, but of our most accomplished
artists.

Confessing that, as he did not use instruments to project the
outlines, he could not pretend to have wholly avoided this
snare (while the lithographer, alas, was not always content
to a' bide by his plain copy), he is often careful to mention the
angle subtended by lofty peaks in the distance, and the true
slope on their sides. For, as he remarks (H. J., i. 347),

the vagueness with which all terms are usually applied to the
apparent altitude and steepness of mountains and precipices,

284 TO DAKJILING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUKNEY

is apt to give false impressions. It is essential to attend to
such points where scenery of real interest and importance is
to be described. It is customary to speak of peaks as tower-
ing into the air, which yet subtend an angle of very few de-
grees ; of almost precipitous ascents, which, when measured,
are found to be slopes of 18° or 20° ; and of cliffs as steep
and stupendous, which are inclined at a very moderate
angle.

CHAPTEE XIV

THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

IT was now too late to proceed to the Hills -of Assam, where
the healthy winter season would soon be over. This was small
disappointment. The other mountains south of the Ganges,
which had so charmed him the previous April, had lost all their
attraction now that he had seen the veritable Himalayas.
Moreover Hodgson laid stress on the simple fact that it was
better to explore one district thoroughly than to wander. He
resolved therefore to stay at Darjiling, where Hodgson's society
and library, Muller's scientific aid, and Campbell's zealous
interest, were strong inducements to a man who aimed at
being something beyond a collector and tourist, and to follow
up his success on the west of Kinchinjunga by an expedition
to the east of it the next summer, completing the botany and
sending home young plants and especially seeds, of which he
writes to Sir William,

I have done my best to give satisfaction. I stayed at
13,000 feet very much on purpose to collect those of the
Ehododendrons, and with cold fingers it is not easy at the
ripening season, December, to collect those from the scattered
twigs, generally out of reach. (March 27, 1849.)

As to getting the seed of E. Dalhousiae, there was a further
difficulty,

for you cannot see the plant on the limbs of the lofty oaks
it inhabits, except it be in flower, and groping at random
in the woods is really like digging for daylight. . . . You
must remember it is no light work to be the pioneer of these

285

286 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

fine things (April 2). I have obtained, however, plenty of
young plants, and will send a tin case, direct, on my return
to Darjiling (April 11).

$ he cold weather gave opportunity of a trip with Hodgson
to the Terai in order to complete the botanical chain from the
plains to the snows. Six weeks were spent in sorting and
packing the botanical spoil from Nepaul ; eighty coolie loads
were sent down to Calcutta.

The most notable event of these intermediate weeks was

what I might call an AngeVs visit from Mr. William Tayler,1
the Postmaster-General for India, brother to Frederick
Tayler the artist ... a highly accomplished man and a
splendid sketcher ; and we became friends in a very few
hours. . . .

The botanist among the mountains suggested an admirable
subject for his brush.

He is pleased to desire my sitting in the foreground
surrounded by my Lepchas and the romantic-looking Ghorka
guard, inspecting the contents of a vasculum full of plants,
which I have collected during the supposed day's march.
My Lepcha Sirdar (which means Great man's Head man)
is kneeling before me on the ground, taking the plants out of
the box, that in his hand being a splendid bunch of Dendro-
Uum noUk. He is picturesquely attired in costume, with a
large pigtail. Another is behind me ; the Ghorka Havildar
and Lepchas, in their picturesque uniforms, are looking on,
and my big Bhotea dog lies at my feet. On one side two
Lepchas are making my blanket tent house, cutting Bamboos,
&c. I am in a forest, sitting on the stump of a tree, with the
Snowy mountains in the background ; and a great mass of

1 William Tayler (1808-92) was an Indian civilian who about this time was
Postmaster-General of Bengal. His skill in portrait painting made him many
friends ; his caricatures some enemies. In 1855 he became Commissioner of
Patna. His policy during the Mutiny had provoked great controversy, pro-
longed for many years, and an open quarrel with the Lieuter ant-Governor led
to his resignation, when he practised as a lawyer in Bengal till his return to
England in 1867.

Kis brother Frederick (1802-89) wasa water-colourist and etcher who en joyed
lifelong popularity in England, especially for his sporting and pastoral scenes.
He was President of the Old Water-colour Society, 1858-71,

A PICTURE OF THE TRAVELLER 287

Ferns and Rhododendrons, brought in by another man, are
on the ground close to me.

My dress was the puzzle, but it was finally agreed I should
be as I was when in my best, a Thibetan in the main, with
just so much of English peeping out as should proclaim me
no Bhotea, and as much of the latter as should vouchsafe my
being a person of rank in the character. So I have on a
large, loose, worsted Bhotea cloak, with very loose sleeves ;
it is all stripes of blue, green, white, and red, and lined with
scarlet. Enough is thrown back to show English pantaloons,
and my lower extremities cased in Bhotea boots. My shirt
collar is romantically loose and open, with a blue neckerchief,
which and my projecting shirt wrists, show the Englishman.
My cap is also Thibetan, and only to be described thus :
it is of pale gray felt, the upturned border stiff and bound
with thin, black silk ribbon. On the top is a silver-mounted
pebble, and a peacock's feather floats down my back. The
latter are marks of rank. (April 25, 1849.)

The sketch, begun in February and finished during April
on Tayler's later visit to Darjiling, was sent to England that
Fitch might make a copy for Sir William. The copyist's prac-
tised hand improved to some extent on the workmanship ; but
in the interests of accuracy Hooker was constrained to write
home (January 30, 1850) : ' The stream of water and fruits
of Hodgsonia which Fitch has brought into the foreground are
doubtless improvements, though the latter are anachronisms
when coupled with Ehododendron flowers, the one being the
offspring of May and the other of September.' Later, a
third version of the scene, more successful both in composition
and in technique, was made from Fitch's water-colour by Mr.
Frank Stone. From the former, which is in the possession
of Dr. Charles Hooker, of Cirencester, the accompanying
illustration has been reproduced.1

The big dog introduced into the picture was Hooker's faithful
companion during his second journey to the snows till the
unhappy day when, owing to his incorrigible habit of running
on to the slippery bamboo bridges, he fell into a torrent and

1 Mr. Stone's version belongs to Lady Hooker, Fitch's copy to Capt. J. S.
Hooker.

283 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

was swept away. Kinchin, as he was named, is first referred
to in a letter at the end of the Nepaul expedition :

I have brought from the Snows a .most grand Bhotea
dog, about which I must write to dear Bessy, and a droll
puppy of a breed which I hope will live in the Plains. The
former is a huge and savage creature, but a faithful watch ;
he does not bite me, but has already so served three of
my servants, chiefly at night. If you know a book called
* Youatt on the Dog,' and can refer to it, you will find
a splendid wood-cut of this — ' the Thibet Mastiff.'

The results of the Nepaul expedition being completed, from
February 27 to March 24 he \vas in the plains. Happily the
Sikkim Terai was free from the malaria, so deadly elsewhere,
and he was able to reassure his parents, who would naturally
be alarmed by the sudden death not only of his late companions,
Mr. Williams1 and his assistant on the Survey, who had im-
prudently camped in a most unhealthy jungle, but of his uncle
and almost contemporary, Gurney Turner, who had entered
the medical service of the E.I.C.

A reasonably good collection, as he modestly calls it, was the
result, though in the densely wooded Terai ' the only safe way
of botanising is by pushing through the jungle on elephants ;
an uncomfortable method, for the quantities of ants and
insects which drop from the foliage above, and from the risk
of disturbing pendulous bees' and ants' nests.' Geological
research in dense tropical forests was exhausting, but he made
many notes, including traces of inversion of the strata, as at
the foot of other great mountain ranges, such as the Alleghanies
and the Alps. By the Mechi river, the western boundary of

1 The following is characteristic : ' If , as I fear is the case, the widow of
Williams (of the Geological Survey) is left destitute — (she has six children) —
there ought to be a small sum raised for her by the officers of the Geological
Survey. I have written to Reeks about it, and requested that, if this be done,
he would apply to jou for £10 in my name ; for during the two months I spent
with poor Williams, he wo old not allow me to spend a shilling for board or
travelling expenses. Reeks will only set down my name for £2 2s., and give
the rest under a fictitious signature ; for neither could some of my brother
officers afford so much, nor are they called upon to give it by obligations to the
deceased.' (To his mother, Feb. 1, 1849. Trenham Reeks, who died in 1879,
was Registrar of the School of Mines, and Curator and Librarian of the Museum
of Practical Geology.)

IN THE TERAI 289

Sikkim, were * reported Iron Hills ' ; inspection, however,
showed that ' the Iron is, I believe, only Manganese, which will
disappoint Mr. Campbell ; but I have found a small (useless)
seam of coal and vestiges of coal fossils.' Other observers
had seen in the alluvial plains of the Ganges and the flat-topped
terraces of gravel along the foothills the sure sign of a deep
sea that in geologically recent times had washed the base of
the mountains as they were gradually upheaved ; Hooker
himself confesses that he could never look at the Sikkim
Himalayas from the plain without seeing in them the weather-
beaten front of a mountainous coast, while the deep valleys
he explored seemed essentially long fiords with terraced pebble
beds and transported blocks such as could be seen on the
raised beaches of our Scotch sea lochs exposed by the rising
of the land.

For the rest, other picturesque episodes of the trip may
be read in the ' Journals ' ; the elephant fair at Titalya,
where Dr. Campbell joined them, on business as a buyer for
the Government ; the coolness of shooting the rapids of the
Teesta after the heat and haze of the plains ; the carnival
at theyoungEajahof Jeelpigoree's Durbar, with its battle, not
of confetti, but of small paper bombs of red powder ; the
weariness of riding elephants, and the fierce storm of hail as
they returned which cut to pieces Dr. Campbell's experimental
tea garden and lay unmelted there for four days.

Now began preparations for the second and longer Hima-
layan journey, through eastern Sikkim. The plan was parallel
to that of the former trip. As formerly they had ascended
the Tambur river, so now the party was to follow the river
Teesta to its head-waters ; then ascend either fork to the pass
at its head leading into Tibet. The western fork was the
Lachen, its pass the Kongra Lama ; the eastern the Lachoong,
leading to the Donkia pass, under the great mountain of that
name. These passes were far to the northward of the passes
visited in 1848, for the barrier chain trends north-east from
Kinchinjunga, and the line now taken was some fifty miles to
the eastward. Thus it was expected that the direct route
would take no less than twenty-five to thirty marches.

290 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

The journey produced wonderful results, but ended in
a very unpleasant adventure. In the latter part of it, Dr.
Campbell joined Hooker, and on their return both were seized
and held as hostages for nearly two months while the Dewan
tried to extort better terms in the treaty between Sikkim and
India. The party had set out on May 3 for a three months'
trip, but it was six months before the explorations were com-
pleted, and eight before the travellers returned to Darjiling
on Christmas Day, 184.9.

Hooker, travelling alone, would certainly not have been
thus molested ; but the chance of seizing the Political Agent
was irresistible to the crafty Oriental, one of whose chief
henchmen, moreover, had a personal score to settle with the
Eesident, who had caused him to be punished for the abduction
of two Brahmin girls from Nepaul. For Hooker at first was
reserved merely passive obstruction, triumphantly overcome by
good-humour and patience, and the exhibition of the Rajah's
formal permit and promise of assistance on the way to the
snowy passes. The latter he was careful to obtain, despite the
renewed shuffling of the Dewan, which would have left him
with the poor alternative of a second visit to Jongri.

As there are many rapid rivers to be crossed, and I
must have relays of food, I cannot well venture without
his permission. Though he cannot stop me, he may detain
my coolies, and to remove the bridges is only the matter
of ten minutes. Lord Dalhousie has again proffered his
best services, and I write to him on the subject without
hesitation.

Accordingly Campbell wrote a third letter to the Rajah, giving
him ten days in which to make up his mind, and send formal
permission and a guide.

This was effectual. By May 2 permission had come to
visit the Lachen and Lachoong passes, and a guide, the same
Meepo who had served on the former expedition, was to meet
him a few marches ahead. It was a disappointment that,
owing to a stringent order from the Court of Directors as to
leave, Lord Dalhousie, however willing, was unable to grant

START OF THE SECOND JOUENEY 291

immediate leave to Dr. Thomas Thomson, Hooker's old friend
and fellow- student, the explorer of the North-western Hima-
layas, to join in this Sikkim expedition. He had, indeed,
three months' sick leave which he was about to take at Simla,
but his regular six months' leave was not due till the autumn.
This he planned to claim immediately after rejoining his
regiment in the Punjaub, and so share the final trip to Assam
and the Khasia Hills.

A start was made on May 3, with a larger travelling camp
than originally expected.

They are 42 in all ; 10 are soldiers, 5 are Hodgson's
shooters, &c., 10 are Lepchas of my own, the rest Sikkim
Bhoteas. Only two or three have ever beenf to the Snows,
but all seem active, willing, and cheerful.

From his second camp he writes further :

Everything promises happily for the success of this
my present expedition, thanks to Hodgson and Campbell,
whose kindness exceeds all I can describe. How far I may
be able to proceed is very problematical, for the best
collection of charts and routes will not reveal to me whither
I am going. The soldiers inspire confidence in my people,
and that is all I want. My own followers appear excellent
fellows. To-day they accompanied me in a march which
t,ired even my unloaded self, and though the weather is
terribly hot, they uttered not a murmur.

The villagers everywhere showed themselves kind and civil.

I have just been accosted by an enormously fat Lama,
with a grand present of eggs, &c. The kindness of these
simple mountaineers is very grateful, and their civil speeches
quite graceful. They hope you will not fall ill, are sorry
their roads are so indifferent, apologise for not bringing
fowls (the priests say this) ' because they must not take
life ' — say they will hear of your progress in safety with
pleasure, and hope to see you en route home again, to stay
with them. A small joke convulses them with laughter,
and the expected * backsheesh ' is always received with many
thanks.

292 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

But official obstruction began with the first functionary
encountered, to be answered, as always, with patience and
firmness, seasoned with good-humoured contempt. The fellow
declared he had no orders ; the party must wait two days
until word could be received from the Kajah. Confronted
with the necessary permit, he apologised, but must mend
the roads, and that would take two days.

So [exclaims Hooker] these trumpery functionaries lie,
cheat, and obstruct, and nothing but patience and cool
contempt put them down. The moment I gather the con-
tents of their long speeches from the preface, I cut them
short with an answer which does not suit Bhotean idioms
and fashions.

The personal difficulties on the journey may be measured
by the fact that whereas to the snows was reckoned a matter
of twenty-five, or for a heavily laden party, thirty marches,
in the event it took eighty-three days, from May 3 to July 24,
to reach the Kongra Lama pass. On May 5, the next hint of
obstruction on the part of a friend of the hostile Lassoo Kajee
melted away after the arrival of the Tchebu Lama on his way
to Darjiling, though the latter, who was to prove himself a
faithful friend, was formally commissioned to say that the
Eajah had wished the expedition to be postponed on account
of his son's death.

Now [comments Hooker] as the Kajah had not spoken
to his son for sixteen years, I doubt his sorrow. The period
qf mourning is over, anyhow, afid, as I told the Lama, it
was all one to me, if Kajah, son, and family were to die
together — that was no reason why I should not travel
through his country. He promptly apologised for his
Master, and wrote an order (of what use it is the sequel
will show) that I was to pass on unmolested, till I met a
guide from the Rajah.

Five days later obstruction was renewed, but the tables
were neatly turned on the obstructor. The Lama of Gorh,
another underling of the Dewan's, having obstructed the roads
and bridges overnight, officiously came forward as a guide,

FIKST OBSTRUCTION 293

offering the choice of two roads. Hooker, all politeness, asked
for the coolest, and at every obstruction, assured him that as
he had volunteered to show the road, it was clear he meant to
removal all obstacles, ' and accordingly I put him to all the
trouble I possibly could, which he took with a very indifferent
grace,' until fully discomfited by the arrival of the faithful
Meepo with the Eajah's authority to proceed. Unfortunately
the latter had never travelled the road, so that they were at
the mercy of the guide he had brought with him, who was but
a spy on both.

At Singtam, where he reduced his party by sending back
the escort, he was delayed a day by the Soubah or governor, of
whom he was to have much experience later, on the pretext
of collecting food, which never arrived, and at Choongtam,
where the Lachen and Lachoong join to form the Teesta, a
full week. The motive was clear.

The Kajah hopes, by throwing his Guide and party
upon my resources, that he shall starve me into going away,
and he has also followed up this scheme by sending a foolish
old official to frighten my people ; but the poor man cannot
bear any degree of ridicule, and between laughing at his
menaces and treating him with all kindness, I have fairly
won his heart. I pay most liberally for everything I
get; I give large presents to the Authorities and to the
Convents ; every day I heal the sick who come to me for
advice and medicine ; 'and nobody has received even a
hard word from me, except in reply to the insolence of the
Kajah.

It was more serious that the convoys bringing the promised
supplies from Darjiling for the men, who required no less
than 80 Ibs, of rice per diem, were very late in coming, and
when they arrived, brought only enough for eight days. That
Campbell should not have fulfilled his promise of sending
supplies regularly seemed at first incomprehensible, but it
turned out that after the rains had begun on the 10th, the
Dewan had taken care to leave the roads unrepaired ; the
journey was lengthened and the carriers had to consume part
of Hooker's supplies as well as their own. Here, then, he stayed

VOL. I U

294 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

till May 25. His itinerary gave him six marches further
to the snows, but two months were to pass before he reached
the Kongra Lama.

It is worth recording, as an instance of his consideration for
the people he was among, that he now resolved to forgo one
of the most attractive parts of his programme, in the belief,
afterwards dispelled, that the Sikkimese might suffer if he
crossed the passes. Accordingly he tells his mother (May 24,
1849);:

It is my intention to proceed to the top of both of the
Passes, without crossing, which the Kajah has forbidden ;
and though I dispute his authority to give such a prohibition,
I cannot act in defiance of it and cross the Passes in secret.
Thibet is the Headquarters of the Sikkim people's Church,
and, if through any act of mine the Passes were to be closed,
I should inflict upon the natives what they would consider
a serious injury — namely, the shutting of their Church Door.
It is most reluctantly that I give up the intention of crossing,
especially as the Eajah's own order and other circumstances
convince me that I could do so if I chose, and that no one
has power to hinder me, for the first Chinese village is distant
two days' marches on the other side of the Border. How-
ever, I have plenty to do on this side, and if by crossing I
should throw any effectual impediment in the way of my
Sikkim investigations, I should be a great loser by it.

At Choongtam he was forced to divide his party again,
leaving there all but fifteen. Three marches further, at
Lamteng, there was another week's delay and very short com-
mons, meagre supplies taking twenty days to come from Dar-
jiling over the bad roads. On June 23 came news that a large
convoy had been driven back by landslips, but there was promise
of another coming, so that on the next day he did not hesitate
to move forward one march to Zemu Samdong, the bridge
of the Zemu, a large tributary on the west bank of the Lachen.
Here his guide, the local headman, or Lachen Phipun, alleged
the Tibetan frontier to be. Not knowing which of these
streams was the real Lachen, and having no crossing of a river
marked here on his route, Hooker resolved to wait at least

DELAY AND HUNGEE 295

till sufficient supplies arrived, though both wet and hungry,
learning the difference between a fowl and a chicken — ' of the
latter I eat bones and all, of the former I cannot.' Hunger,
he also declared, made it a special martyrdom to science when;
instead of eating a curious fruit called Gundroon, a polite
present from the Kani, he put some aside to be sent to Kew.1
Four weeks were spent up the Zemu, trying vainly to reach the
head of the valley and the clearer Tibetan skies ahead, for the
report of a pass in that direction was probably a deliberate
blind. Large collections were made, for the grassy hills
swarmed with rare plants, and were sent down the valley to
be dried. Even so, the persistent wet destroyed much, and
he laments to his father :

Alas, one of my finest collections of Ehododendrons sent
to Darjeeling got ruined by the coolies falling ill and being
detained on the road, so I have to collect the troublesome
things afresh. If your shins were as bruised as mine tearing
through the interminable Khododendron scrub of 10-13,000
feet you would be as sick of the sight of these glories as
I am.

It was a rough time, but produced no ill effects, though

a hole in the rock or a shed of leaves is very often my
residence for days, and my fare is just rice and a fowl, or
kid, eggs, or what I can lay my hands on — no beer or
luxuries.

The great encouragement was that no other explorer had
seen so much of the unknown Himalaya, or with results to
be compared with his.

On the 28th and 29th came the Phipun's attempt to hustle
him off with a rabble of threatening followers, which Hooker,
supported only by his dog, Kinchin, entirely disconcerted by
a show of unconcern, backed with plain speaking.

At the first alarm the coolie headman, Nimbo, Hooker's
one courageous follower, took three lads with him down the

1 Dispyros Kaki, Linn. The note by Hooker with the specimens in the
Kew Museum is as follows : * Fruit called Gundroon by the Bhotheas. Good
eating dried in this state. Imported to Sikkim from Lhassa.'

I

296 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

valley to the drying sheds and rescued the plants from the
marauders. Next morning, he tells Sir William (July 5) :

Sure enough, as I was sitting drawing on my bed, with
a cup of tea on one side, it was * Jenny Lass wha's coming ! '
and all the ' wild Macraws ' were wending up the glen.
, Twenty of the most uncouth barbarians you ever set eyes
on gathered at the mouth of my tent, dressed in scanty,
tattered blanket kirtles, with long knives, long brass pipes,
and long matted hair, bare-legged and bare-headed ; they
reminded me most forcibly of Scott's tales. I scarcely
deigned to lift my head and look at them, but let them
gather as they pleased, and then sent to ask what they
wanted here. * To speak to the Sahib.' I said they must
report to me who they individually were, which they refused
to do yesterday, and only gave insolence to my Sirdars.
It turned out that every man was a Sikkim Bhotea and the
Thibetans had all run away the previous night ! I then
sent word to the head man, that he must send every one
of his rag-tag and bobtail away, or I would not speak to
him either. This he did with some trouble, as a few were
contumacious, and when he came to my tent I took him
roundly to task for frightening my people, detaining my *
things, and giving insolence. Having rated him soundly,
and taken all his answers down on a big sheet of paper, I
sent him about his business, and have seen no more of the
Bhoteas since ! Can you fancy such fools ! If you give
in an inch it is all up ; if you get the upper hand an inch,
you may bully and swagger and knock them down like
ninepins.

Intimidation having failed, dilatory tactics were renewed.
On the return to the bridge at Zemu Sandong on July 1
letters arrived from Campbell and from the Tchebu Lama;
conveying the Kajah's orders to the Phipun that he should
aid the party. Three days later the Singtam Soubah arrived
as conductor, with more commendatory letters and presents
for Hooker from the Eajah. His secret business, however,
was to starve the white man out, and though, after certain
supplies arrived on the llth, he led Hooker the following
day one more march up the Lachen to the village of Tallum,

A GAME OF BLUFF 297

he lingered there till the 23rd, alleging anew that this was
the last point of Sikkim, and that Tungu,- the next village,
was in Tibet. All the villagers; down to the little children,
were instructed to tell the same story. Talium was the
scene of the famous game of bluff, which convinced the
Soubah that it was he, and not Hooker, who was being
starved out.

Now the Singtam Soubah's instructions I also saw were
to be most civil and draw me away ; he represented the
Eajah's affection for me as boundless ; should I be but in
a stream or come to hurt, nothing short of a Chait at Lhassa
and annual worship could be thought of. The Eajah's
anxiety on my behalf alone induced him to pray my return
to Darjeeling> &c. &c. The more civil he was the more so
was I, but I felt bound to assure him that my instruc-
tions were explicit, that I should wait where I was for
orders from Campbell, which could not be before twenty
days. He, knowing how short of food we were, grinned
acquiescence, fancying he would soon starve me out. I
in turn knew that the greedy old Kajah, by way of
insuring his getting on with his duty, had allowed him
and his coolies (sent to repair the road back) only six days'
food.

Being camped at 11,500 feet, I had plenty to do, lots of
new plants, and was as busy as possible every day and all
day for nine or ten days. The Soubah visited me every
morning and we had long chats ; he is a fine fellow and has
been in Lhassa, Digarchi, &c., and told frankly and freely
all he knew, giving me most curious information. Talking
one morning of the mountain chains, I asked him for a rude
sketch of those bounding Sikkim ; he called for a great
sheet of paper and charcoal and wanted to make his
mountains of sand ; I ordered rice, of which we had sore
little, and scattered it about wastefully ; it had its effect,
he stared at my wealth and, after bidding him good-bye
(the custom always is you have to send your visitor away),
I saw no more of my rice, which was ominous for his granary.
Not long afterwards he volunteered to take me a ride to
Tungu, which all swore was across the border. I agreed if
the tent should go ; he dare not let me. Why ? It was in

298 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

' Cheen ' (Thibet). Then I said I had given my promise
not to go into Cheen, and would wait till my orders from
Darjeeling came ; he was nonplussed again.

Well, on the 10th day it pleased Providence to afflict
the Soubah of Singtam with a sore colic so that he could
not pay me his morning visit, and as I did not ask for him
he took for granted that I was angry and dare not ask for
medicine. This was owing to the quantity of wild stuff
the poor soul had eked out his fare with. A servant came
at night to tell me how bad his master was — ' like to die/
he said, twisting his fingers together and laying them across
the pit of his stomach to indicate the commotions of the
Soubah's inside. I gave him a great dose at once and he
was on his legs next morning looking woefully. He told me
he had heard of ' Kongra Lama,' and would take me there
if I promised not to stay more than one night at Tungu.
I gave the same answer. Oh, he said, Tungu is not in
Cheen. Is it in Sikkim then ? Yes ! Very well, we will all
go to-morrow morning and I will stay as long as I please.
There was no help for it, so he laughed acquiescence.

There is a triumphant ring in the first announcement of
his success.

I have carried my point and stood on the Table-land of
Thibet, beyond the Sikkim frontier, at the back of all the
snowy mountains, alt. 15,500 feet.

He had not only defeated, but won over his old opponent.

We went to the Pass and into Thibet yesterday, the
Soubah of Lachen, my arch enemy, the guide. He has
made 100 rude apologies : the Chinese had threatened
to cut his head off, &c., &c. I answer that an Englishman
always carries his point, and that days, weeks, and months
are all the same to me. He vows he will tell no more lies,
not so much as that, hiding all but the very tip of his little
finger. That now we are friends he will show me everything,
and I must visit his wife in his black tent on the frontier.
Now the tables are turned and the Bhoteas are as civil as
they were before hostile and impracticable.

July 24, 1849, was the day of triumph. The day before

SUCCESS 299

they had mounted to the high alp of Tungu, where friendly
Tibetans from across the frontier were camped for the summer
in their black horsehair tents, pasturing yaks. The journey
to the pass and back was the best part of thirty miles. The
ground was level enough for riding on the hardy Tartar ponies,
stubborn, intractable, unshod, which never missed a foot among
the sharp rocks, deep stony torrents and slippery paths, even
in the pitch darkness of the final way back. Sorry-looking
beasts, nothing could tire them, not even the sixteen stone
burden 01 the Soubah. Hooker himself walked some thirteen
miles of the way, botanising ; but ' at dusk,' he confesses, ' I
took horse, for alas ! I am quite blind in the dark.'

Peppin, the Soubah, was as good as his word ; going and
coming they were most graciously received by his squaw and
family.

The whole party squatted in a ring inside the tent, the
Soubah and myself seated at the head, on a beautiful Chinese
mat. Queen Peppin then made tea (with salt and butter),
we each produced our Bhotea cup, which was always kept
full. Curd, parched rice, and beaten maize were handed
liberally round, and we fared sumptuously, for I am very
fond both of Brick Tea and curds.

Nature reserved an impressive setting for the last act of the
serio-comedy. As they sat round Peppin's hospitable fire, a
tremendous peal like thunder echoed down the glen. The
men started to their feet and cried to Hooker to be off, for the
mountains were falling and a violent storm was at hand. So
for five or six miles they pursued their way up the river bed,
shrouded in fog and deafened by the unseen avalanches that
thundered down unceasingly from the great mountains on
either side. Only the low hills which flanked the river fended
off the falling rocks. Gradually, as they ascended, the valley
widened ; at 15,000 feet they emerged on a broad, flat table-
land, and 500 feet higher reached a long flat ridge, where
stood the boundary mark — a Cairn ! This was their goal.
The storm lifted its curtains. Beyond showed the blue and
rainless skies of Tibet ; behind, were revealed the two snow

300 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

peaks of Chomiomo and Kinehinjhow, so named from its
' beard ' of icicles, and between them the funnel-mouthed head
of the valley up which they had come.

Here [he exclaims], after three months of obstacles, I
was at last at the back of the whole Himalaya range at its
most northern trend in the central Himalaya, for this is far
North of Kinchin-junga and Chumalari or the Nepal Passes
I visited last winter, and opens on to the Thibetan Plateau
without crossing a snowy ridge to be followed by other
and other snowed spurs, as Kanglachem and Wallanchoon
do. Here too I solved another great problem. There was
not a particle of snow anywhere en route, right or left, or
on the great mountains for 1500 feet above my position.
The snow line in Sikkim lies on the Indian face of the
Himalaya range at below 15,000 feet, on the Thibetan at
above 16,000. I felt very pleased and made a rude panorama
sketch on four folio sheets, very rude you may suppose, for
the keen wind blew a gale and we were quite wet ; above
15,000 feet too, I am a ' gone coon,' my head rings with
acute headache and feels as if bound in a vice, my temples
throb at every step and I retch with sea-sickness.

An hour and a half was spent on the Tibetan side, making
observations. The letter tells how, in spite of the fire they
made, ' my shivering Lepchas were numb and I gave them
my cloak, going always well clad myself.'

Much as Hooker would have liked to stay for some time
in the high alpine region of Tungu, the question of supplies
forbade. The post took twenty days from Darjiling. Still,
he stayed the rest of the week, exploring the high yak pastures
and the glaciers, before setting out on the week's march back
to Choongtam and plenty, 7000 feet lower, a weary march
over roads in a terrible state with floods, landslips, jungle,
and impassable places, and warmth attended with tropical
discomforts.

I think leeches are the worst ; my legs are, I assure you,
daily clotted with blood, and I pull my stockings off quite
full of leeches ; they get into the hair and all over the body.
I cannot walk ten yards without having dozens on my legs ;

THE TUNKRA-LA 301

they produce no pain but the itching and bleeding are
troublesome ; poor Kinchin can hardly walk from weakness,
and he is blinded by the number hanging on to his eyelids,
and his nostrils are quite full. (To W. J. H., Aug. 6, 1869.)

At Choongtam he rested ten days ; then proceeded to
complete his programme by starting afresh up the eastern
stream, the Lachoong, to the disgust of the Singtam Soubah,
who was still charged to accompany him, and longed to be
back amid the comforts and the native beer of his own home.
The unhappy man was also very lame from insect bites, and
at the village of Lachoong (August 16) remained on the sick
list, while Hooker, in unwonted freedom, made an eastward
excursion to the unknown pass of the Tunkra-la, afterwards
used by the British expedition to Lhassa. Of this cold, un-
sheltered spot and his botanical results so far he writes in a
continuation of the letter to his father dated August 24th.

I think the botanical results of my little Thibetan cruise
(which you may talk of) will astonish you, for number ; not
that they would have been increased by going further North ;
but I found what I so many years have only dreamed of,
the remarkable change in vegetation that only occurs at
the boundary of the mountains and plains, that prevalence
of species and paucity of specimens which marks that
curious zone where the perpetual snow rises 2000 feet [i.e.
the snow-line is 2000 feet higher than on the southern side]
on mountain faces opposed to the most sterile country in
the inhabited globe. I am indeed more gratified with my
Lachen journey than I can express to you, so long have all
my friends here and at home thought the probability of
reaching the Thibetan Plateau in this direction visionary.
Campbell's and Hodgson's congratulations are extravagant.
I am very pleased too to think that any one may now go,
the egg-shell is broken ; the intricate route once known and
the nature of the impediments, it is easy to forestall the
one and follow the other. Of the importance of its botanical
results as to the Sikkim Flora you have yet no idea, nor had
I till two days ago, when I returned from a long visit to
another Pass of which nor I nor Campbell were aware and
which took me to within ten miles of Phari and the Holy

302 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOUENEY

Mountain Chumalari. I was four days away ; it is amongst
the main ranges East of Sikkim and leads to Choombi from
this ; though only of the same height as Kongra Lama,
this, the Kankola, was heavily snowed, and indeed from
14,700-15,000 feet we were on snow the whole way. It
took two days from hence to reach Tunkra ; headache and
fatigue prevented my botanizing much on the travelling
days, therefore I camped at 15,000 feet and made a full
Flora at 14-16,000 feet, wholly different from the Kongra
Lama Flora at the same altitude.

Immediately above 15,000 feet there is far more rock
and snow with vast piles of debris than anything else.
This road is very rarely travelled, and then only by an
occasional courier from the Eajah, when at Choombi, to the
N.E. quarter of Sikkim.

Having no tent we slept on the ground, a great precipice
our only shelter from the rain and snow. It was curious
to waken in the morning and see the broad snowy faces of
lofty mountains staring at you, the bright sunbeams dancing
on their rosy peaks, and all within a few yards of you.
Unfortunately the weather was extremely bad and always
is so on this range. At sunrise it was invariably brilliant
and clear, and I then hastily sallied out to a high place to
take views, angles, and bearings. From such heights the
prospect of the whole Kinchin group was superb beyond
all powers of description ; there was an exuberance of snow,
and as the clouds of night rise and reveal peak after peak,
with cliffs, domes, and tables of snow, it really conveyed the
idea of a forest of mountains. At 8 o'clock clouds form,
and before 9 A.M. every object far or near, is wrapped in
thick fog, and you are fortunate if you can gain a glimpse
of the sun with the sextant to make out your time and
position. At 10 A.M. rain always commenced, and lasted
with sleet or snow till sunrise of the following morning.
Our camping ground was of course very cold, and the little
sticks of firewood, for which we had to send down 2000 feet,
were so wet, that with this, and the diminished oxygen of
the air, it was very difficult to keep up a fire. I often
think on these occasions of passages in your lectures, with
keen appreciation of your tact and power in riveting the
student's attention ; how often do I remember your Life

TIBET FKOM DONKIAH PASS 303

of Linnaeus, and of what you have not realised for many a
year, that it is

The sweetest of pleasures under the sun
To sit hy the fire till the ' praties ' are done.

Kesuming his course up the precipitous valley of the
Lachoong, he left Lachoong village on August 29, and in two
marches mounted 6000 feet to Yeumtong, where a week was
spent among the mountains. Here his long patience was
further rewarded. On September 7 a new friend arrived in
the person of his old opponent, the Lachen Phipun, who, having
now, as he said, ascertained that the Tibetans were entirely
indifferent, offered to act as guide still northward up the valley
to Momay and the Donkiah Pass. Momay, at 15,362 feet,
with its great yak pastures, the highest in Sikkim, proved to be
an ideal place for observations of all kinds, and eking out two-
third rations with what could be obtained in the village, the
party stayed here till September 30. On the 9th they went to
the Donkiah pass, 18,466 feet, and in order to obtain a still
wider view over Tibet, Hooker scrambled up the mountain side
another 1000 feet, an ascent made a second time -when he
revisited Donkiah later with Dr. Campbell. The climb eclipsed
in altitude Humboldt's famous climb on Chimborazo, and this
record of over 19,000 feet, as well as three peaks or passes of
18,500, held the field till the brothers Schlagintweit in 1856
reached the height of 22,230 feet on Kamet.

This stage of the expedition is well described in the following
letter :

Lachoong River, Thibet Frontier (i.e. Momay) : September 13, 1848.

From the top of the Donkiah Pass I had a most splendid
view for 60 miles north into Thibet — first of extensive plains,
dunes, and low rocky hills utterly barren and red from the
quantity of quartz, tinged with oxide of iron, which form
the hills north of Kongra-Lama ; beyond that again, and
as far as the eye could scan, were ranges of rocky mountains
sprinkled with snow and of comparatively moderate eleva-
tion. From Kongra-Lama at 16,000 feet the view was
wretched enough, but from hence, no language can convey
an idea of the horrible desolation and sterility of the scene !

304 THE SECOND HIMALAYAN JOURNEY

' A howling wilderness ' is the only meet term ; there was
neither grandeur in the mountains nor beauty in the valleys
to invite the traveller ; in colouring, form of the land and
mountains, and their composition and stratification, it
strangely reminded me of the Egyptian desert. The rocks
were disposed in horizontal strata, cropping out on the
mountain faces and broken into low crags along their tops ;
not even lending fantastic shapes to relieve the eye. Eange
after range was like its fellows until, in the far distance,
one range loftier than the rest, black, rugged, and heavily
snowed in some places, shut out any more distant horizon.
The whole landscape sloped N.W. and the ranges were East
and West, so that I do not doubt the truth of the unanimous
assertion of the people, that all the waters from north of
my position and west of the Paniomchoo are feeders of the
Arun which enters Nepaul far west of Kinchin- junga.

Very different from this dreary Tibetan landscape was the
fantastic grandeur of the mountains hard by. There was a
great amphitheatre of rock and snow under Kinchinjhow, walled
in with precipices and an ice face of 4000 feet, * a great blue
curtain reaching from heaven to earth/ only fretted where
* icicles fifty feet long run along in lines like organ pipes ' ;
its floor, two miles each way, ' a maze of cones of snow laden
with masses of rock rising fifty or eighty feet — comparable
to nothing but the crater of a stupendous volcano, where little
enclosed cones of fire have been suddenly turned to ice.'

. . . What keeps me here is the very curious Flora, though
not so rich as that of Kongra-Lama and the Thibetan plains.
I have a set of most curious new plants from between 17
and 19,000 feet — Woolly Lactuceae and Senecioneae like
Cukitium, Gentians, Chrysanthemums, Saxifrages of course,
Cyananthi, and some very odd things. They are extremely
scarce and require close hunting. Sometimes I get but one
or two specimens of a kind, and poking with a headache
is very disagreeable.

To-day I went up the flanks of Donkiah to 19,300 feet,
amongst the knot of snowy peaks west of Chumulari, and
such gulfs, craters, plains, and mountains of snow are surely
nowhere else to be found without the Polar circles. Of

AN ANTAECTIC PAKALLEL 305

course I have seen nothing to compare for mass and con-
tinuity with Victoria Land, but the mountains, especially
Kinchin-jhow, are beyond all description beautiful ; from
whichever side you view this latter mountain, it is a castle
of pure blue glacier ice, 4000 feet high and 6 or 8 miles long.
I do wish I were not the only person who has ever seen it
or dwelt among its wonders. Now I have been N., S., E.,
and W. of it, up it, down it, to 16,000, 17,000, and 18,000
feet ; and every view enchants rne more than another.

. . . I was greatly pleased with finding my most Antarctic
plant, Lecanora miniata, at the top of the Pass, and to-day
I saw stony hills at 19,000 feet stained wholly orange- red
with it, exactly as the rocks of Cockburn Island were in
64° South 1 ; is not this most curious and interesting ? To
find the identical plant forming the only vegetation at the
two extreme limits of vegetable life is always interesting ;
but to find it absolutely in both instances painting a land-
scape, so as to render its colour conspicuous in each case
five* miles off, is wonderful.

1 See Himalayan Journals, ii. 130 and 165.

CHAPTEE XV

CAPTIVITY AND BELEASE

DUBING the last weeks at Momay, as has been said, Hooker
had again been happily relieved of the presence of the Singtam
Soubah. Finding the situation unendurable, . the wretched
fellow withdrew to lower altitudes, uttering the gloomiest warn-
ings against cold and famine and Tibetan interference. But
on September 28 he returned to ask formal leave to go home,
and brought the welcome news that Campbell, accompanied
by the friendly Tchebu Lama, was on his way north through
Sikkim, having been sent by the Government to seek a per-
sonal interview with the Rajah. His object was to cultivate
better relations with the Sikkim officials, and to enquire into
the breach of good faith displayed in the discourtesy and
hindrances offered to Hooker. His authority to enter Sikkim,
moreover, gave him the opportunity of learning something
about the country which the treaty bound us to protect, yet
from which we were so jealously excluded.

Leaving Momay, therefore, on the last day of September,
Hooker hurried down to Choongtam at the junction of the
rivers, and was joined by Campbell on the morning of October 4.
Then, starting together on the 6th, they repeated and enlarged
Hooker's previous trips, first up the Lachen to the Kongra
Lama pass, then actually bluffing an entrance into Tibet,
and following the upper Lachen round its eastern bend to its
source in the Cholamo lake. This brought them to the Tibetan
face of the Donkiah pass, which they crossed (October 19),
and so completed the round by descending the Lachoong to
their starting point at Choongtam, October 27.

306

DE. CAMPBELL EXPECTED 307

Two letters to Sir William describe the happenings of this
month.

Choongtam : October 3, 1849.

I arrived here late last night, having made three flying
marches down from Momay Samdong to meet Campbell,
who will be here to-morrow en route to Kongra Lama, as
he tells me you are (ere the receipt of this) aware. I have
been months stimulating him to the journey and with success
at last. It is now six months since I have had any one to
talk to, and now that the route is known and he has the
Eajah under his thumb, I do not anticipate any difficulty.
He had a most narrow escape for his life on the second day
after leaving Darjiling : his pony slipped its foot in a most
dangerous part of the road ; feeling it do so he wisely jerked
himself off, and the animal, rolling down the precipice, was
killed on the spot !

I had hoped to make a very fine collection of seeds on
the road down here, but it sleeted and snowed all the first
day, and rained tremendously all the other two, which sadly
impeded my proceedings. However, I did my utmost, and
have ripe and good seeds of many very fine things, of which
I send a few samples. I am now collecting seeds as fast and
hard as I well can, and losing no opportunity.

The tardy advance of the whole flora is most remarkable,
and many plants actually ripening their seeds, and uniformly
past flower at 15-16,000 feet are still in full flower at 7-10,000.
The reason plainly is, the further north you go the more sun-
shine there is. ...

On the way down I passed an uncut maize field at 7000
feet — very high for the culture of that plant — and I stole
several hermaphrodite heads. The villagers made an outcry
at first, as they appear to know the value of the male panicle,
but a sick woman turning up whom I doctored, gave me
the run of the field as fee, and a pocketful of small, hard,
tasteless peaches. . . .

I brought down three loads of 80 Ibs. each of plants whose
sodden state now keeps me hard at work. It is a very fine
collection after all, with heaps of new and curious things
from the Passes. The roads, mere tracks at best, were in
a horrid state from landslips and deep mire, and I do wonder
how my coolies made it out in three days, but they are all

308 CAPTIVITY AND EELEASE

the best and most patient coolies you can conceive, never
complaining. . . .

I have just had the big tin vasculum up from Calcutta,
at which you shook your head so gravely. The Lepchas are
charmed with it, and there will be a competition as to who
is to carry it. You have not an idea how bulky the undried
plants of these climates are ; the otherwise wry large vasculum
I use does not hold half, hardly one-third morning's collec-
tion. As to drying paper, you know I stow well, yet that
ream of Bentall's paper does not suffice to lay in one day's
collection, nor near it, if you take woody with other things.
You may well wonder how I get on ; it is only by changing
and drying papers every day. Bentall's is not nearly so
good as the sugar refining paper I bought at Calcutta, and
of which my stock cost £15. But after all good English
brown paper is the best for all plants, as Mr. Brown always
said. . . .

You will be glad to hear that I quite got over my head-
aches at great elevations and most of my other distressing
symptoms, and I would not hesitate going to 20,000 feet if
the mountains were but accessible so high. Still the lassitude
is trying, and a sort of weight, like a pound of lead, dragging
down the stomach, probably caused by over-action of the
lungs straining the diaphragm, or diminished atmospheric
pressure actually relaxing that organ and causing the ab-
dominal viscera to drag heavily downwards. It is a horrid
feeling.

Boiling point is a perfect nuisance at these elevations,
and the Barometer is the only useful, accurate, or simple
method. You must have a man to carry the wood and
often the water too ; blowing the fire gives intolerable head-
aches, without blowing the best wood will not burn owing
to the deficiency of Oxygen (i.e. rarity of the air) ; and if
there be any wind (as there is sure to be) the temperature
never comes up to the true B.P.

I have just had dinner (for which and all other mercies —
including the safety of poor Campbell's neck, who writes
affect ingly on the subject and says he is spared a little longer
to love me as a brother). To return to the dinner, it was
a fine grouse tasting strong of Juniper tops, followed by
the peaches, all I can say of which is, that if Loti were no

DK. CAMPBELL ARRIVES 309

better Plato (I think it was Plato ?) might have let his pupils
eat their fill. A very large leech presented himself as the
bell rang, to whom I did not refuse the rites of oriental
hospitality, laying salt before him with alacrity.

The servant I left here has caught some beautiful butter-
flies and splendid beetles. I have rewarded him with fifteen
shillings to buy a garnet-colored Bhothea cloak which is his
[heart ]-eating envy, and in which, with his long hair parted
down the middle and beardless face, he looks like an auld
wife at Kilmun Kirk. . . .

You will I fear think this a very childish letter, but
really I have little news and can think of nothing but ' the
Campbells are coming.' My little finger too is hurt and I
cannot write much.

Lachoong (village) : October 25, 1849.

What do you think — we spent four days in Thibet !
in spite of Chinese guards, Dingpuns, Phipuns, Soubahs,
and Sepas. It was a serious undertaking and required a
combination of most favourable accidents, together with
my previous acquaintance with the country, and a most
indomitable share of resolution and boldness. Campbell
has behaved splendidly, and diverted me by throwing all
the sage precepts he sent me to the winds. He has frankly
told me that he did not, could not, believe the real nature of
the opposition and ill-treatment I had received ; he had
not been two days with me before he was storming and
bullying right and left. The unfortunate Singtam Soubah,
with whom at C.'s intercession I had kept such good friends,
he gave no peace to, blackened his face, and sent him to the
Durbar in disgrace.

On arriving at Tungu an hour after C. I found him at a
drawn battle with the Phipun, my arch-enemy, and quite
astonished that the ruffian cared no more for himself than
he did for me, or the Eajah, or anybody else under the sun.

After fully weighing the possible consequences of
breaking through the border and perhaps exposing the
Eajah to menaces from China, &c., we determined to do
it if possible, and we told the Border Chief that if he dared
to oppose we would send a guard of Sepas from Darjiling
to close the Pass. This threat, and promise of a present
if we succeeded, got the man over, the Singtam Soubah

VOL. I X

310 CAPTIVITY AND EELEASE

(lord of all the district) being conveniently packed off in
disgrace two days before. Our great ally was the Tchebu
Lama, the Eajah's representative at Campbell's court, a
man of intelligence and vigour, who had been dreadfully
misused in Sikkim by the enemies of the English who sur-
round the Bajah's park. This man we absolved from all
participation and consequences, offering him an asylum
and provision at Darjiling should the worst come to pass.

On the Border we were met by two Thibetan Sepas,
who made a terrible row and endeavoured to stop us, with-
out laying hands however on our bridles. They met us in
Sikkim, swore that it was Bhota (Thibet alias Cheen), a
lie of which we took advantage when really across the
border. Then a terrible row was kicked up and the Cheen
camp came out running after us with boots, matchlocks, &c.
The Lama and Phipun both got frightened and implored
us to stop for a conference, to which Campbell properly
acceded, and I put spurs to my pony and galloped ahead on
to the sandy plains of Thibet, determined to stay away all
day and see what I could, for there was no good I could do
by waiting with C., who could make no retrograde motion
whilst I was ahead. Two Sepas started in pursuit of me,
but Campbell kept them back with his stick till I was out
of sight and of catchable distance. The elevation, 17,000
feet, was such that my pony was soon knocked up and I
pursued my way on foot up the Lachen, at the back of
Kmchin-jhow, over dry sandy stony dunes, with Carex, a
little grass, tufts of nettles, Ephedra and a thirsty looking
Lonicera ? a few inches high. Proceeding N.E. from
Kongra Lama I had long, stony, rolling mountains on the
North and East, and to the South the stupendous snowy
mass of Kinchin-jhow rose plumb perpendicularly from the
sandy plains. Finding the country so traversable I thought
it the best thing I could do to follow the Lachen to its source
near the Donkiah Pass, as that would be our route out if
Campbell should succeed in getting the coolies and himself
past the guard, and because I had difficulty in making C.
believe that I could and would guide him through the waste
with compass and sextant if he only could and would break
the frontier. Later in the day I arrived at Cholamo lakes,
within sight of the Donkiah Pass, but my pony was so

IN TIBET? 311

knocked up that I had great difficulty in dragging him after
me. At the lakes I refreshed him with some tufts of green
Carex and led him back, suffering much from headache
as the sun was intensely hot, and a little exertion brings on
headache at these elevations (nearly 18,000 feet).

Late in the evening I met Campbell's party, viz. the
Lama and Phipun, looking for me ; they told me that
Campbell had gallantly pushed through thirty Sepas armed
with matchlocks, that no hands were laid on him, but on
our coolies (we had no Sepas nor arms), who of course were
much frightened ; that Campbell having shot ahead and
I too being gone, he, the Lama, took on himself to point
out to the Chinese officer that if either of us died for want
of our tents, &c., it would be a terrible affair for the officer
above all, who should have taken us alive rather than stop
our men. The coolies were then allowed to pass on too,
and came up at night suffering terribly from the dry heat,
sun and dust and elevation. The Lama then went to find
Campbell, who had mistaken the way towards Donkiah,
and soon came in full of spirits and gave me a most ludicrous
account of the mixture of fright and obstinacy and force
the Chinese Sepas displayed.

In the evening the Chinese followed us, the Dingpun,
or Lieutenant, riding on the top of a black Yak ! surrounded
by pots, pans, bags and bamboo bottles of buttermilk, a
tent, blankets, &c., all bundled about his Yak, and he on
the top of all like a gipsy on a laden donkey. He was a
small withered man, in a green coat, with a gilt button on his
Tartar cap ; behind came the Sepas, enormous ruffianly
looking men, dressed in blanketing, each armed with a
pipe, a long knife, and a long rude matchlock lashed across
his stern. These matchlocks are slung at right angles across
the hip ; they are very rude, long, with a pronged support
or rest ; the latter folds up with a hinge and projects like
antelopes' horns beyond the muzzle. Such ungainly imple-
ments across their stern parts were comical enough looking.
They marched in orderly, took no notice of us, and camped
close by. We tented in a low cattle enclosure on the bare
plain, burning Yaks' dung for fuel. The cold was intense
and wind violent and dusty, sky brilliantly clear.

We determined to stay a day or two where we were, at

312 CAPTIVITY AND RELEASE

all hazards, and sent word to the Dingpun that we would
condescend to receive him if he would visit us ! next morning.
This he did promptly, and we explained to him that it might
be all very right and proper for him to obey the orders
of the Lhassa Govt. and prevent (or try to) Englishmen
passing from one Sikkim Pass round through Cheen to
another, but that it was all stuff and we did not feel our-
selves bound to respect their prejudices. Also we added
that . . .

(Here the letter ends abruptly, the only addition is)
Singtam, Nov. 1, Eipe Abies Webbiana, 3 packets sent.

The return to Choongtam prefaced the long planned
treachery of the Sikkim Dewan.

Meepo, the guide, met them here, with orders to take them
to the Chola and Yak-la passes in East Sikkim, a way leading
over the same ridge (the Chola range) as the Tunkra pass already
explored, across Chumbi, a wedge of Tibet running between
Sikkim and Bhutan.

The road passed the Eajah's residence at Tumloong, and
here Campbell desired an official audience of the prince. But
although they were welcomed by the principal people and the
Lamas as well as the populace, the meeting was prevented by
the Amlah or Council, one and all relations or adherents of the
Dewan, who directed them from Chumbi, where he was trying
to stir up strife in Tibet.

On November 4 they left Tumloong for the Chola pass. This
they ascended on the 7th, but were turned back by a Tibetan
frontier guard on the plea of ' no road.' This guard was not only
polite, but protected the travellers from the sudden insolence
of a number of Sikkim sepoys who unexpectedly came up.
No less unexpected was the re- appearance, lower down the
road, of the troublesome Singtam Soubah, who had quitted
them three weeks before, short of the Kongra Lama pass, —
obviously ill at ease, and demanding a conference with Campbell,
a conference naturally deferred till the evening's camp. Here
was waiting a great party of Bhoteas, the rough, intractable
element of Sikkim. They did not wait long. The night was
very cold ; the people crowded into the hut where Hooker and

AKKEST 313

Campbell were waiting. The latter went out to see to the
pitching of the tents.

He had scarcely left, when I heard him calling loudly to
me, * Hooker ! Hooker ! the savages are murdering me ! '
I rushed to the door, and caught sight of him striking out
with his fists, and struggling violently ; being tall and
powerful, he had already prostrated a few, but a host of
men bore him down, and appeared to be trampling on him ;
at the same moment I was myself seized by eight men,
who forced me back into the hut, and down on the log,
where they held me in a sitting posture, pressing me against
the wall ; here I spent a few moments of agony, as I heard
my friend's stifled cries grow fainter and fainter. I struggled
but little, and that only at first, for at least five-and-twenty
men crowded round and laid their hands upon me, rendering
any effort to move useless ; they were, however, neither
angry nor violent, and signed to me to keep quiet. I retained
my presence of mind, and felt comfort in remembering that
I saw no knives used by the party who fell on Campbell,
and that if their intentions had been murderous, an arrow
would have been the more sure and less troublesome weapon.
It was evident that the whole animus was directed against
Campbell, and though at first alarmed on my own account,
all the inferences which, with the rapidity of lightning, my
mind involuntarily drew, were favourable.

Soon the Singtam Soubah returned, ' pale, trembling like
a leaf, and with great drops of sweat trickling from his greasy
brow,' with the Tchebu Lama under arrest. He explained the
seizure of Campbell as a political hostage, to be kept till the
supreme government at Calcutta should confirm articles to
which he should be compelled to subscribe. How would
Campbell behave ? What steps should Sikkim take to secure
their end ? Hooker refused to answer till informed why he
himself was made a prisoner, whereupon the Soubah went away.
Campbell was knocked about and tortured by twisting of the
cords that bound him, especially by the scoundrel already
mentioned who bore him a grudge ; but he disconcerted the
Soubah by declaring that whatever he might say or do under
compulsion, the Government would not confirm it. The

314 CAPTIVITY AND RELEASE

Soubah's followers slunk away, and the Soubah himself left
Campbell, who was then taken, much bruised, to his tent. ' It
is Tartar fashion to catch and coerce a great man when they
can,' and the Dewan had arranged for Campbell's seizure from
the day he crossed into the country, three months before. But
his tools were too timid, Hooker's popularity too great for
arrest in the capital itself, where they were to be quietly de-
tained unknown to the Kajah, till the Dewan returned from
Chumbi. Here he had failed in his attempt to involve the
Tibetan guard in his aggression, an attempt which drew down
upon himself the anger of the Tibetan authorities when they
investigated the affair next summer ; while at the Chola pass
the personal animus of his henchmen, delighted to outrun the
letter of their instructions, created an impasse for which they
were speedily disgraced by their master.

The plan failing, they were utterly dismayed, having
committed a gross outrage on Campbell's and my persons
from which no imaginable good could come. The only
course remaining was of course to trump up a new story
and to detain us as hostages for no ill befalling them
pending the Government's taking active steps for our
release.

Unfortunately they were so simple as to let out all their
secrets to me, when trying to gain information from me by
all manner of means, and over and over again gave me the
Rajah's assurance that no fault whatever had been or could
be laid at my door and that Campbell's offences were wholly
political. Now, C. having Govt. sanction and approval
for all his supposed offences, they do not know what to do,
and urge our trespass on the Thibet frontier in the hopes
that Govt. will commit itself and take up that grievance
against us.

This Dewan [writes Hooker, December 28, 1849] is an
alien and universally detested ; powerless except through
his gang of Bhotean ruffians, who are runaways from their
own land, and whom he protects, and who protect him.
He is a man of some energy, and finds it easy to ride rough-
shod over the simple and indolent Lepchas. He rules the
old chiefs with an iron rod, monopolises trade, and is the

A EEASSUEING LETTEE 315

bitter foe of the English. All the summer he spent in
Thibet, vainly trying to incite the Chinese to make common
cause with him and drive me out of Sikkim and back to
Darjeeling. This was the origin of his conduct to me at
the Zemu river in May, June, and July. The Eajah is an
old, timorous, and inoffensive being. The priests are all
friendly, and hold Campbell and the British name in high
respect ; and the Lepchas are fond of us to a man, and
would gladly transfer their allegiance to us if we would only
protect them.

Force had first been used against Hooker to prevent him
from giving help to Campbell ; he was offered good treatment
and presents, but refused such marks of respect so long as his
friend was ill treated, and warned the Soubah of the conse-
quences that must follow.

Writing in the first days of his captivity (November 12 :
the letter was not despatched till considerably later)/ in the
forlorn hope that this letter may reach England,' he tried to
reassure his father :

My bonds are not very heavy, and I am under no appre-
hension either on my own or Campbell's account. I was
seized in the hope of extracting information from me (by
intimidation and otherwise) as to what course these stupid
people should pursue. In this, I am happy to say, they
have utterly failed ; and I think they are so nonplussed,
that they will not detain me much longer. Campbell is
very strictly guarded. I am much better off; and have
so very many friends among these poor people (to an evil
faction among whose rulers this is attributable) that I hope
and believe I can be useful. ... I am altogether prohibited
from approaching or communicating with Campbell, but
he and I keep up a capital correspondence. My hand
is so fatigued with copying out his Despatches to Govt.,
for I dare not send the originals by this opportunity,
and sending a copy of my Journal for Hodgson to forward
to you, that I can write no more. The said Journal H.
will send you a copy of at once. I also so very much doubt
this reaching you that I do not care to write much hereby.
My old friend Meepo sticks well to me, and will I hope get

316 CAPTIVITY AND KELEASE

this on to Darjeeling, where a demonstration from the
military will effect our release at once. The Kajah has not
fifty stand of arms, nor fifty men to handle them.

I have now to beg and implore you not to make a stir
about this. I have never deceived you nor my Mother and
entreat you to remark that all I say on the score of my position
not exciting any apprehension of my safety, is strictly true,
and to make it otherwise is mere romancing. I am allowed
the free use of my instruments, plants, and books, and am
busy and well occupied all day long.

I have heaps of letters written and writing, Bentham,
Berkeley, Darwin, &c., but send only this by this chance.

After an interview with the Amlah, or council, on Nov-
ember 13, however, he was allowed, to his great satisfaction,
to join Campbell, though they were both ill fed, and later
horribly overcrowded, as unsuspecting messengers arriving
from Darjiling were thrust into their narrow quarters ; while
their own coolies were starved or arrested.

The Dewan at last arriving from Chumbi on the 20th to
find that his stroke had miscarried, professed anger and surprise.
In sober fact, he had no conception how seriously the Indian
Government would regard what he persisted in calling a
mere mistake, which should be overlooked by both parties ;
Campbell's vigorous representations had their effect, and speedy
release was promised ; but a communication couched in mild
terms arriving from Darjiling, where thereal facts wrere unknown,
complications with distant Tibet were feared, and an immediate
incursion expected — to the great amusement of Sikkim spies —
the Dewan was seized with a diplomatic illness, and nothing
was done. Peremptory orders from Calcutta for their release
were disregarded as not bearing the Governor-General's great
seal, for Lord Dalhousie was in Bombay ; and captivity, as
shown by the following letter (received February 3), became
more trying.

To Miss Henslow

December 2, 1849.

I am in great anxiety till I hear whether the report of
Campbell's and my death has reached England ; for we

EIGOUES OF CAPTIVITY 317

know that the Eajah purposely circulated the tale of his
having compassed our destruction, and that it was believed
in India. Now, we have, happily, no cause for apprehension,
but every reason to hope that our captivity is drawing to
a close.

My durance here has been somewhat of the vilest.
Certainly the Sikkimites have left no way untried of making
Campbell and me as wretched as possible. We are not allowed
to stray ten yards from this miserable hovel in which we
are immured, and we are debarred all correspondence and
the power of laying our complaints before our own Govern-
ment, or even before the Eajah. These people actually
converse in lies, — they think in lies — and I verily believe
that any appeal they may make to their own consciences
is answered by a lie. Their utter mental degradation and
distortion are inconceivable. I speak of the Bhotea authori-
ties. The Lepcha population are a better set ; they sym-
pathise with us and show us many a little kindness by
stealth. The Lamas, too, who are somewhat more enlightened
than their rulers, are coming forward to a man, and repre-
senting to the Eajah the peace and comfort in which they
lived under Campbell's sway ; also that the Eajah is literally
breaking his own head, for that when this outrageous conduct
is answered, (as it must be and resented) by an appeal to
arms, these people will assuredly come off second best. They
have no muskets, their bows they handle very awkwardly,
their long knives will be useless against Artillery. These
warnings have already alarmed the Eajah, especially as
we echo the same tale ; he would be thankful now to be
rid of us, but how to do so is the question ! He has com-
mitted himself fatally by the violence used towards our
persons ; and as to the complaints he alleges against Camp-
bell's public acts, the Superintendent, already appointed
at Darjeeling, pursues, and will pursue, the same line of
conduct, nor could Campbell alter if he would.

You would have been highly diverted by our schemes,
especially for corresponding with one another ; for Campbell
and I were confined separately and debarred all commu-
nication. My Lepcha boys were so clever that we never
failed to get little wisps of paper conveyed to and fro between
us. Now that we are together we get on much better, and,

318 CAPTIVITY AND EELEASE

although guarded, and closely watched by an ever-present
spy, we never make ourselves unhappy.

Our only communication with the Durbar (Court) is
through our spy, a truly odious being. He is perfectly made
up of malevolence and falsehood, to practise which is his
main occupation. He is a filthy squinting Bhotea, who drives
away every one who comes near us, and causes our poor
coolies to be flogged, when they approach the door to beg
a little food from our small stock. We are, of course, more
than civil, nay, we are kind to him, but he is equally un-
touched by our kind deeds and our remonstrances. Many
a base scurvy trick he has played us and misrepresented our
conduct to the Eajah, who treated us ill enough and starved
both Campbell and me for the first fortnight ; as he does
our poor followers to this very hour. I suppose the evil
animus this vile fellow (who rejoices in the name of Toba
Singh) exhibits against us constitutes his recommendation
in the Eajah's eyes. Happily neither he, nor any one here,
can speak English, so my friend and I talk with perfect
freedom, only using conventional names for persons. We
call the Rajah Prince, the Dewan Butcher, Toba Singh Evil
Eye, and so on.

Hodgson is our good angel now. Though his health
almost imperatively requires him to go to the Plains, he
stays at Darjeeling, in order to serve us by communicating
with Government, threatening the Eajah, looking to the
defences of Darjeeling, and comforting poor Mrs. Campbell
and the few inhabitants who yet remain at the Station. The

ostensible manager there is the brother of ; he thinks

, (and is allowed by Hodgson to think) that he does everything,
but he is a wholly inefficient person, and quite incompetent
to stir a peg without the impulse, counsel, and correction of
others.

From the middle of November, however, permission had
been given to write to their friends, though even before their
arrest, a whole packet of letters had been destroyed. Hooker
accordingly sent a private account of all that had happened
to Lord Dalhousie, then at Bombay, with instant effect. Troops
were hurried up to Darjiling ; an ultimatum despatched to
the Eajah. Military force was a message the Dewan could not

CHRISTMAS EVE 319

pretend to misunderstand ; his vague promises of relief, his
alternate boasts of the glories of Lhassa and peddling offers
to sell them ponies cheap took on another tone. Propitiatory
messages and gifts arrived from the Kajah and Eani, and the
prisoners set out for Darjiling on December 8 under the charge
of the Dewan, ' as slowly as he could contrive to crawl.' Mes-
sengers bearing Lord Dalhousie's despatch met them on the
13th, but still the Dewan, with his ponies and his merchandise,
with which he yet hoped to do a roaring trade at Darjiling,
loitered and talked and chaffered and allowed his bodyguard
to make a parade of threatening the lives of his captives,
till on the 22nd he halted in a state of hopeless vacillation
within sight of Darjiling and its new barracks, twenty miles
away, and shaken by the knowledge that the Eajah's peace
offerings had been rejected. There was one last alarm. Nimbo,
Hooker's sturdy Bhotea Sirdar, the special object of the Dewan's
anger, had broken from prison, and with his chain still hanging
to his ankle, had managed to reach Darjiling, and now threatened
to lead a party to the rescue. Their attack would have been
the signal for the murder of the prisoners.

Christmas Eve brought opportunity for a final stroke of
diplomacy ; the morrow was the great and only ' Poojah ' of
Englishmen, when they all met ; it would be well to let Camp-
bell join his relations and appease the exasperated soldiery.
The Dewan, equally afraid to lose his hostages and to keep
them, at last, with extreme reluctance and bad grace, consented.
By 4 o'clock they were at the frontier, the bridge over the
Great Eungeet, and by 8 safe in Darjiling, where, in addition
to the rest, Hooker found his old friend and new travelling
companion, Thomas Thomson, already awaiting him.

CHAPTEK XVI

LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM

PUNITIVE measures against the Kajah were not very ad-
mirably carried out. Instead of the friendly chiefs being
invited to Darjiling, the Kajah was bidden to come in and
surrender, bringing the guilty parties with him, on pain of
invasion. But when he failed to comply, and indeed to
bring in the guilty was beyond his power, the threat was not
carried out.

The army camped for some weeks on the north bank of
the Great Eungeet, the Dewan with his handful of followers
being on the hill not three hours away, and finally with-
drew, while for penalty the fertile Terai lands, the British
gift to the Kajah, were resumed, his pension withdrawn,
and Southern Sikkim annexed. The fidelity of the Tchebu
Lama was happily rewarded with money and a grant of land
at Darjiling.

From his intimate knowledge of the country, Hooker was
in a position to give sound counsel when asked, and to perceive,
if he could not always correct, various false steps taken by
the temporary administration ; but he intervened as little as
might be in matters which were not his proper concern, and
his chief satisfaction lay in the eventual release of one of his
men who was reported to have been murdered, and in the fact
that thanks to his clear account of the affair, Lord Dalhousie
acquitted Campbell of blame, and re-appointed him with wider
powers than before.

For a short time the military preparations threatened to

320

MILITARY SEEVICES 321

upset Hooker's plans ; his brief share in the abortive campaign
appears in the following letter to his mother, dated January
31, 1850 :

Before the time of the General and staff coming up here
I was asked repeatedly whether I would go into Sikkim
with the troops ; I always say I did not wish to nor want
to, but that if the General showed good cause for desiring
it I would think upon it. Volunteer I could not and would
not, being in another service and receiving pay from my
own Govt. for very different work. Tom and I both
went away from the station when the General was coming,
but he had not arrived a day before he wanted me and
sent the most urgent message through Campbell. I there-
fore returned about ten days ago, and found the old gentle-
man, Genl. Young, all in the clouds, as to carrying out
his orders of occupying Sikkim with a military force. Mean-
while 14,000 men, Sepoys and Europeans, had come up
with headquarters of one Eegt., guns, a whole staff of
officers, and nothing but the ' horrid din of arms ' was to
be heard.

Genl. Young is a very nice old gentleman and greatly
obliged to me for my counsel, maps, and information, which
settled him to march as soon as possible and take the Eungeet
bridge. Both he and Mr. Lushington (the special Com-
missioner) begged me to conduct the troops which I refused
except they sent me a written request specifying the urgency
of the occasion, which I should forward to H.M. [Com-
missioners of] Woods, &c., and meanwhile take upon me the
responsibility of acting with heart and good will under
the General's orders. I objected on Thomson's account
who had corne so far to see me, and he was immediately
put into orders for medical duty in the detachment (advance
guard) with myself. This is a capital arrangement, for it
gives him time of service in India instead of leave which he
is now upon, and every hour taken off the time he will have
to spend in India on his return after furlough is so much
added to his life.

I went down with the troops the other day and took
possession of the bridge over the Great Eungeet and camped
some 500 men in Sikkim. As no further advance was to be

322 LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM

made at once I returned to my plants at Darjiling, but
expect to be summoned down very soon again now. No
opposition of any kind was made to us, and I doubt if there
will be any, so you need be under no alarm on my account.
Under any circumstances it appeared to me so clearly my
duty to undertake the service that I did so without any
hesitation and have no fear for the result. Except Campbell
and myself no one knows anything of the country, and hence
the marching of the troops without good guidance would
be most unadvisable. Campbell is so much the aggrieved
party that he could not with propriety go to attack the
Kajah's country ; I, on the other hand, have no ill-will (nor
has C. for that matter), the people, I know, are friendly to
and fully trust me, they would far rather make overtures to
me than to soldiers with guns in their hands, and with the
heartiest desire and determination to bring things to a peace-
ful issue if possible, I do hope my presence may be useful.

The orders at present are to march to Tumlong and
occupy the capital, for the Eajah refuses to give himself up
or to offer any adequate concessions for his conduct. Many
of the people I know from private sources are all ready and
willing to come over to Darjfling, and only want our assurance
that they will not be molested to grant a peaceful march
to our soldiers. This they now have and appreciate. The
Dewan has only thirty men to oppose us with and they
will not help him, the Eajah has no army nor is he trying to
raise one, so that he will probably flee at our approach.

It is said that the Eajah has sought succour from Thibet,
and has received for answer that he has only got his deserts.1

1 The expedition was abandoned, because the general, from his experience of
the Nepaul campaign, reported the country as 'impracticable for British troops.'

In 1861 another punitive expedition was organised against the same Rajah
for acts of violence and aggression on our territory. A staff officer engaged
on this campaign wrote afterwards to the Standard (August 13, 1862) apropos
of Hooker's military services :

' In 1859-60, on iny way between Calcutta and Darjeeling, I studied Dr.
Hooker's most interesting and valuable work, Himalayan Journals, which I
found to be a most perfect staff officer's report, containing accurate informa-
tion on every point that could be useful to the commander of an expedition,
regarding hills, valleys, elevations, distances, rocks, soil, trees, vegetation, roads,
rivers, bridges, productions, inhabitants, their character, climate, seasons, &c.,
and accompanied moreover by an excellent sketch map, which the government
copied and furnished for our use.

' For the time that the force was in the field the work was as hard as has
ever been performed by any force ; but the rapidity of its movements and the

DANGEKS BELITTLED 323

Dangers and troubles once over were characteristically
treated as of small account, and in December 28 he writes to
his mother :

You see, by the above date, that I have, as usual, lighted
on my legs and am safely escaped from the Kajah's clutches.
Not that I think my own personal danger was ever very
imminent ; but the man who could commit one such rash
and mad act (as the seizing and maltreating us), might be
capable of doing what is really far more unlikely.

The whole affair has been naturally exaggerated at
Darjeeling, and so, into the Indian newspapers. My kind
friend, Mr. Hodgson, especially, was possessed with the
most dreadful alarm — due, I am well aware, to his intense
solicitude on my behalf. He imagined all sorts of horrors,
and attributed our capture to the Chinese authorities, whom
he supposed to resent our having crossed into Thibet. He
verily believed we should be carried into' Lhassa — perhaps
to Pekin, in a wooden cage — in short, he conjured up all
sorts of chimerse which, happily, did not enter our heads. -

He concludes with a very light touch :

I am dreadfully busy, as I need hardly tell you ; and T.
Thomson is an invaluable help. Hodgson says I am fat,
and that my looks are a disgrace to the Eajah's prison house !
Campbell is robust and rosy. The new baby is to be named
Josephine.1 It is very small and much the colour of blotting-
paper, like all the little babies I ever saw ; but some mothers'
eyes have a property of neutralising that tint, as yours must
have done, for you say I was a fair and white infant !

Similarly, to his uncle T. Brightwen, whom he thanks for
a timely gift of new razors, ' now first used upon our truly

complete success of the expedition, which elicited the warm thanks and highest
expressions of approval of the Governor- General in Council and of Lord Strath-
nairn, who was then Commander-in-Chief, were owing in a very large degree
to the perfect information regarding the people and country afforded by Dr.
Hooker's work, and which was not obtainable from any official source.

f I am, sir, your obedient servant,

See also ii. p. 183. ' G.'

1 He writes to his mother, April 27, 1850 : ' Josephine was christened the
other day, I answering all the responses I could in conscience, which does not
include all the Church of England formulae.'

324 LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM

patriarchal countenances,' he adds, * though a close prison
and heavy threats are not pleasant, still I fancy such books as
Gonfalonieri's and Andryale's are indebted to a doleful imagina-
tion for much of their interest/

Though for some months he confessed to being ' over-
whelmed with Sikkim politics/ a return to his own pursuits
was made all the pleasanter by the knowledge that his action
was approved by Lord Dalhousie, who wrote him * the kindest
letter that ever gentleman penned,' and that, while the news-
papers reflected on the conduct of all others concerned, he
' alone came off with high credit.'

For nearly three months he and Thomson were hard at .
work — ' for hard work it really is ' — preparing the collections
to go home, filling up gaps where specimens had been lost,
and completing the Sikkim flora by a visit to the foot of
the hills. Thomson, fresh from exploration and botanising
in the North-west Himalayas, was astonished by the magni-
tude of the collections, which by March ' form a huge mass,
some 100 men's loads, and I am sure you will be pleased with
them.'

Altogether my collections are very handsome, though
what with the Eajah's tricks and the horrible climate I
have lost a great many of my large things, as Palm
plants and fruits, &c., which were to have been dried
whole for Museum specimens ; these I am replacing as
fast as I can, and Thomson being in the jungles, get on
v very well.

The latter was with the military, surveying the new boundary
and choosing healthy positions for outposts. The forests
continued to supply new plants. One budget contained seeds
of 1000 species ; others equally large followed. There were
100 kinds of woods, including all the Pines and most of the
Ehododendrons.

My specimens of Palms were each twelve feet long, and
the new ones I am getting are as large, but the old ones
almost all rotted though kept in a room with a constant fire
during last rains.

EHODODENDKON NIVALE 325

There were also

whole specimens of Rhododendron nivak from 18,000 feet,
the loftiest of all shrubs, and hitherto of any known plant,1
but I have several species of plants from above that, curious
half spherical balls of an Alsinea 2 growing in Thibet at 18,000
feet, like our old friend Bolax.3

Indeed the Himalayan heights were full of new marvels.

Donkiah is a wonderful place ; 19,200 feet is the altitude
of the Pass, and plants to 200 feet of top, Lichens to all
but 20,000 feet. Wait till you see my colored sketch of
Thibet. Jorgensen's works are moonshine to mine.

1 This plant is described as follows in Hooker's Rhododendron Book :

RHODODENDRON NIVALE, Hook. fil.
Snow Rhododendron.

The hard woody branches of this curious little species, as thick as a goose-
quill, straggle along the ground for a foot or two, presenting brown tufts of
vegetation where not half a dozen other plants can exist. The branches are
densely interwoven, very harsh and woody, wholly depressed; whence the
shrub, spreading horizontally, and barely raised two inches above the soil,
becomes eminently typical of the arid stern climate it inhabits. The latest- to
bloom and earliest to mature its seeds, by far the smallest in foliage, and pro-
portionately largest in flower, most lepidote in vesture, humble in stature, rigid
in texture, deformed in habit, yet the most odoriferous, it may be recognised,
even in the herbarium, as the production of the loftiest elevation of the surface
of the globe, — of the most excessive climate, — of the joint influences of a scorch
ing sun by day, and the keenest frost at night, — of the greatest drought followed
in a few hours by a saturated atmosphere, — of the balmiest calm alternating
with the whirlwind of the Alps. During genial weather, when the sun heat.s
the soil to 150°, its perfumed foliage scents the air ; whilst to snow-storm and
frost it is insensible, blooming through all, expanding its little purple flowers to
the day, and only closing them to wither after fertilization has taken place.
As the life of a moth may be indefinitely prolonged whilst its duties are unful-
filled, so the flower of this little mountaineer will remain open through days of
fog and sleet, till a mild day facilitates the detachment of the pollen and fecun-
dation of the ovarium. This process is almost wholly the effect of the winds ;
for though humble-bees and the ' Blues ' and ' Fritillaries ' (Polyommatus and
Argynnis) amongst butterflies do exist at the same prodigious elevation, they
are too few in number to influence the operations of vegetable life.

The odour of the plant much resembles that of ' Eau de Cologne.' Lepidote
scales generally rather a bright ferruginous-brown, wholly concealing the
ramuli, foliage, &c. Leaves one-eighth to one-sixth of an inch long, pale green.
Corolla, one-third of an inch across the lobes. The nearest allies of this species
are R. setosum and R. Lapponicum, from which latter it differs in its smaller
stature and solitary sessile flowers.

This singular little plant attains a loftier elevation, I believe, than any other
shrub in the world.

1 Arenaria rupifraga, Fenzl.

3 Bolax glebaria, the Tussock grass of the Falklands.
VOL. i y

326 LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM

The Khododendrons by themselves claimed separate notice.
The first part of the new book,1 drawn up by his father from
material sent home by him, had just arrived, following the
eulogistic reviews, so eulogistic that they aroused Hooker's
mistrust as well as his curiosity.

To return to our Rhododendrons : I have further com-
pleted and copied out all the descriptions ! together with a
catalogue raisonne of the Indian ones known to me. It took
me fifteen days' hard work, which I did most grievously
grudge, and thought worse than my captivity, and assure
you it needed all the stimulus of seeing, for the first time,
the Book itself, to keep me on to the weary hackneyed
Ehododendrons. As to the said book, it is above all notice
from the like of me. The plate of E. argenteum likes me
best ; and that is not I think to be surpassed for drawing,
perspective, colouring and portraiture, by Bauer's Banksia.
It is a far grander and better book that even I expected,
after all its panegyrics ; and I am most heartily obliged to
you for giving me the lion's share of the honors, which should
by rights be as much your own as is the Victoria book.2

And he tells his mother of an appreciation from ' perfect
strangers ' which he confessed was very gratifying.

All the Indian world is in love with my Ehododendron
book, and extracts from my Tonglo journal, which I sent
to the Asiatic Society Journal, have been praised in all the
public papers. (August 8, 1849.)

The map of his travels was another labour to complete.

I am so busy with my plants that I grudge working at
the Map, and yet it must be done, whilst the materials and
references to my note-books are fresh in my mind.

January 23.

Hodgson had got a map partly ready to send by this
mail, but it is so very foul that both Thomson and myself

1 The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya. (Edited by W. J. Hooker.)
1849-51, 14 x 7, pp. 30, pi. with descriptive text. Fol.

2 Description of ' Victoria Regia,' LindL, or Great Water Lily, by Sir Wm.
Hooker, 1837. M. D'Orbigny claims that he was the first to gather specimens
in 1828 in the Province of Corrientes, in a tributary of the Rio de la Plata.
Poeppig called it Euryak Amazonia, 1832.

MAP MAKING 327

think it better to retain it at present, and I will do my best
to get one ready for February post, but really these are works
of no ordinary labour, and I do dislike doing things in an
inferior manner to what I can do them.

By the 30th, however,

I had just finished for you an excellent large map of my
wanderings, but have thought it proper to give it to Genl.
Young, who was all abroad as to how to dispose of the
troops now marching into Sikkim.

July 18.

My map of Sikkim has been copied at the Surveyor
General's office. Thuillier is greatly pleased with it. I have
given it to the Govt. as they wished it, but Thuillier sends
you overland either the original or a facsimile. Lord D. sent
for it and expressed himself most kindly and flatteringly ;
it is the first and last of my performances in that line. As
a topographical map I hope it will do me credit, it is as
full as I could make it with accuracy, and I have the materials
for working the elevations of 5 or 600 places over the surface,
as also full ones for making it geological, botanical, and
meteorological from the plains to 19,000 feet of elevation
in one direction, and to 16,000 along the Northern, N.E. and
N.W. frontiers.

After all this was not the last of the Indian map-making ;
in November he made a map of the Khasia Hills, which he
visited during the autumn, and this

I finished this morning (Nov. 26, 1850) ; a very poor affair
it looks. Thuillier will send it you with a copy, after he
has copied it for insertion into the General Atlas of India.
That finishes my survey work, I am glad to say. The work
has cost me great time and labour, but I do not admit that
it was so much time taken from Natural History, for I have
had plenty of that too, as much as I could well put up
with.

His experiences, shown graphically in the map, revolution-
ised current theories about the geography of the Himalayas,
in which the veteran Humboldt was so deeply interested.

328 LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM

I no longer regard the Himalaya as a continuous snowy
chain of mountains ; but as the snowed spurs of far higher
unsnowed land behind, which higher land is protected from
the snow by the Peaks on the spurs, which run South
from it.

It is singular that Thomson and I have, independently,
arrived at precisely the same novel conclusions as to the
great features of the Himalayan Eange — its Glaciers, Geo-
logical structure and Epochs, Snow Line, &c.

For the rest of his travels in India, there were to be no more
long months of solitary journeying. ' T. Thomson is with me
at last/ he cries joyfully on returning from captivity. Thomson,
like himself, was the son of a Glasgow professor ; they had
been fellow students. He too had travelled in Tibet, and had
been a prisoner amongst Asiatics — one of the Ghazni prisoners
in 1842. ' He parted from me in 1839, when we quitted England
respectively for India and the Antarctic Ocean, and he was the
first to greet me on my arrival in Darjiling.' He had fallen
ill on his way to join his friend, for six weeks, but now, by the
end of January,

he has so wonderfully recovered that we walked together
from Khasing to Darjiling, 25 miles, in 6 hours, uphill 3000
feet. Still he looks thin, grey and very old. ... I cannot
return the compliment when he assures me that I look
fatter and younger than I did ten or eleven years ago
(in 1839) ; for he is grown extremely like his father, and
has literally quite as many white as black hairs upon his
head.

Hooker's praises of him as ' a most pleasant companion, very-
clever, (he always was,) and generous too, devotedly fond of
Botany and a famously hard worker, a regular Planchon for
acuteness, but with twice the steadiness of character and none
of the little Frenchman's crotchets,' culminate in the description
* the most valuable friend, certainly, I ever formed.' Their
vast collections they proposed to work out together, when
they returned to England ; but even thus early a more
ambitious scheme 'floated before them, and Hooker urges his
father to engage a certain well-trained assistant for them,

JUNG BAHADUR AND FUTURE TRAVEL 829

* especially if you project a Flora Indica, at which Tom pricks
up his ears with a will.'

To Hooker it was a great relief that the Borneo project had
fallen through, after the death of Lord Auckland, who had
arranged it. Apart from escaping that very unhealthy climate,
there was a great advantage in having opportunity to complete
a knowledge of Indian botany, albeit with emptier pockets.
Thomson, however, to join in the expedition, had to sacrifice
a year of his long-looked-for furlough ; certain departmental
friction was too strong to be overcome, and neither his recent
illness, nor his scientific work, past or prospective, availed to
let him count this period as Indian service.

The trouble in Sikkim at the first blush seemed fatal to the
prospect of future travel so near as Nepaul. But good feeling
was undisturbed. * The Nepalese are so fond of Campbell
and me that they even offered to come and rescue us from the
Sikkimites ' (January 2), and Lord Dalhousie continued to
think the expedition feasible and did his utmost to bring it
about. Jung Bahadur was passing through Calcutta on his
way to pay an official visit to England. A meeting was arranged,
and in the middle of March Hooker joined him and the Governor-
General in hopes of receiving permission to start as soon as
the weather served, in April. But though very friendly, Jung
Bahadur was unwilling that Europeans should travel in
Nepaul whilst he was absent and unable to protect them.
Next year, certainly, on his return, but not this. Hooker,
however, was unwilling for various reasons to stay out another
year, though

Lord Dalhousie entreated me, the last thing before we
separated, not to give up the project . . . even offered me
a companion, but I refused, saying that I would not choose
to go with any one of whom I knew less than of Thomson.

Accordingly the alternative was adopted, of a journey to
Assam and the Khasia Hills. As to Bhotan, ' I would not go
there for the world, without 500 men in front of me and as many
in the rear.' ... As between Nepaul and the Khasia Hills,
the botany of the former could not be very different from that

330 LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM

of Sikkim, its chief interest being in its botanical geography
and the eclat attending the traveller who traversed it from
end to end ; as to the latter, ' doubtless its vegetation is richer,
though not so novel as that of Nepaul,' for it had been visited
several times. (March 18, 1850.)

But the balance is finally struck with fair contentment
(April 27) when a new actinometer and telescope had arrived
and been tried.

I could wish they were going with me to Nepaul instead
of the Khasia Mountains ! Still I really believe the latter
country is the best in a botanical point of view both for my
companion and myself, and it is certainly far the most
practicable.

And the journey justified itself. He writes on August 8th :

I have here the means of making extraordinary collec-
tions : had I remained in Sikkim, the same expedition would
have procured no more plants.

Accordingly in mid-April he returned the weary five-days'
journey from Calcutta to Darjiling, to make ready for the
start, having

been so much out and about Calcutta that I am very sick
and weary of it. Greater kindness no man could receive
than I have, but it is a killing sort of kindness that requires
the compression into fourteen days of the good feeling of all
Calcutta,

of which he says in a ' sadly idle gossiping letter ' of April 6
to his mother :

On the whole the society is more entirely agreeable than
any I have ever mixed in. There is very little personal
feeling shown, and there is much more real friendliness and
kindness amongst the people than in your starched circles
at Kew, where one feels far more patronized than shown
attention to for your own sake, or from any desire of
cultivating an acquaintance. Hospitality is here literally
a ruling passion, and I am sure that I know twenty houses

CHAEACTEE SKETCHES 331

in Calcutta, into which I should go unasked and be sure of
a hearty welcome ; indeed I may say I have been asked to
be the guest of more than that number of families.

A few thumbnail sketches of character, mostly Indian, may
be added from the letters of these days ; the last, with its note
of self-reproach for too easy condemnation of unobservant
stupidity, is especially noteworthy.

I see by the newspapers that was married. I

sincerely congratulate his family upon it ; he is now provided
for, and he had not talents for a profession, interest for a
sinecure, nor industry enough for anything. I pitied him
for his circumstances as much as I liked his really amiable
disposition.

Mr. X. was a civilian and known as * Jemmy Blague,' the
greatest liar in all India. His brother, Col. X., inherits the
title, and says of himself that he killed so many Beloochees
at Meanee, that Sir C. Napier had to stop him and took
away his sword, when the gallant Colonel doubled his heroic
exploits with the scabbard !

I have begun to like Capt. Y. in spite of his want of
sense. He is a truly kind-hearted fellow and neither captious
nor vain. When walking with me the other day, he men-
tioned that during three years of his childhood he had been
stone blind. I was very much struck with this, and I felt
ashamed of the harshness with which I had spoken of him.
True I never dreamed that what I said would ever come to
his ears ; perhaps, too, if he had enjoyed the use of four
eyes all that time he might not have profited by them ;
still, we really know very little of what we are doing when
we pass harsh judgments upon others and condemn their
conduct, and I felt tacitly rebuked for my want of charity.

CHAPTEE XVII

TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS

THIS, the fourth and concluding expedition, lasted nine months.
A start was made on May 1, 1850. A six weeks' boat journey
took them down the (northern) Mahanuddy, an affluent of
the Ganges, across the great delta at the head of the Bay of
Bengal, then past Dacca, and by the course of the Ganges, the
Bramahputra, and the Soormah to Chattuc and Punduah at
the foot of the Khasia Hills. From this point first elephants
and then an army of 110 coolies conveyed the travellers and
their belongings to Churra, on the mountain tableland, on
June 12. On September 13 they left for the eastern part of
the plateau, and on November 17, having made an exhaustive
collection, including 2500 species of plants and 300 kinds of
woods, descended to Cachar, beyond Silhet. Lack of time and
tribal warfare prevented entrance into the botanically unex-
plored valley of Manipur.

Cachar was left on December 2 for Silhet, where four days
were spent, and Chattuc, whence on the 9th a fortnight of
boat brought them to Chittagong. Here a botanical excursion
was made to the north, and plants were collected apparently
unknown since Eoxburgh's time. But the higher hills were
inaccessible, for the head-hunters were very active, and had
taken thirty heads from one Bengali village the week before.
Setting out again by boat on January 16 they reached Calcutta
on the 28th, and leaving on February 7, arrived once more in
England on March 25, 1851.

The first part of this eastward journey, what with the bad-
ness of the boats and excessive indolence of the crews, a ther-

332

DACCA 333

mometer. ranging between 95° and 106°, and scenery destitute
of all interest, was ' miserably slow and very uncomfortable
to boot.'

We have been alternately winding through narrow
channels, tossing in vast river beds, bumping on sandbanks,
or lying, moored to cliffs of sand and mud, waiting for fair
weather or calms. Scarcely a tree has been visible for days,
and then came wretched cottages, accompanied by clumps
of Mango and ghostly Palms. . . . The desertion of our
crew compelled us to put into Pubnah for a few hours. You
will scarcely believe it, but these people are so lazy and
capricious, that our Headman and the crew actually ran
away from their own boat, (a large covered luggage craft,
80 feet long) leaving it to be the property of nobody, (i.e.
our property if we chose) ; so we had to hire other men at
Pubnah, and brought it on to Dacca.

A fresh picture appears with the city of Dacca.

The dwellings of the English residents are truly mag-
nificent, as much so as at Calcutta, with richer gardens
and more beautiful prospects. The streets are open and
clean, and this is literally the first Indian town I have seen
where you can drive along the public ways without grievous
offence to the nose. [The narrow-fronted native cottages of
mud or plaited matting, running back fifty feet from the
street, with their eaves dipping nearly to the ground at the
corners, looked all roof.] In these hovels the famous Dacca
muslins used , to be worked : they were wonderful fabrics,
of which they say that you could not see them when out-
stretched on the dewy grass, nor distinguish them from
gossamer, when floating in the air. Aurungzebe reprimanded
his daughter for appearing en deshabille, when she was really
wreathed from chin to toes in one hundred yards of muslin.
The manufacture has long been given up, or nearly so, but
now there is a fitful revival, owing to the order given for
the Grand Exhibition of 1851. For this, Dr. Wise 1 is collect-
ing the article, materials and implements : the latter are

1 Thomas Alexander Wise (d. 1889), appointed Assistant Surgeon in Bengal
1827, founded Hugli College and was its first Principal, doubling the work with
the Civil Surgeoncy of Hugli 1836-9. Appointed Secretary to the Council of
Education, afterwards Principal of Dakka College, retiring in 1851.

334 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS

so simple that he justly remarks that it would require two
natives to accompany them, in order that they should afford
any degree of instruction to the public.

Dacca, which now has been restored to the position of a
provincial capital, in 1850 presented ' the aspect of a tolerably
well preserved and most extensive ruin,' still richly adorned,
for

all the houses are, or were, white- washed and stuccoed,
much decorated, even the humblest ; columns, friezes and
arabesqued pediments, often extremely pretty, are every-
where seen ; their ornaments strangely recalling what
upholsterers and architects term Byzantine at home. I
took for granted that this style was introduced by the Mussul-
man conquerors from the West ; for Dacca rose to glory
under Aurungzebe ; but I am afraid that it is all borrowed
from the ancient Hindoo Capital of Eastern Bengal, of which
but a single street remains, twelve miles distant, and now
buried in jungle. Certainly, I have neither met nor read
of anything like it in India, for here there are none of the
ugly variously constructed pillars, nor those of bulging form,
or twisted like a rope yarn, which to my untrained eyes,
'seem typical of Hindu architecture. Nor are you offended
with the gaudy colours, Peacocks, Elephants and vile defor-
mities which appear on the friezes, capitals and every part
of the Hindu temples. Grotesque figures are rare, and the
running patterns and scrolls are elegant and quite similar
in general character (so far as I can judge) to the Greek.
The ruins of the more strictly Mohammedan buildings —
Mosques and Tombs — are picturesque, and the damper climate
does not accelerate their falling to dust, as in Western Bengal.
Grass and climbers quickly bind and conceal the heaps of
rubbish ; while shrubs and Ferns spring from the shattered
walls.

The Khasia mountains presented a great contrast to the
Himalayas in other respects as well as in their small elevation
of some 6000 feet. The long table-topped ranges were very
precipitous, with roaring cataracts pouring over their scarped
flanks, which rose from the plains like walls, the valleys receding
in amphitheatres of cliffs. On the ascent from Punduah,

MEGALITHS 335

the scenery was splendid, far more beautiful than any part
of the Himalaya, and much more Brazilian in character ;
with groves of Areca Palm, fine rocks and a better mixture
of brushwood and large trees than the complete forest of
the Sikkim Himalaya presents. The vegetation was quite
different, everything new to us.

The outstanding features were the heaviness of the rainfall
and the abundance of plant life. At the very start they filled
nearly a ream with the plants collected on their walk from
Punduah before breakfast.

To Us Father

June 21, 1850.

Scattered Pandani and the wonderful Stonehenge-like
tombs of the natives are the arresting objects of the view ;
the former quite out of the places with which we associate
their presence ; the latter singularly in harmony with the
moorland scene, whether as recalling the Druidical remains,
or the erratic boulders of our own bleak open counties in
England and Scotland, they are wild uncouth objects.

Of the weather ' most horrible ' is the term, I believe,
for all the time between May and October ; we are con-
sidered to be singularly fortunate in getting out to any
distance for seven days out of ten — for the first three it
rained a deluge ; and then the said clearance commenced,
which is unprecedented in the memory of the oldest inhabi-
tant.

Thick fog and torrents are the prevailing character,
the rainfall equalling often in forty-eight hours the whole
annual English fall. The statements are incredible, and I
have set up my rain-gauges to see for myself ; it is windy too,
which is bad for me, as the rain gets on my spectacles and
stops work ; the damp is of course ruinous.

With half a dozen collectors at work and three good coal-
fires burning in the drying bungalow, it was very hard work
for Hoffman (his servant) and six men to get the plants
changed and papers dried daily.

I had no idea [he continues] of the richness and variety
of the Flora, nor can you ever have of the bulk of tropical

336 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS

plants, which, as I always say, puts the ordinary vasculum
hors de combat in an hour ; as to your notions of drying
paper — 80 Ibs. is not a great collection for one day, and one
and a half ream of paper to put them in (Tom adds * at the
very least '). Compared to the 4500 feet of Sikkim Himalaya
(to which these mountains botanically answer), the latter is
literally a poor botanising country ; but again we have
here no region like the 5-10,000 feet of Sikkim, nor of the
Arctic of 10-17,000 feet.

Our collections, including those of this morning, amount
to 1176 species, gathered since leaving Dacca ; of which
800 were gathered since we quitted Punduah — this excludes
all the species we found in these hills which we had gathered
in the plains, and a great mass of un-numbered things out
of flower. I am safe in saying that 1000 species might be
gathered within five miles of Churra in a week.

Hodgsonia is in fruit and quite a different plant from
the Sikkim one ; so it is well you have stopped its premature
debut, as the confusion of plants and plates of ^Roxburgh's
and mine would have been a terrible business. I have a
fine fruit in spirits for you ; it is not ribbed, and differently
shaped.

Despite the rains and the limitation of local supplies, both
friends kept well and hearty.

July 20, 1850.

Tommy Thomson and I get on capitally together — and
pray tell Aunt Harriet, with my love, that he can still ' eat
through anything ' as well as your well-appetised son. We
are getting on very comfortably here. Mrs. Inglis, of Churra,
sends us every day, by the post which goes on to Assam, a
tin with a fresh loaf of bread, pat of butter, and a muffin !
We get plenty of fowls and eggs, and occasionally vegetables,
but little or no milk : for these savages, the * Khassya '
people, though they keep cows, haVe a prejudice (not religions)
against milk ! I think this is almost a unique feature in the
human race. We are extremely busy, as you may suppose,
more so than we ever were before, and are making enormous
collections of plants, but have much less time than we could
desire for the microscope and examination, still less for
drawing and none for other pursuits. The climate is cool

KAINFALL AND COLLECTORS 337

and excellent ; the thermometer is hardly ever up to 80°,
or falls below 68°, at midsummer.

Darjeeling cannot compare with Churra — 500 inches and
more (i.e. upwards of 40 feet) of rain fell last year at Churra.
I do not doubt that it is the rainiest climate in the world.

Nunklow : July 11, 1850.

Here Tom and I have arrived at our furthest North from
Churra, all beyond this being very unhealthy. It is very
tantalising to be stuck up here, literally within one day's
horse ride of Jenkins,1 whose dwelling at Gowhatty we can
almost see ; but the intervening Terai is deadly at this season.
I have written to ask if he can send me an Assam native of
tolerable cunning who will get me the Palms and Bamboos
from the Terai. I have already thirteen species of Bamboo
from Churra and ten from Sikkim : I believe those of the
two countries to be perfectly different. Unfortunately
they never flower, and I am determined with Tom's help,
and by obtaining gigantic specimens, to describe them by
habit, leaf, etc.

August 23, 1850.

What with Jenkins' and Simon's collectors here, twenty
or thirty of Falconer's, Lobb's,2 my friends Kaban and Cave
and Inglis' friends, the roads here are becoming stripped
like the Penang jungles, and I assure you for miles it some-
times looks as if a gale had strewed the road with rotten
branches and Orchideae. Falconer's men sent down 1000
baskets the other day, and assuming 150 at the outside as
the number of species worth cultivating, it stands to reason
that your stoves in England will still be stocked. The only
chance of novelty is in the deadly jungles of Assam, Jyntea,
and the Garrows. I am therefore not spending my money
on Orchideae collecting but rather on Palms, Scitamineae,
&c., which are more difficult to procure and not sought
after by these plunderers. Oaks I will attend to, but they
are most troublesome, as not one in a thousand is worth
anything.

1 Col. F. Jenkins (ft. 1833, d. before 1884) became Major-Gen. H.E.I.C.S.
and Commissioner of Assam, the botany of which he investigated. He sent
large collections of Assam plants to the Natural History Society of Cornwall.
Jenkinsia Acrostichum was named after him.

2 Thomas Lobb (ft. 1847) was a botanical collector for Veitch in India and
Malaya. The genus Lobbia Planch, was named after him.

338 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS

The vast extent of the collections and the amount of labour
to be expended upon them at home appears from the following :

Thomson's collections went home in April by the * Welling-
ton ' in 28 boxes, directed to the India House. One box
contains his books ; he gave the whole collection to the
' India House,' being unable to pay the carriage of his own
private ones, formed previous to the Thibet mission, to
Calcutta. If Government do not do something, nothing
can come of either Tom's or my collections ; they cannot
even be housed without. The collection you will receive (I
hope have received) per ' Queen ' will form at the outside
one quarter of the bulk of what I shall have, and we are now
packing in much larger paper layer over layer of plants to
suffocation. How Bentham would storm, I often think,
but we can neither afford paper, nor room, nor carriage.
Luckily they are beautifully dried and all large specimens,
but the separation will require great space, time, and un-
remitted labor.

We left the hills on the 10th, and I had the pleasure of
seeing all stowed safe away in a large boat hired to send all
to Falconer's from Punduah. The dried plants in 70 bales
are camphored and put up like bales of cotton in gunny 1
tight and dry. I could get no boxes. The woods, Palms,
Bamboos, &c., are similarly put up, but, being very large,
some 10 feet, they got a ducking going down the hill on
men's backs. I hope none are injured and they had all
dried when I followed them. Seven Ward's cases are full
of Palms, Pines, a few Oaks and Larch, Nepenthes, &c.
The Palms look splendidly ; amongst them a new species
of Wallichia, 20 feet high. There are also boxes with smaller
things and bottles with fruits and flowers of more than
800 species of plants in spirits.

As to the Calami and Bamboos, I ticketed them, wrapping
the tickets up in folds of paper, but I doubt their surviving ;
and I do not see how they can be made available for the
museum, except by Thomson or myself. The same may be
said of the woods, tree-ferns, &c., which can only be worked
up with the herbarium, and that will be a work of great
time and trouble. I wish very much that the Government

1 A coarse material used for sacking, made from jute fibre.

MODEST AMBITIONS 339

would give me a house at Kew for the collections, and
a small salary to engage my working them up for the
museum and public, and leave me to get a publisher who
would illustrate, and over whom I should have some hold
by having the offer of my Journal. I should greatly prefer
this to having a grant} for publication made to me. I shall
never write well for profit, and would willingly give all
my materials, scientific and popular, to the publisher,
seeking no profit, but exercising a control over the amount
of ' illustration ' to be given to both Natural History and
Journal.

Friends at home were more than ever eager that the vast
results of the Indian labours should not be thrown away.
Dr. Wallich offered his help if Hooker and Thomson should
take up a Flora of India, joining with them as a preliminary
in revising the Indian Herbarium at the Linnean. Hooker,
in reply (June 12, 1850), tells of the hard measure meted out
by the E.I.C. to Thomson, though he had lost all his splendid
outfit and collections in the Cabul campaign, and of his own
slender prospects from the Admiralty and the Geological Survey,
the latter ' involving work he will not undertake again for the
price,' though he hoped for some readjustment for the sake of
a position he much liked.

To Dr. Wallich

June 12, 1850.

Other expectations I have none but a wife to maintain,
and expensive appearances to keep up.

As to writing a book of travels, or working up my
Geology, Physical Geography, or Meteorology — I have no
thoughts of it.

Wealth I do not seek ; but it is absolutely necessary
that I be placed in unembarrassed circumstances to carry
out the Fl. Ant. and Flora Indica ; it were not expedient
that I should have even the Geological Survey Work.

Eeputation is a very fine thing, and Botany a very
charming science, but neither will keep the pot boiling in
that land of constraint and restraint — England — where my
prospects are distraint for window-tax and poor-rates, if
the Woods and Forests will not give me a barn at Kew.

340 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS

My £400 here is, with prudence, equal to £800 in
England, it has been more than that to me, but this year
my expenses will be very great, nearly tripled. Had I
my life to live over again, it should be in India — that,
however, is not the question. I am homeward bound this
cold weather to slap my empty pockets up and down
Piccadilly, and sponge upon my friends at the Oriental
for a dinner, since you inhospites, Athenaeum, will not lay
a plate for a stranger.

So here, my dear Wallich, is a good growl for you, after
which I feel better, but not the less of a mule.

Thomson is the most good-tempered and -humoured
fellow you can imagine, and no one can be more full of zeal
and love of Botany, nor more willing to work ; but the
Flora Indica may go to Shaitan before we tax ourselves with
such a responsibility under such wretched prospects.

To his Father,

It is easy to talk of a Flora Indica, and Thomson and
I do talk of it, to imbecility ! But suppose that we even
adopted the size, quality of paper, brevity of description,
&c., which characterise De Candolle's Prodromus, and we
should, even under these conditions, fill twelve such volumes,
at least ; though excluding any word of English or not
upon distribution, particular habitats, Remarks on structure
or aught else. About eighteen years of fair work would
be needed, for I should not approve of any portion being
so slightly executed as Decaisne's Asclepiadeae, Choisy's
Convolvulaceae, and Alphonse De Candolle's various orders ;
and I further think that the plan of distribution is carried
to excess. Our friend, Mr. Bentham, is truly the only
first-rate Monographer of the present day. If therefore
Thomson and I are to write a Flora Indica, we ought,
I think, to be considered competent to do it all, or
nearly all, except the Cryptogamia. That the East India
Company will not come forward with money to aid the
publication, you may rest perfectly k assured. It may give
Thomson military allowance, and he will be well content
with that. It may also take copies, and by so doing, first
raise up a Publisher, and then ruin him by distributing
gratis copies to those who would, otherwise, be purchasers.

i. 340]

J. D. HOOKER, AT THE AGE OF 32.
From a Sketch by William Tayler, 1849.

NEEDFUL AID FOE PUBLICATION 341

Our Government may assist by granting me a small salary,
or connecting me with Kew, so that I may have leisure
to work, and thus it may stop my clamorous mouth ; but
neither our Government nor the E. India Company will
give a sum, in any way proportioned to the work. What
would a thousand pounds be, for a job, the labour of which
must stretch over fifteen years ? And I trow they will
never award loth a salary to me, and money for the work.

The question may be simplified by merely asking what
is to become of my materials, MSS., and collections, on
my return ? I cannot undertake their arrangement, much
less their publication, unless I am settled. If it be at all
practicable, I desire to push for a house and small salary,
attached to the Garden, and at once, because (firstly) Mr.
Aiton's is now vacant, and (secondly) because the magnitude
of my collections requires to be considered and accom-
modated. (Thirdly) because the money might now be
granted as the continuance of an allowance hitherto enjoyed
by a man, already in the service of the Government, and
who has done his utmost to please his employers. They
surely could never cast me wholly off, on my return ? —
(Still, there seems on other grounds an evident leaning
that way) — But it must be surely remembered that I have
hitherto received nothing in the shape of salary, and that
every shilling has been spent in collecting and on travelling
expenses. I do not much relish the idea of a Government
Grant towards the cost of publication. It might only leave
us in the lurch, as was the case with the Flora Antarctica.
And supposing that Fitch's services should be no longer
available — what sort of a predicament should I be in then ?

The Admiralty, as you are aware, give me a salary and
a grant, and the Woods and Forests, or whatever body may
employ me, cannot (I should hope) do less. A salary would
be far better for me than a grant as enabling me to work up
my Journals ; they cannot otherwise be given to the world.
For such books as the work on Rhododendrons and its con-
tinuation, I shall grudge neither the plates nor the little
trouble requisite to draw up the descriptions. But when
such work is involved as the laborious publication of my
Journals, of a systematic botanical work, — or of the scientific
results of various kinds, arising from my travels, I must

VOL. I Z

342 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS

find myself placed, at least, in independence, before I can
even begin. I already feel something of the Burchell l spirit,
and nobody need be surprised if (the necessary and just
stimulus being withheld) I should lapse into such a condition
as his — so far as my collections and materials for publication
are concerned.

1 William John Burchell (1782-1863), the great explorer in S. Africa
(1810-15) and Brazil (1826-9), published only a part of his S. African results.
On his return with yet richer material from Brazil, the Prussian Government,
it is said, offered him a handsome pension if he would settle with his collections
in Berlin. This he refused, but his hopes of getting them published in England
were bitterly disappointed.

CHAPTEE XVIII

THE EETURN FROM INDIA

THE end of the Indian journey brought up the same problem
as had arisen at the end of the Antarctic journey. What was
the next step to be, and what arrangements could be made
for the publication of the scientific results by the Government
who had sent out the expedition ? Government help, he
held, might be given to working out research, but not to the
endowment of researchers as such. As he puts it to his mother
(August 8, 1849) :

Mr. S. is very clever, but one wants hard-headed, working
men now-a-days, and Government pay should be doled out
according to the amount of national profit, pleasure or
advantage yielded by the science to the Public in general,
and not to physiologists in particular, or philosophers. You
need not apply this to me. I offer no excuse for myself
and court no favour.

Hooker had always thought it proper to complete in India,
apart from the voyage out or home, the three years for which
his grants were allowed. That the last year was to be spent
in India instead of in Borneo was in every respect good for
him save as regards finance. If he was left to pay for his
passage home the arrangement did not err on the side of
liberality. He still received £300 from the Woods and Forests
instead of the £400 for the two preceding years, but lost his
full naval pay (£200), time of service and naval allowances,
together with the free passage home which, under the Borneo

343

844 THE EETUEN FBOM INDIA ,

scheme, would have been his with the rank of surgeon on
board the Maeander.

Peeling that he could manage on his allowance, he had
refused while in Sikkim to apply to the Indian Government
for any grant in aid of his costly and laborious expedition to
the snows, or to allow Hodgson to appeal on his behalf ; but
Campbell, before a similar disclaimer could reach him, had
made representations to the Government, who generously
granted him £100 to cover the cost of feeding his coolies, subject
to the approval of the East India Company. However un-
willing to ask, he was much gratified in accepting the proffered
grant, and was free to spend the more on his collections and
on scientific instruments. His total expenditure was £2,200 ;
the official allowances were £1,200 : the remainder was con-
tributed from his own and his father's purse.

As for a permanency in the future, he had no wish to take
up such a post as the directorship of the Botanical Gardens
in Ceylon, offered to him on the death of his friend Gardner
in 1849. Indeed his constant wish was to be settled at Kew.
His father was short-handed. His former curator, Dr. J. E.
Planchon,1 had left him suddenly : ' Citoyen Planchon ' or
simply ' the Citoyen ' as he was playfully nicknamed, Planchon
of whom Hooker writes home amid the Kevolutionary breezes
of 1848 :

I hope Planchon won't be going to Paris now ! He will
be drawn (for a soldier) and quartered (not in Barracks), if
he does not take better care. I doubt if the Eepublicans
are so civil as were Napoleon's soldiers, who, at the battle
of the Pyramids, gave the word, ' au milieu, les femmes,
les anes, et les savants.'

The little man, to whom the Hookers were much attached,
was a paragon of botanical acumen, winning a second nick-
name from the ' §a touche ' with which he invariably clinched
a botanical argument ; it was the highest praise to call T.

1 He afterwards attained great eminence as Professor of Botany in Mont-
pellier, where in his researches on the Phylloxera he discovered the only cure
for this pest — namely, the grafting of the ordinary vine on the nearly immune
stocks of American species.

AN ASSISTANT NEEDED AT KEW 345

Thomson * a regular Planchon for acuteness.' But, with all
his cleverness, he was, it seems, flighty and unstable, and he
had unaccountably broken with Kew and the friends to whom
he had expressed such gratitude and devotion.

An assistant [writes Hooker to his father on Feb. 1, 1849]
is now your chief requisite, and I wish I were at home to
help you in this and other matters. It is the only draw-
back to ray thorough enjoyment during my journeyings,
that you should miss me in some cases where two pairs
of eyes and hands, nay two whole heads and bodies are
wanted.

And he urges his father to engage at once a man who seems
suitable, using his Navy half-pay to secure him rather than
lose the chance of an honest, careful, industrious man.

Soon after his return to England a long standing anomaly
in Sir William's position at Kew was remedied. Though
Director he had had no official residence in the grounds ; the
great herbarium, which was one of the scientific mainstays
of the Gardens, was his private property. He had brought
it with him from Glasgow ; it was the one valuable inheritance
he could leave to his son, and at his death was liable to be
removed or dispersed if that son had not the means of main-
taining it at Kew or elsewhere. Until 1853, for all its public
utility, it was housed and maintained at his private expense
in the * three-storied, many -roomed ' house at West Park,
two-thirds of a mile from the Gardens,1 ' a very pretty, genteel
and comfortable residence ' (in Dawson Turner's Johnsonian
phrase), which, exclaims Hooker, ' has always been an incubus
to me, so large in itself, while still your collections and Her-
barium are outgrowing it ! ' These, with the study and
artist's room, occupied thirteen rooms, while Sir William's
expenses all along far exceeded his official salary.

At length, however, a change came about. First, the
house in the Gardens belonging to Aiton, the late super-
intendent, fell vacant at his death in October 1849. It now

1 The grounds of West Park, 7£ acres ia extent, are now occupied by the
Kew and Richmond Sewage Works.

346 THE EETUEN FROM INDIA

was offered as the semi-official residence of Sir William, the
thrifty Government, however, proposing to charge him £100
per annum as interest on the capital cost of the new Herbarium
accommodation.

All my Indian friends lift up their hands with amazement
at it. . . . But it is an immense advantage that the Govern-
ment can have it to declare that you put them to no expense,
but that, on the contrary, you give them what interest they
choose on their money.

For some reasons [he writes home to his father, February
28, 1850] I shall regret West Park, a very pretty and nice
place ; and most of all I shall regret leaving it on poor
Mamma's account, who will lose her pets of cows, poultry
and pigs. Bessy will miss the garden, and I the wall fruit
and the long gravel walk, which I have always cherished
the memory of, for dear old grandpapa Hooker's sake. But
really I never could endure the big house, without servants
enough to answer the bells punctually, and in the rooms
of which it was impossible that a dozen persons could be
collected together with comfort. ... I must add to the
catalogue, the difficulty of getting to town from West Park,
of sending to hire a Fly, or that perpetual trial to my temper,
the waiting an hour for an omnibus, or the missing it (perhaps
both), and iii the rain, may be ! The weary walk from our
house to church, all in the mud, for Mamma, the want of any
neighbour who can come and spend an evening hour with
my sister, and my own midnight trudges from the omnibus,
perhaps from Hammersmith, in case of my own staying at
all late in town.

The plan dropped, till in 1855 another Crown house fell
vacant by the death of Sir George Quentin, Riding-master
to the family of George III. This became the official residence
of the Director. It faced the Green and had its back in the
Gardens. But it could not accommodate Library or Herbarium.
Fortunately another large house close by was now available.

This was a house which had been purchased by George III.
in 1818, at Banks' suggestion, to provide for a Herbarium
and Library to be attached to the Royal Botanic Gardens.
One of the rooms was already shelved for books. But the

HOUSING AT KEW 347

death of both in the same year cut short the project, and in
1823 George IV. sold house and grounds to the nation. In
1830 William IV. granted it to the Duchess of Cumberland
for her life. From 1837, when the Duke succeeded to the
Throne of Hanover, it was known as ' The King of Hanover's
House.'

Now it reverted to Banks' purpose. Herbarium and
library were placed here, and formally made accessible to
botanists, while the Government assumed the cost of main-
tenance and provided a scientific curator.

True that from Sir William's first days at Glasgow, his
botanical treasures ' had been open to botanists, as was its
owner's hospitable table to visitors from a distance.' Neverthe-
less to the condition first proposed that the Herbarium should
be thrown open to the public, while its owner paid for its up-
keep and a curator, the younger Hooker demurred ; Sir William
had already halved his income by leaving Glasgow for Kew,
and such a step meant surrendering to the Crown all private
rights in this valuable property without adequate return.
Possession of it, moreover, was an excellent lever to use in
the gradual reorganisation of Kew from a semi-private to a
wholly national establishment, the official home of botany
with scientific and popular interests fairly adjusted, the centre
to which lesser botanical centres should be correlated with
due subordination. This transition clearly could only be
effected through the Hookers, father and son, who owned
so much of the material and were ready to enlist their un-
rivalled powers under the Government in the service of science
and the nation.

Two important pieces of work under Government auspices
now lay immediately before Hooker. One was to complete
the botany of Boss's Voyage for the Admiralty. So far he
had only published the Flora Antarctica in two quarto volumes
(1847), with 200 plates out of the 500 for which an official grant
of £2 each was made to cover the printer's bill. There remained
the Floras of New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania, and he
made the usual application for his half-pay as Naval Surgeon
to support him'^while completing this Admiralty work. This

348 THE EETUEN FKOM INDIA

was granted for three years. Thus a great part of his labour
was unremunerative. Nearly ten years later, however, he
was agreeably surprised by a grant of £500 from the Admiralty
in recognition of his l zeal, perseverance, and scientific ability
in his botanical services ' ; quite a new feature in his relations
with My Lords Commissioners. His account of this appears
in a letter to Huxley (I860), who responds : * The Admiralty
affair pleases me very much. It is only right and just, but still
I think you may well be gratified. Justice does not always
come in so pleasant a form.'

To T. H. Huxley.

DEAB^H. — My vanity will not stand the holding this
back from you. I must confess to being amazingly Itickled
after twenty-two years' service of sorts, at receiving a hand-
some and spontaneous expression of unqualified approbation
from my Lords of the Foul Anchor. I had made the applica-
tion in due form for the small arrears (of three years' pay)
that was due (for nine years' work) ; and just by way of
not throwing a chance away, in spite of my wife's laughs,
I sent a crackling cartridge of foolscap with a statement
of the length and breadth of my works and pay. I said
nothing of quality, the Navy being the only service in which
I never saw a fellow do good by praising himself. I made
no grievance. I used no influence of any kind or sort or
description, nor did my Father. Washington 1 immediately
took the matter up and sent me a dozen queries from my
Lords ; I answered all categorically, some three months
ago — and lo the result !

His second great task was to work out his Indian collections.
They had been made for Kew under the auspices of the Woods
and Forests Department, which governed Kew, and unless
worked out, arranged, and housed, were, like his Zoological
collections on the Erebus, just so much labour thrown away.
To this end he desired application to be made to the Depart-

1 John/Washington (1800-63), Rear-Admiral, entered the navy in 1812 and
travelled much between 1822 and 1853 : Secretary of the Royal Geographical
Society 1836-41. He was engaged on the East Coast Survey 1841-7, and
became F.R.S. 1845, Assistant Hydrographer and Hydrographer 1855-62.
He was Hooker's companion on his Syrian exploration.

INTEEEUP'PED AID 349

ment through his father for a continuance of the £400 a year
originally granted him in India, and the tenancy, at whatever
rent was usually asked, of one of the Crown 'houses hard by,
unoccupied at the moment, where he could live and keep his
collections, in close touch with all the materials for reference
at Kew. It was surely the duty of the Department, whose
commissioned officer he had been, to see that the work com-
missioned should be adequately completed.

This view of the case, however, his father was at first
unwilling to adopt. However great Joseph's services had
been, however deserving of later furtherance, the Department,
he thought, had entirely fulfilled its duty by the simple grant
of the sum originally asked for the Indian expedition. Any-
thing more must be a matter of favour, not of due. Was
the Department in arrears for the amount of its last year's
grant ? He offered his own purse instead ; and prepared
to make an appeal ad misericordiam, much to his son's mis-
liking.

All this [the latter writes to Bentham, April 2, 1851]
is due to his excess of modesty ; it is equally certain that
he looks on his own Crown salary as mere kindness on
the part of Govt. to himself, and that the fact of his
liking his work and being willing or able to hold his post
at half pay, would justify the Crown in cutting it down so
much, should they wish to be just rather than liberal as they
are in his opinion to himself.

Indeed it was rather a question of himself wanting aid,
what with his broken health, the often trying Garden duty,
and the extension of the Herbarium and Museum beyond his
powers, while he saw ' the great accumulation of scientific
objects which are gradually being consigned to oblivion in
favour of showy articles.' But this was a subject which his
son could not broach to him ; it must be left to older friends
like Bentham or Henslow.

But Sir William consented to delay making the application
till he had consulted with these old friends ; and meanwhile
the presidents of the various learned Societies spontaneously

350 THE EETUEN FROM INDIA

deputed Lord Rosse,1 President of the Royal Society, Robert
Brown, the botanist, representing the British Museum, and
William Hopkins,2 President of the Geological Society, to
press the Government on a matter of so much importance to
science. By the following spring, just a year after his return,
these representations produced their effect. The Department
authorised the grant for three years, to the end of 1854.

Meantime in September he was in the act of moving into
Aiton's old house in the Gardens when very onerous conditions
were sprung upon him by the authorities. Refusing to be
saddled with such a burden while his footing was still un-
certain, he broke off at once. Furniture and all were taken
away again.

My collections [he tells Harvey a couple of months later]
were turned out neck and crop of course — the dried plants
into the Temple of the Sun, and the rest into the back shed
of the Orangery ! where they are going the way of all paren-
chyma and pleurenchyma !

He finally settled in a house, now No. 350 Kew Road,
belonging to Mr. Bryan, the Vicar, where the Curator, John
Smith the elder, had spent his last years. Here he brought his
wife, for at the beginning of August he had married Frances
Henslow. Their engagement had been a long one, but this
price had been paid deliberately. His position in the botani-
cal world had to be assured by his great travels in India.
Perfect confidence and rare strength of mind were needed to
resolve upon a three years' separation within a few months
of their engagement. But by birth and training she was able
to help in his work, to share, his aims, and appreciate the
worth of their joint sacrifice.

Still, even after such sacrifice and achievement, his chosen

1 The third Earl of Rosse (1800-67), whose laborious experiments for the
improvement of the reflecting telescope culminated in the great telescope at
Parsonstown, first used in 1845.

2 William Hopkins (1793-1866), mathematician and geologist, nicknamed
while tutor at Peterhouse ' the Senior-wrangler maker ' : a teacher of Stokes
and Kelvin, Tait and Clerk-Maxwell. He applied mathematical and astro-
nomical tests to geological reasoning. Was elected President of the Geological
Society 1851, and of the British Association 1853.

HIS CAEEEE JEOPAKDISED 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 establishment and tempting at such a juncture.
Friends urged him to this prudential course. * Shall I give
up Botany and stand for Koenig's x 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 2 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

1 Charles Dietrich Eberhard Koenig (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 Department. This was
the post left vacant by his sudden death.

2 Asa Gray (1810-88), relinquishing medicine for botany, became Professor
of Natural History at Harvard 1842-73, and succeeded Agassiz as Regent 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 with Hooker was not only that of
scientific affinity, but of close and enduring friendship.

352 THE RETUEN FROM INDIA

very anxious though, and were it not that my Father would
feel my leaving the place, I would hang no more on in this
suspense.

And in August he writes sympathetically to Bentham,
who was suffering from similar qualms :

If I thought you would be a happier man I would advise
you to give up Botany ; but you would not be so, and evil
as our days are, whether they mended or worsed, it would
be all the worse to you to have given up what is at least a
wholesome and constant mental resource. I sometimes
despond too, but as I was once told, * I am limed to the twig/
and so are you ! Besides, you have a year's work for Cam-
bridge Herb.,1 and it would be dull work for you to drag
through that as a termination to your Bot. career.

Sir William now made definite application for Joseph's
appointment as assistant to himself at the Gardens, a very
needful addition to the staff carried into effect in May 1855.
In the preceding December, after his failure to obtain one
of the Crown houses, Joseph Hooker had moved to a more
roomy house at the top of Richmond Hill, No. 3 Montague
Villas ; the new appointment brought him back to a house
near the gates of the Gardens lately occupied by Mr. Phillipps.
His wife, he tells Bentham (July 3, 1855),

is not best pleased about it ; but I tell her she may spend
the difference in fly-hire. As for me I am blazed or blase (or
whatever you call it in French) of change, and feel curiously
indifferent — it is all out of one's lifetime ;

an attitude of mind parallel to that in which he had undertaken
the previous move, proposing to take the house

at or about the last moment, but being at present under a
bad attack of Phytomania I am rather indifferent to all
things in general, and my prospects in particular ; it is well
I should be sometimes, for I am sure I feel worried enough
when it does fall on my spleen.

\

1 See p. 384.

ASSISTANT AT KEW 353

Thus at length his own and his father's highest hopes were
realised. Till Sir William's death ten years later, leaving his
son and assistant obviously marked out as successor to the
Directorship, father and son were settled together at the Mecca
of botany they had created, united by strong affection as well
as by a common work.

The culminating point of Hooker's scientific work during
the decade is the Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania,
* which in itself would have made Hooker famous,' writes
Professor Bower.1 This was published in 1859, just before
the ' Origin of Species ' appeared. Six years earlier he had
published the corresponding Introductory Essay to the Flora
of New Zealand. The difference between the guiding con-
ceptions of these Essays, one in the middle, the other at the
end of his first great period of systematic work, is a measure
of the writer's advance in scientific theory, his long-standing
dissatisfaction with the older view of fixity of species finding
appeasement in the practical utility of the theory that species
originate in variation.

He had long been the confidant of Darwin's views ; had
discussed and debated them with his old friend, providing
botanical information, offering criticisms, citing instances
and pointing out difficulties, suggesting his own solutions to
problems which had vexed him ever more insistently as he
more fully realised the fluidity of species, and the difficulty
of establishing ' specific types,' — those abstract definitions, to
which individual specimens should be referred, being as hopeless
as the bed of Procrustes. On the main lines, at least, he was
approaching conviction. The new theory, privately discussed,
threw light on his own work if he was not yet, in the earlier
fifties, persuaded of all its details ; and he felt bound to avow
publicly the change of view brought about by his later in-
vestigations. But Darwin's views had not yet been concen-
trated and expressed as a whole. A summary of them was
given to the world in the * Origin.' The sledge-hammer effect
of this was still to be experienced.

1 The present Professor of Botany at Glasgow.

354 THE KETUEN FEOM INDIA

Darwin and Wallace's 1 joint communication on Natural
Selection was read before the Linnean Society in July
1858 ; the ' Origin ' was not published till November 1859.
The Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania, appear-
ing between the two, did not thus early proclaim Natural
Selection as a proven theory and philosophic principle, what-
ever effect on his trend of thought Hooker confessed the
publication of the ' Origin ' might produce. He frankly
employed the theory as a working hypothesis to see whether
it did not explain the perplexing questions of botanical affinity
and distribution better than its predecessor, which, he had
still accepted as the working hypothesis for the New Zealand
Essay. Applied to the vast material over which his mind
had ranged, the hypothesis * worked ' in striking fashion.
So far as plant life was concerned, the Tasmanian Essay
offered in advance a strong buttress for the ' Origin/ which
dealt with life in both animals and plants.

Discussion of this progress in scientific views is most
profitably postponed to a Darwinian chapter. For the present
it is enough to bear in mind that the species question was
constantly before him ; and that while working on the ordinarily
accepted lines until he could see more clearly, he was ready, when
fuller conviction came, to avow openly his change of attitude.

With the publication of the Flora of Australia and Tasmania
(1855-60) the Botany of Eoss's Voyage was completed, the
New Zealand Flora having been published between 1853-
55. The next important work of this decade was the beginning
of his magnum opus, the Flora Indica. The first year after
his return in March 1851, * slightly fatter, three years younger,
and much stronger than when I left England in '47, ' was mainly

1 Alfred Russel Wallace (1822-1913), the joint discoverer of the principle
of Natural Selection, gave up his profession as land-surveyor and architect
to travel and study nature, visiting the Amazon with Bates, 1848-52, and the
Malay Archipelago, 1854-62. It was from here that he sent Darwin in 1858
the paper which was read at the Linnean with Darwin's own, and led to the
speedy publication of the Origin. Besides his two great books of travel, his
most important scientific books are those on Geographical Distribution of
Animals, Tropical Nature, Island Life, and Darwinism. He received the
Royal Medal of the R.S. in 1868. Keenly interested in social reform, he wrote
a volume on Land Nationalisation. He wrote also against compulsory vac-
cination and became a strong supporter of spiritualism.

STAKT OF THE FLORA INDICA 855

devoted to getting ready the materials for the New Zealand
Flora, so as to clear the field in part at least for the Indian
work. Though the last boxes of his collections arrived in
September and * astonished ' his father, to be followed im-
mediately by Thomas Thomson and his 'collection, numbering
twenty-five chests, it was not till March 20, 1852, that he wrote
to Bentham :

I have broken bulk with the Indian collections, done all
the woods (about 500), Palms, Bamboos, and big things,
and am all ready to plunge into the Haystacks, working in
the rooms at Kew.

Some of his Indian results had already been published
by the Asiatic Society of Bengal whilst he was in India. One
folio volume with fine illustrations of the Sikkim Ehododen-
drons, edited by Sir William from his son's notes, drawings,
and materials, appeared in successive parts between 1849
and 1851. i Another folio, a volume of illustrations of Hima-
layan plants from near Darjiling, chiefly collected by him
on behalf of an Indian friend, Mr. Cathcart, was edited, with
descriptions by Hooker himself, in 1855.

But now Dr. Thomson settled hard by and spent a great
part of the next three years at Kew, completing his ' Travels in
Western Himalaya and Tibet,' published in 1852, and working
side by side with his friend at their common task. His masters,
the East India Company, encouraged him to work with promises
of reward if the work were satisfactory, but gave no imme-
diate help. Nor was assistance forthcoming from the British
Association. The nebulous hope of bringing out a whole
Flora of India, however, took solid shape when, on the death
of his father in 1852, Thomson came into a little money. This
he promptly devoted to science, paying for the huge volume
of 581 pages which he and Hooker brought out in 1855, and
hazarding repayment from ' John Company.' The detail of
this, the first and only volume of their Flora Indica, was so
full that if the work had been completed on the same scale,
it would have reached nearly 12,000 pages.

1 See ante, p. 326.

356 THE EETURN FROM INDIA

Part of the plan was to find trustworthy specialists to
deal with certain Orders. Thus Hooker writes in July 1852
to Munro,1 the soldier-botanist, the * wonderful grass-man/
who had been arranging the grasses in the Kew Herbarium,
and who was keen enough to send home a collection of plants
from the Crimea in the intervals of fighting :

Bentham has already taken to preparing the Legumi-
nosae Indicae. We shall ourselves commence with Ranun-
culaceae as soon as the collections are arranged, and beat
about for assistance amongst good and true friends, print-
ing for them at once, offering them copies for their labour,
and selections from the complete collections in order of
the extent and value of their contributions. What do
you say to a Graminologia Indica with short, terse generic
and specific characters, synonyms and a summary of the
Geog. distrib. of the species, to be printed, published, and
distributed gratis, to a certain extent, by ourselves as
' Munro's Gram. Ind.,' giving you 50 copies, and after dis-
tributing to all. deserving public and private establishments,
putting the remainder into a publisher's hands to sell ?
Such is our present idea of proceeding. Will you kindly
think the subject over and offer any suggestions, not so much
with reference to your doing the Grasses, as to the general
principle? Great progress might thus be made towards a
Flora Indica, by the serial publication of large Nat. Ords.
and groups of small do. complete in themselves. We shall
be very careful how we trust the materials to authors we
have not satisfactory experience of.

But its completion was a task beyond even such energetic
men. Time and opportunity were too scanty. Hooker was
deep in other work. Thomson was bound to return to India.
Enthusiasm did its best, and he had plunged eagerly into
work, lightly proposing as a side occupation to index the
Kew Herbarium, to Hooker's grim amusement. He was
wholly in sympathy with the views of his fellow- worker.

1 William Munro (1818-80) saw active service in the Sikh war and the
Crimea, and held the West Indian command from 1870 to 1876. During the
many years his regiment was in India he studied botany, becoming the chief
authority on the Grasses. He did not live to complete his general monograph
of the whole order of Gramineae undertaken after his retirement.

THOMSON AS COLLABORATOR 357

Thomson and I [writes Hooker to Bentham, October 10,
1852] are not at all likely to quarrel about the limits of the
species, which I hold that we should do if we were improper
lumpers quite as much as if we were hair-splitters.

But the spade work was very heavy. By November,

we have done a vast deal to the Malayan Flora, but not
nearly got through the Khassya bundles. Thomson finds
the arrangement of his own N.W. parts, which is not yet in
Nat. Ords ! a much heavier task than he dreamt of. We are
working steadily on, however.

But Thomson was constantly being called away by the
claims of ailing relations ; his powers of persevering concen-
tration had been sapped by much illness in India, and at the
turn of the year 1853-4, Hooker writes in despondent mood
to Bentham :

He cannot work except under the very strongest stimulus,
and every advantage being put under his nose, — it was so
in India, there was no inducing him to study a plant though
so keen and admirable a collector. ... As to Flora Indica,
I have no idea when Part I will be out, and between Thom-
son's excessive scrupulosity, his natural slowness, and his
matchless procrastination, I see very little chance of fits
appearance under x months. The consequences of working
by fits and starts tell very heavily, for it requires the same
work to be gone over again and again. An immense intro-
duction is nearly written, but also so by fits and starts that
Mrs. Hooker has to go it all over, and it sometimes takes an
hour to unravel a page of the MS. I have taken "up the
distribution of my own plants in earnest, and dropped Flora
Indica altogether as hopeless under present circumstances.

Nevertheless the book, as has been said, appeared in 1855.
It is described in a letter to Munro, November 8, 1855 :

The first volume of Flora Indica is finished and consists
of 2 parts, 280 pages of introductory matter, and as much of
description, extending from Eanunculaceae to Fumariaceae ;
it cost Thomson and me the best part of two years' hard
labour and will, I hope, prove. useful. We have a copy for

VOL. I 2 A

358 THE KETUKN FKOM INDIA

you, and I ain half inclined to send it to the Crimea [Munro
was then a Major and on active service], as if you are obliged
or inclined to throw it away we can give you another.
Thomson paid all the expenses of printing, publishing, and
distributing, and I have offered the E.I.C. to continue and
conclude it, if they will only pay at the rate of £200 for
every 1000 species described, and I offer to get it printed
and published free of all further expense to them and of
any remuneration to the authors, also I would engage
myself to stick to it for ten years at that rate. Hitherto
they have given Thomson no reimbursement for any of his
expenses, though he spent a year beyond his furlough at it
upon no pay at all.

The financial fate of the book was very disappointing.
It is recorded in another letter to Munro, December 21, 1856.

I am so disheartened about Flora Indica and the knavish
conduct of the Court of Directors, that I have done nothing
more to it ; as soon, however, as I get Fl. Tasman. off my
hands I shall return to it with zest ; and devise some dodge
to give John Company a Koland for his Oliver. You are
aware, I think, that after paying all the expenses of the
1st vol. we put a merely nominal price on the 130 copies
we put out for sale (after giving away 120), and that John
Company, after refusing to subscribe for copies, or promote
the work, or repay the authors, on hearing how cheap it
was, bought up 100 copies unknown to us, which threw the
work out of print, and left us £200 out of pocket, and our
object defeated ! I never was so sold in my life. I have
begged and implored in vain that they give back the copies,
and I have offered back not only the money but to give
them gratis 100 copies of the Introductory Essay. As to
poor Thomson, they will not give him Is. for time or labour
' or expenses. Have not we a good growl ?

The political sequel of 1857 of course precluded any scheme
of tit for tat. Hooker enjoyed the grim suggestion that the
dissolution of the East India Company was a retribution for
this meanness as well as other more serious shortcomings.

After Thomson's return to India the two friends continued
to work together, and from 1858-61 published in the Journal

PKOGRESS OF THE INDIAN FLORA 359

of the Linnean Society the ' Praecursores ad Floram Indicam :
being sketches of the natural families of Indian plants, with
remarks on their distribution, structure, and affinities.' But
with Thomson's departure and Hooker's appointment as
Assistant Director at Kew, the greater work was inevitably
laid aside, and remained on the shelf for fifteen years, during
which his only Indian work of importance was a considerable
share in preparing Thwaites' 1 Enumeration of Ceylon plants
(1858-64). But in 1870, the India Council was moved to
take an interest in the matter, mainly through Mr. (afterwards
Sir) Mountstuart Grant Dun0,2 with whom Hooker had some
correspondence the previous year on Indian Forestry and
Botany. The Duke of Argyll 3 also, Secretary for India, had
scientific interests. Thus Hooker obtained support when he
pointed out that the Indian Government had sanctioned the
much needed Flora in 1863, but workers were wanted. The
matter had slipped so entirely from official ken that the India
Office could not even find the record of this official letter written
six years before, and had to ask Hooker for a copy of it.

T. Thomson, the natural continuator of the work, was
out of health, and in any case was bent on discussing details
at impracticable length. There was no help for it ; Hooker
met the renewed interest of the India Council by assuming
the responsible editorship, and with the help of a staff of
collaborators made a new start. Twenty-seven years of further

1 George Henry Kendrick Thwaites (1811-82), beginning life as an account-
ant, devoted himself to entomology and botany, especially the cryptogams,
wherein his microscopic discoveries were ahead of his time. Most important
was his determination of the algal nature of diatoms. For thirty years (1849-
79) he was in charge of the Ceylon botanical gardens at Peradenyia, publishing
an ' Enumeratic Plantarum Zeylaniae ' (1859-64) which won him his F.R.S.
He was also responsible for the successful cultivation of cinchona and other
economic plants in Ceylon from 1860 onwards.

2 Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff (1827-1906) was Under Secretary
of State for India 1868-74, and for the Colonies 1880-1, when he was appointed
Governor of Madras 1881-6. His series of Diaries contain many literary,
personal,- and political reminiscences.

3 The eighth Duke of Argyll (1823-1900) was a vigorous Liberal politician
and capable administrator who ultimately broke with his party over the Irish
question. Between 1868 and 1874 he was Secretary of State for India. From
his earliest days he was interested in science, especially geology, in which he
did some original work ; but his chief activity was as a polemical upholder of
ideas left stranded by the progress of science.

360 THE EETURN FROM INDIA

labour saw the completion of the Flora of British India. This,
he notes with regret, was conceived on a more restricted scale.
It ran to seven volumes, published between 1872-97, contain-
ing but 6000 pages of letterpress dealing with 16,000 species.
In the preface Hooker describes it as a pioneer work, and
necessarily incomplete. But he hopes it may

help the phytographer~,to discuss problems of distribution
of plants from the point of view of what is perhaps the
richest, and is certainly the most varied botanical area on
the surface of the globe.

To complete the history of his systematic work on Indian
Botany, let me quote from Professor Bower.

Scarcely was this great work ended when Dr. Trimen
died. He left the Ceylon Flora, on which he had been
engaged, incomplete. Three volumes were already pub-
lished, but the fourth was far from finished, and the fifth
hardly touched. The Ceylon Government applied to
Hooker, and though he was now eighty years of age, he
responded to the call. The completing volumes were issued
in 1898 and 1900. This was no mere raking over afresh the
materials worked already into the Indian Flora. For Ceylon
includes a strong Malayan element in its vegetation. It
has, moreover, a very large number of endemic species, and
even genera. This last floristic work of Sir Joseph may be
held fitly to round off his treatment of the Indian Peninsula.
His last contribution to its botany was in the form of a
' Sketch of the Vegetation of the Indian Empire,' including
Ceylon, Burma, and the Malay Peninsula. It was written
for the Imperial Gazetteer, at the request of the Government
of India. No one could have been so well qualified for this
as the veteran who had spent more than half a century in
preparation for it. It was published in 1904, and forms
the natural close to the most remarkable study of a vast
and varied Flora that has ever been carried through by one
ruling mind.

Such was the main channel of the enterprise ; but the
work overflowed into many subsidiary channels. Witness
Hooker's numerous contributions on Indian subjects at this

BUKDEN OF INDIAN COLLECTIONS 361

period to the ' Icones Plant arum ' (Sir William's series of
illustrations of remarkable and interesting plants), the ' Kew
Journal of Botany,' the Gardeners' Chronicle, and the * Pro-
ceedings of the Linnean Society,' two of these monographs
being written in collaboration with Thomson.1

The work finally involved the arranging and identification
of their vast number of specimens so that the duplicates might
be distributed among other public and private collections.
The heavy burden of this task finds a constant echo in the
letters of these years, the more so as it was suddenly doubled.
For, to quote the obituary in the Kew Bulletin :

Before this work had been completed the Indian collec-
tions of Falconer, Griffith, and Heifer, made over to Kew
from the cellars of the East India House, had to be dealt
with in the same manner. The latter task had not been
completed when Thomson departed, but another smaller
though very important one was successfully accomplished.
Besides the three collections mentioned, the residuum of the
Indian Herbarium distributed by Wallich on behalf of the
Honourable East India Company was also entrusted to Kew.
The distribution of this great collection took place between
1828 and 1832 ; there was consequently no set of its plants
at Kew. In this Kew did not stand alone ; the herbarium
attached to the Eoyal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, at whose
cost and for whose benefit the collection had been brought
together, was in like case. By a happy chance the friends
were thus enabled to fill more or less satisfactorily a great
hiatus in the herbaria of both gardens ; a set, fairly complete,
so far at least as the plants collected by Wallich himself are
concerned, was made up and laid into the herbarium at Kew,
while a similar set was taken to Calcutta by Thomson (who
now succeeded to the Superintendentship there).

Thus in April 1857 Bentham is told,

I am still struggling on with the general arrangement of
the Herb. Ind. roughly into species and have only got down
to Monopetalae. The number of sheets and specimens is
frightful. I toil on and to little effect.

1 See list of works, Appendix B.

362 THE BETUKN FKOM INDIA

In May 1858 he complains to Harvey of being appallingly
behindhand with his work, and in June adds :

I am working now extremely hard at these Indian collec-
tions, of which I am utterly sick. I expect another year will
see them all arranged and incorporated in Herb. — and then
comes describing.

In August, three weeks' enforced absence from the work had
been such a gnawing anxiety that he could not think of pro-
longing it, since, there being no means of warming the distri-
buting room, it was imperative to make an end before winter,
lest it should drag on and cumber all the next year. By
mid-November he came to the end of all he could do that
year, namely 160,000 ticketed species. * As for myself,' he
tells Bentham, * I am in statu quo, but considerably thinner,
I am told.'

This was one heavy item. Then there was the Tasmanian
Flora. ' I find it tremendous work,' and again (Aug. 8, 1859),

this luckless Essay of mine has broken my back. I had no
idea of the mass of material I had accumulated for it, or the
time it would take to digest it ; it is not half printed, and if
I leave it in the present state for 2 months, it will take me
many days to begin again, if indeed I ever could work
myself up to completing it after such a break. I am daily
working every spare moment at it, and have still several
sheets to print and some to rewrite from the rough.

Then he was planning out the Genera Plantarum with
Bentham, ' which I am deeply pondering.' His father's
illness and prolonged absence in the summer of 1859 threw
on his shoulders an accumulation of correspondence and all
the work in the Garden, with the added responsibilities of
looking after the erection of the large new Conservatory. Yet
when his father did return for a few days there was no relief,
for

he now likes to consult me about everything he does, so that
when he was here I had literally more to do than when he
was away !

< THE HIMALAYAN JOUENALS ' PUBLISHED 363

As a last touch, he was out of his old house and not yet in his
new one, where the workmen were in possession. Much of this
labour he had foreseen, but he had not foreseen its cumulative
effect. Accordingly (August 8, 1859) :

I write till my 'fingers ache, tramp the Gardens and grounds
till I am foot-sore, and go to bed at night to ruminate on the
little I have done in the day. My wife presses me to go and
join you, but with such a prospect before me I feel it would be
folly or something worse, and the ' Genera,' which I am
anxious to begin as soon as the V.D.L. Flora is off hands,
would then be indefinitely postponed.

Staying alone all the summer at his father's house, for he
had sent his wife and children to the Henslows', he reluctantly
gave up the holiday he had planned to take with Bentham.

Meantime the ' Himalayan Journals ; or, Notes of a
Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the
Khasia Mountains, &c.,' were published in 1854. These two
volumes, containing together more than 900 pages of incident
and adventure, as well as picturesque description and the
most varied scientific notes, were * dedicated to Charles Darwin
by his affectionate friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker.'

The first edition met with instant success. A second,
slightly abridged, followed in the next year with less good
fortune. In 1891 a one volume edition was brought out in
the Minerva Library, and was reissued in 1905.

The Journals ensured their author the highest reputation
as a scientific traveller. The permanent results drawn from
observations in so many branches of science have already
been noted. His own view of it appears from a letter of thanks
to Berkeley.

I am greatly delighted with your hearty praise of my
book. I did really take so much pains with it, and have for
so many years looked forward to the publication of such a
book, that I keenly appreciate the favourable notice taken of
it by my friends and the public. To write a book of the
sort, after travels of the sort, has been the pole-star of my
life from earliest childhood, and now that it is really all over

364 THE EETUEN FKOM INDIA

and out I feel the great climacteric passed, and look back
upon life after the fashion that people are described as doing
after marriage, or the birth of their first child at latest,but as I
do not after either of these occasions. I am greatly pleased
for my wife's sake too, who took infinite pains with it, and
but for whom it would have been a very differently rated
book I fear.

Nevertheless, working out results in so many other directions
proved a heavy distraction from his prime task in Botany,
and he exclaims to Bentham :

Catch me at Quizzical Geography, Geology, and Meteorology
again if you can ; they have afforded me much amusement
and instruction and wonderful pleasure ; for I have always
felt a keen pleasure in practical philosophy, tools and tables
of logarithms, and now that I have said my say and added
my quota to the heap, I think the wisest thing I can do is
to leave it for work that is more expected of me.1

The one fly in the ointment was the extreme parsimony
of the East India Company :

I have had a fight with them [he tells Bentham in August
1855] about discount upon the Himalayan book ; which
would have left me out of pocket £30 by the copies they did
me the honour of subscribing for, and I pitched them a letter
that they could not say no to, telling them that they did not
behave so in another case to which they were subscribing
(Gould), and they were the only subscribers I had, public
or private, who asked for 15 per cent, discount on their
subscription. So much for my growls.

A variety of other occupations helped to fill up these years.
Preparations for the Great Exhibition of 1851 were well afoot
by the time of his return to England. His services were
immediately secured as a Juror in the Botanical section and

1 For this practical turn compare his description (to Berkeley the micro-
scopist, 1854) of the Microscopical Society Soiree, ' where nothing short of a
double-barrelled, revolving, etc., etc., instrument is thought worth notice.
I saw some astonishingly pretty things, but the whole view is too kaleidoscopic
for me. I never feel satisfied as to what I see if I have not poked at it pre-
viously with my own fingers.'

A JUROR AT THE GREAT EXHIBITION 865

as editor of the reports, to see the whole series through the
press, ' which is a great bore in some cases and very easy in
others ; there will be 1600 pages of it.*

This employment involved the tedious journey from Kew to
town three or four times a week. His ' Report on Substances
used as Pood ' was duly printed among the other reports that
year ; it was followed next year by his and Lindley's ' Report
of an Enquiry into the best mode of detecting Vegetable Sub-
stances mixed with Coffee for the purposes of Adulteration.'

His own work as a Juror was honorary ; for his work as
editor of the reports he received remuneration, a grateful
increase to his precarious income, albeit the time expended
on the work ran to eight months instead of three, as proposed.
As he writes to Bentham in July 1852, apropos of * working
very hard now at New Zealand Flora, the Garden and my
Indian Journal ! '

Chicory versus Coffee report is gone in — Parsnips, Mangel
wurzel, Beans, Acorns, Tan ! etc., come next. I like the
work, but that is the worst of me, I like anything for a change,
and believe I should take to any pursuit with avidity (except
drink and Wordsworth) that was put on me.

CHAPTEE XIX

BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PROSPECTS IN THE FIFTIES

HOOKER had long been conscious that something was wrong
with the state of botanical science, in England especially.
Physiology applied to plant life, as to animal life, was making
fruitful discoveries. But systematic botany had almost ex-
hausted the Linnsean and post-Linnaean impulse. The more
nearly the Natural System of Classification initiated by De
Jussieu and elaborated by De Candolle completed the catalogu-
ing and classifying work along established lines, which seemed
to be its sole remaining function, the more nearly it reached
a sterile completeness. Schleiden in 1842 saw that Botany
as an Inductive science must rest upon research into develop-
ment and embryology. But these morphological studies
with their comparison of structures which pointed to living
lines of natural affinity, stood apart from systematic botany
as a separate discipline. Though material was thus being
laid up for a theory of descent, the doctrine of origins was
still bound up with the traditional cosmogony. Eesearch was
cramped by the heavy hand of fundamental theory. It led
seemingly to no promised land of science ; no new vivifying
principle which should reveal the clue to those perplexing
problems in the affinities and distribution of plants, to which
no rational and satisfactory answer was forthcoming on the
old lines.

The search for novelties loomed too large ; in the absence
of good organisation between botanists, mere species-mongering
had led to unspeakable confusion and overlapping. Observers

366

SPECIES-MONGERING 367

had given different names to the same plant in different regions ;
their unco-ordinated observations tended to obscurity rather
than light.

What is to become of specific Botany I cannot think. I
have only last week found out that the little Ehododendron
anthopogon described by Don, Wallich, Eoyle, Lindley,
Hooker and three times by Hooker-fil. is the very old
Osmanthus pallidus — absolutely identical — not a variety
even ! I also took up the Indian Vaccinia and found that
out of 16 species figured in Wight's 1 Icones no less than 9
were bad and old !

Man had not found what nature indeed had denied, a
common standard for differentiation between species, varieties,
transitional forms ; nor an independent basis for that ab-
straction, the specific type, so useful as a label, so dangerous
as a determinant. The very name conjures up the ancient
logical battle between Nominalists and Realists ; and the
latter day Eealists, perhaps unconscious of their intellectual
affinities, were in the ascendant, upholding the existence of
such types, the living approximations to which constituted
species.

Full realisation of this state of things could only come
through knowledge at once profound and far reaching such
as Hooker's/ uniting as it did the close personal study of
entire floras and of the literature that dealt with them, repre-
senting every kind of region from the Poles to the tropics —
the Antarctic, New Zealand, Australia, India, the Galapagos
Islands, Aden, and the Niger, besides the botany of certain
Arctic voyages, and much of Ceylon and the Cape. Only
such intimate knowledge, ranging over the widest areas, could

1 Robert Wight (1796-1872), M.D., of Edinburgh, entered the E.I.C.
service and became a leading Indian botanist. He was early in touch with
Sir W. Hooker, in whose botanical periodicals he began to publish his material
when on furlough after 1831. At the same time he published with Arnott one
vol. of his Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indiae Orientalis. His later work in
India included inquiry into the cultivation of useful plants and the charge of
an experimental cotton farm, while at considerable loss to himself he published
his Illustrations of Indian Botany with coloured, and Icones Plantarum Indiae
Orientalis with uncoloured plates, numbering over 2000.

368 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PROSPECTS

absorb and transcend the results of observation over lesser
areas, with their comparatively clear demarcation of species.
From such broad surveys came the gradual conviction that
systematic b6tany was at once too artificial and too sectional to
represent truly its professed ideal of natural grouping, being
rigid and definite where nature proved to be plastic and variable.
Only after dealing with thousands of specimens in the collec-
tions which passed under his scrutiny could he exclaim * more
specimens always break down characters/ i.e. destroy the
rigidity of botanical definition and extend the fringe of in-
dividual variability. It began to grow clear that over a
sufficiently large range every variety might exist between
two allied species, and that where these intermediate forms
had not chanced to be exterminated so as to leave the extreme
forms in isolated contrast, it was impossible to lay down where
the one ' species ' ended and the other began.

But this upset the doctrines everywhere taught. Hooker,
realising as no other botanist the difficulties involved and their
reaction upon his science, divined in them one secret of the
ineffectiveness he deplored in systematic botany. System,
he saw, broke down at its widest extension. Unknown to
its expositors, it had become formalised and abstract ; it
awaited a new interpretation to revive its powers.

Meantime, the same abstract formalism had invaded the
lecture-rooms. All that could* be done for the regeneration
of botany was to improve the teaching of it, first, as has been
seen, by setting examination papers which demanded a training
not in simple memory, but in thought and observation ; then
by aiding in the preparation of the right kind of books for
students and the right kind of lectures, in new organisation
at the Universities and in the publications of the learned
societies. His hopes take shape in a letter written to Huxley
in the earlier part of 1856 :

My own impression is that we shall make no great advance
in teaching Nat. Science in this country, except by some
joint effort of Botanists and Zoologists who should pave the
way by propounding a strictly scientific elementary system,
— were this once effected we have sufficient command

NEED OF OKGANJSED TEACHING 369

over the public, as examiners in London, and as confi-
dential advisers of examiners and professors elsewhere, to
ensure the cordial reception of such a system. What with
Henslow's Botanical School diagrams now in progress and
Museum Types we have made a fair start, and if you do
not occupy the field in Zoology some pitiful botcher or
other will.

I am very glad that we shall meet at Darwin's. I wish
that we could there discuss some plan that would bring
about more unity in our efforts to advance Science. As I
get more and more engrossed at Kew I feel the want of
association with my brother Naturalists, — especially of such
men as yourself, Busk,1 Henfrey,2 Carpenter,3 and Darwin, —
we never meet except by pure accident and seldom then as
Naturalists, and if we want to introduce a mutual friend
it is only by a cut and thrust into one another's business
hours — it is the same thing with our publications ; they
are sown broadcast over the barren acres of Journals and
other periodicals which none of us can afford to buy and
then weed : if either the Linnean or Koyal could be made
to stand in the same relation to Nat. Historians that the
Geological does to Geologists [&c.] great good would accrue,

1 George Busk (1807-86) studied at the College of Surgeons and entered
the naval medical service in 1832, leaving it in 1855 for purely scientific pur-
suits, chiefly microscopic work on the Bryozoa, and later, palseontological
osteology. He became F.R.C.S. in 1843 and President in 1871, as well as
serving on its board of examiners. For twenty-five years also he was examiner
in physiology and anatomy for the Indian army and navy medical services.
He did much public work as Treasurer of the Royal Institution, Hunterian
Professor and Trustee, and Fellow of the Linnean, Koyal, Geological, and Zoo-
logical Societies, receiving the Royal and Wollaston Medals, and was President
of the Microscopical and Anthropological Societies, and edited various scientific
journals. A close personal friend of both Hooker and Huxley, he was one of
the nine friends who made up the X Club.

* Arthur Henfrey (1819-59) succeeded Edward Forbes in the botanical
chair at King's College in 1853. His original writings, translations and
editorial work did much for education and physiological botany.

3 William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-85) was ' one of the last examples
of an almost universal naturalist,' especially in the direction of marine zoology
and deep sea exploration. His most notable work was in Physiology, his
Principles of General and Comparative Physiology (1839) being the first English
book containing adequate conceptions of a science of biology. His Principles
of Mental Physiology takes first place among his researches into the relations
between mind and body, including suggestion and the unconscious activity of
the brain. He came to London in 1844, when he was elected F.R.S. and held
various chairs of Physiology, and was Examiner in Physiology and Comparative
Anatomy at the University of London, until elected Registrar, 1856-79.

370 BOTANY: ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS

but without some recognised place of resort that will fulfil
the conditions of being a rendezvous for ourselves, an in-
citement to our friends to take an interest in Nat. Hist.,
and at the same time a profitable intellectual resort, — we
shall be always ignorant of one another's whereabouts and
writings. (The above is not English grammar but never
mind that.)

The convivial plan was tried in the Bed Lions * and has
signally failed, as will any other that has no other aim but
personal gratification of a kind that can but be got by
dropping Science altogether, and admitting the rag-tag and
bobtail of Literature and the Arts together with the dregs
of Scientific Society. We want some place where we never
should be disappointed of finding something worth going
out for. A good Society well stocked with periodicals etc.
answers these conditions and I wish we had one.
i: Ever your bore,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

From the moment of his return from India the outlook
was depressing. ' Botany/ he exclaims to Bentham early
in 1852,

Botany is going down rapidly it appears to me ; the
Botanists die and take their mantles with them. Eeeve
[the publisher] talks seriously, almost positively, of giving
up Bot. Magazine and Journal (Icones of course) ; 2 he hangs
fire with my New Zealand Flora. I don't find one single
Botanist started up since I went abroad ; many are dead.
Something it appears to me may be done by a combined
movement in the Universities ; is it a time ?

It was little better in December 1856, when he writes to
Harvey apropos of his reluctance to apply to the Eoyal Society
for part of the Government grant in order to publish his re-
searches, for being his own lithographer he would appear to
seek pay for his own handiwork :

1 The Red Lion Club, presumably taking its name from Red Lion Court,
the depot of the British Association, was a dining club founded in 1839 which
met during the British Association Meetings. A frequently schoolboyish jollity
with no further aim or result made no appeal to Hooker.

* Sir W. J. Hooker's periodicals.

VALUE OF * PRECUESOKES ' 371

Botany is all going dogward through the desultory doings
of its votaries. I have been for four years past much mixed
up with Physical Science men, and have found much to
admire in their way of doing business. They let no oppor-
tunity slip of getting all they can for the furtherance of
their publications and observations, whilst Botanists stand
by and depreciate their own efforts and studies. I wish I
could get you here for six weeks and join in a general effort
to lift Botany up in the scale of appreciated sciences.

And a month later he meets Harvey's reluctance to pub-
lish preliminary sketches in advance of the magnum opus
on which he was engaged — Precursores to the first Orders
of the Cape Flora, like 'Hooker's Precursores ad Floram
Indicam :

We differ (you and I) toto coelo as to what we think
good and bad. I suppose from your calling such diagnostic
Praecursores of Cape Genera as I proposed your publishing
' fushionless stuff,' I am to take that as your verdict on the
Praecursores ad Floram Indicam ! ! Now I daresay you
are right as to the way in which the Praecursores are done,
but I hold that such work, if properly done, is about the most
valuable that can be contributed to Bot. Science. What
the deuce do you call useful work, if accurate descriptions
of the genera and species of very little known large tracts
of the Earth's surface are not so ? So * fire away, Flanagan/
as your illustrious countryman Lever has it.

January 10, 1857.

DEAR HARVEY, — I assure you I was only in joke in
pretending that you intended to snub the Praecursores,
though I do assure you that they are not so good as you
take them for : the complication of systematic Botany is
so great that I make many important omissions, and I must
say I am heartily glad that I am prefacing the Flora Indica
(if it is ever to appear) with these less assuming attempts.
Plenty of people point out omissions in such contributions
who fear to plunge into a detailed work, or if they do to
criticise its assumed learning.

On the other hand do you not undervalue t|ie amount
and kind of systematic Botany that you have to dispense ?

372 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS

You think that Praecursores of the first Orders of the Cape
Flora would not be valuable, because of the little novelty,
but I think you have the old error of preferring novelty to
anything else. Where for instance can I go for a tolerably
accurate notion of Cape species of Banunculaceae ? It will
be a greater novelty to me to find in your Flora 3 Anemones
reduced to 2, than to find them raised to 4, and in my idea
it is a far more valuable fact, for reducing a bad species is
far better than making a new. What I regret is to see so
much good sound common Bot. information carried to the
grave by the holders, because being insensibly acquired its
real value is overlooked by them. I had the same difficulty
in getting Thomson to supply sketches of the Tibetan and
N.W. Floras for an Intro d. Essay — he could quite see the
value of my doing it — for the Sikkim Flora ! So it is with
the distribution of Southern Algae, and I do believe that I
should do more good to Science by inducing you to give us
a good unlabored essay on this subject than by attempting
higher things myself or urging you to do so. Botany goes
to the dogs from the prevalence of this mauvaise honte
and false pride.

You are certainly far too hard worked, and I do long to
see the end of some of your great labors. You should never
work beyond 11 J P.M., and you should not poison yourself I l
The expense of that would be well reimbursed in otherwise
employing your time. I think you should still lay out for
gluer, and catalogue yourself, as these are very improving
operations and easy ones on the whole, not demanding too
much brain work or sedentary employment. With Wife's
love, Ever your affect.

J. D. HOOKER.

Excuse this scrawl. Tim [the pet cat] bothered me most
of the time.

In short, as he adds on October 23 :

The besetting sin of the Botanists of the day is the
craving for perfect materials ; forgetful that these Sciences
are all progressive, and our efforts but steps in the pro-
gression.

V

1 I.e. himself apply insect-destroyer to his herbarium.

IDEAS TO BE PUBLISHED 373

Another letter to Harvey (February 3, 1857) strongly
repeats this appeal against the natural depreciation of his
own familiar store of knowledge, and insists on man's duty
of giving his formed ideas to the world.

I am quite prepared for what you say of your work, it
was always my case on first venturing, nevertheless you
have done a great deal already and will soon fall into the
way of it. A few steady weeks at Systematic Botany in
the Herb, wondrously renovates and reinvigorates one I
find, and when weary of desultory head work, I find the
Herb, a great relief.

As to your publications I would urge you to think now
of putting together some of your ideas and facts on wider
branches than purely descriptive. I think that this becomes
a duty after a certain time of life with those who keep
such subjects before them — too much of -our dear bought
experience dies with us, and the pursuit of careful descriptive
Botany rather renders us too timid about striking out into
generalities that are the product of years of insensibly gained
ideas. I express myself abominably and write as I think,
but I am myself urged on all hands to treat some branches
of Botany in a larger manner, and as soon as I have completed
my rough lists of Indian and of Australian plants I intend
to make them the data on which to establish some attempts
to estimate accurately the relations of numbers of genera
and species in given areas with climate and elevation, the
relations numerical of genera to orders, of number of species
in globe, etc., etc., in short to bring to book upon absolute
data (tolerable as far as they go) certain principles now
vaguely enunciated on no fixed data at all. This you could
do for Southern Algae and connect their migration with
ocean currents and temp, of Ocean, not in detail, nor upon
exact data, but upon fair data, and be they good or bad you
are the only one capable of doing it, and it will take any other
man many years to come up to your capability and oppor-
tunity. Heaven knows I dread my. subject and feel enough
my own incompetence, but the work wants doing, nobody
else has the opportunity, and it is in my position of life as
clearly my duty as any moral obligation can well be. Others
can and will work up species, and I have no right to withhold

VOL. I 2B

374 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS

the result of my personal experience in generalising on these
subjects and in handling them so long as I think myself
and am assured by my fellow Botanists that the attempt
on my part is called for. These, however, are not matters
for a week or a month ; but shape a course towards them
and you will find a wonderful mental relief follow, when
distracted with * choses a faire.'

Thus amid the fluctuations and discouragements of the
outlook for pure Botany, Hooker found that to take stock
of his ideas and marshal them in the Introductory Essays to
the Flora of New Zealand and the Flora Indica was a re-
invigorating process. The synthesis meant new force, new
interest. To Bentham, who was in Paris for the Exhibition,
he writes in July 1855 :

The Flora Indica Introd. Essay is going ahead. Henfrey
is shot and proposes altering his whole system of Botanical
instruction at King's College ! my chers confreres the
geologists shrug their shoulders and do not half like it, and
H. Watson is going to review it in the Phytologist.

I shall be amused to hear what they say of the Introd.
Essay in Paris, mind you tell me. I have frightened them
here out of their wits, and some of them thank me for the
presentation copy with a frigidity that delights me. Hither-
to Botany has been dull work to me, little pay ; no quarrels ;
an utter disbelief in the stability of my own genera and
species ; no startling discoveries ; no grand principles
evolved, and so I have a sort of wicked satisfaction in seeing
the fuse burn that is I hope to spring a mine under the feet of
my chers confreres, and though I expect a precious kick from
the recoil and to get my face blackened too, I cannot help
finding my little pleasure in the meanwhile.

Before long, however, a better era for Botany seemed at
hand ; a more cheerful strain is apparent in a note to Henslow
(January 6, 1856) apropos of his son George's career :

Keep him to Botany if you can, but not to the exclusion
of other scientific pursuits, drawing, &c. I am well sure
that there will be openings and good ones for accomplished
Botanists ere long, and I cannot fancy a more agreeable,

PLUKALITIES WITHOUT SINECUBES 375

fairly profitable and useful life than that of a scientific man
who is really attached to his pursuits.

The same note is sounded in correspondence with Harvey,
who, a month before (October 1856), had returned from his
three years' cruise in the Indian Ocean and Australia, and
had been elected to the chair of Botany in Dublin l :

[Nov. 1856.] You know that I am not a sanguine man,
and yet I can see that you have in yourself, with an unem-
barrassed life, abundant resources for a fair income, and I
am sure that you have resources in your collections and
previous career for continuing the life of a pure man of
science, with honor and profit to yourself and to the lasting
benefit of science. I would much rather see you the Curator
of Trin. Coll. Herb, on £100 and free of all Lectureships
whatever than hampered with even the Botanical.

The serious matter was that to the Botanical chair at
Dublin various duties had Jbeen attached, seemingly ' pluralities
without sinecures,' as Hooker defined them, and especially
the duty of lecturing on Natural History at large, for was not
Botany a part of Natural History ? Hooker, backed by his
father, strongly urged the inexpediency of taking up a Zoo-
logical Professorship in any shape at all, joint or disjoint :

[Nov. 25, 1856.] I cannot say that I at all stomach your
Zoological lectures and duties, not from any aversion to
Zoology or to your joint Professorship, so much as because
it will involve all sorts of other minor and major zoological
inroads upon your time. You talk of lecturing on Inverte-
brata as if they were nothing ; do just read Huxley's lectures
in the Medical Times ; they are admirable, though in saying
so I feel like the old Scotch wife who said, ' Ae, it was a grand
discourse, I couldna understand the ane half of it.' By
Jove, the whole science seems to be so changed to what I
learned, and the literature of any one such small Order as
Annelida or Bhizopod or Cestoid worm ! so overwhelming,
and the new facts so revolutionary, that I cannot fancy any

1 See p. 400.

376 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PBOSPECTS

but adepts mastering the Invert ebrata. Of course you can
give an elementary course on these things such as they were,
but so much science and philosophy is now expected from a
professor, that I would rather you could confine yourself to
Botany.

Embodying his friend's arguments in a letter to the
authorities Harvey obtained relief from this anomaly, and
was able, as Hooker put it, to settle down to a quiet Botani-
philus' life. The letter of November 25 continues :

You ought now to take the highest position in Bot. Science
and regard the aspiration thereto as your destiny. You
are loaded with honey and your calling is science, and you
and I should have no thought but to make ourselves useful
to Science, without fear of personal failure. The less we think
of ourselves the better so long as we are no burthens to our
neighbours. Bentham's unselfish love of science always
charms me, he has never a thought of personal aggrandise-
ment in money or honor ; but indeed we have both of us
lived under the highest examples and happiest influences in
these respects. My Father, Bentham, and Thomson are such
a trio as we shall never see again. Except Faraday and
Darwin I know of no others in the walks of science so pure
and disinterested, except perhaps Asa Gray in America. I
am getting prosy, however.

More than once during this period the necessity of lecturing
nearly fell upon Hooker. In 1851 it was proposed to appoint
a Professor of Botany to Kew, to lecture in London, and Prince
Albert suggested him for the post. But such a proposal did
not fit with the real position of Kew or of its Director. Hooker,
being * pumped,' answered frankly that work on his Indian
and Southern collections would put lecturing out of the question
for himself ; that making such an appointment to an estab-
lishment having neither Library, Herbarium, Secretary, nor
Museum-keeper was putting the cart before the horse ; and
indeed, so long as his father was supporting the establishment
in these points out of his private purse or energy, appearances
must be deceptive. Bather call in the services of good outside
lecturers.

LECTURING PROPOSALS 377

In 1855 a fresh lecturing scheme was suggested in con-
nection with Hooker's appointment as Assistant at Kew.
Kew ought to justify its scientific endowment by giving the
public of its science as well as its pleasure walks. At the
cost of his personal inclinations, Hooker was ready to help
the development of Kew by focussing public opinion on its
national character ; but the official world would have none
of it.

Similarly he tells Bentham (January 1854) :

The Royal Institution are pressing me very hard indeed to
lecture for them. I refused on the grounds that it was wholly
incompatible with my duty to Govt., whereupon Faraday
writes offering to go to Ld. J. Russell 1 and get me the Govt.
sanction. I have refused definitely again, and added that
were any application made to Lord J. it would be to appoint
an assistant to my Father. The offers were most kind and
flattering and too pressing — it is always excessively disagree-
able to refuse such invitations, however little inclined one
may be to accept.

It was at least the fact that if lecturing in London exacted
too heavy a toll from the Director's working time at Kew,
Kew was too far from town for a London audience. The only
stimulus to public interest that followed was the opening of
the Gardens in 1857 on Sunday afternoons as well as week-
days. He tells Bentham on June 1 :

My Father remonstrated and my Mother is in a sad way
about it, as you may suppose. For my own part I had no
wish for it and on private grounds oppose it, as probably
disturbing the only quiet day I get in the week ; but on the
other hand I consider it a wise and beneficial measure in a
public point of view, and therefore feel that I have no right
to complain.

The consolidation of the scientific side of the Gardens took
a long step in advance when Bentham in 1854 presented to
the nation his great herbarium and library, valued in cash

1 At that time President of the Council.

378 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PROSPECTS

at £6000. * Bentham, moreover, left Pontrilas and settled
first at Kew and later in London ; saw to the final arrange-
ments of his herbarium, and continued his own botanical
work, more especially the monumental Genera Plantarum
in collaboration with Hooker.

This accession both weighted the scales in favour of Kew
as against the other and in many ways less suitable centre
of botany at the British Museum, and offered a new factor in
the problem of the ultimate destination of the Hooker collec-
tion. As to the status of the Herbarium he tells Harvey
(January 21, 1857) :

We have no funds for buying plants ; my Father pays
himself for all appertaining to the Herbm. as of yore, and
calls it his own. We should hardly dare to ask for money to
buy Cryptogams, as the Herbm. is upheld ostensibly for the
naming of the Garden plants, and we are not yet in a con-
dition to throw down the gauntlet to the British Museum.
We have just drawn up the Garden Report and pitched it
very strong about the uses of the Herbarium as a scientific
adjunct to the Gardens.

With the death of Robert Brown in 1858 the question
came to a head. Ten years before, the Parliamentary Com-
mission had determined that on Brown's death they would
abolish the Botanical Department ; and, Hooker confesses,
' every reason for doing so then is redoubled in force since,

1 In the Memoir of his father, p. Ixxx, J. D. H. writes : * This was second
to my father's alone in England in extent, methodical arrangement, and
nomenclature, and was placed in the same building. Its formation was begun
in 1816, in France, where and in the Pyrenees Mr. Bentham collected diligently ;
but its great expansion by the inclusion of exotic plants dated from his intro-
duction to my father in Glasgow in 1823, when the friendship between the
two commenced which remained undisturbed for forty-two years. From
that date the two botanists may be said to have hunted in couples for the
aggrandisement of their libraries end collections, sharing their duplicates,
Mr. Bentham giving my father the preference in all cases of purchase, &c.
The one great difference between their aims was, that the former confined his
herbarium to flowering plants, whilst my father's rapidly grew to be the
richest in the world in both flowering and flowerless plants. The offer of
this gift was prearranged with my father, who with his wonted disinterestedness
put aside the obvious fact, that its acceptance would greatly diminish the
value of his own herbarium and library, should the Government ever con-
template its purchase.'

BEITISH MUSEUM COLLECTIONS 379

and endless others added.' The Hookers were summoned
to meet the Trustees of the British Museum on the subject
of the Botanical collections coming to Kew.

Brown [he writes to Harvey] leaves everything to Bennett
except the fossils, which he gives to Brit. Mus. if they will
keep them with the plants ; if not they are to go to
Edinburgh. The Trustees will put Bennett in Brown's
place and keep their collections at B. M., but whether Govt.
will not insist on the Brit. Mus. N. Hist, collections being
turned out of the building is quite another question. My
idea is, that eventually all the Nat. Hist, will go to Kensington
Gore but the plants, which will come here.

That the collections should be moved from the dust and
grime of their cramped quarters at the British Museum was
certainly an excellent thing ; the zoologists wished the zoo-
logical specimens to go to a new museum in Eegent's Park,
close to the living animals in the Zoological Gardens ; the
botanists were agreed that the botanical collections should
be merged in the greater Kew collections, instead of main-
taining an independent existence. But Natural History
carried little weight in the House of Commons, and was very
slightly represented among the British Museum Trustees,
Geologists and Physicists especially having been appointed to
this body owing to official interest in the Jermyn Street Museum.
Thus in the eyes of working men of science there was great
danger ahead lest the collections should be handed over to the
charge of the non-scientific Science and Art Department, and
that at South Kensington science and the interests of research
should be subordinate to exhibition as a popular show.1

1 The surplus from the Great Exhibition of 1851, amounting to £213,000,
was invested by the Commissioners in land at South Kensington. Here a
Museum of Art was established, the nucleus of which consisted of exhibits
purchased by the Government. To these others were gradually added, such
as the collections from Marlborough House, the Sheepshanks collection, and
so forth. Tn natural sequence proposals followed for the transfer bodily to
the same centre of other institutions and museums that received Government
support, especially those connected with scientific instruction. For in 1853
the Science and Art Department was detached from the Board of Trade by
the amalgamation of several minor establishments with the School of Design,
under the Secretary of the latter and the indefatigable Henry Cole (afterwards
K.C.B.), himself the chief organiser of the Great Exhibition, and reorganisation

380 BOTANY: ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS

We know to-day how amply science, in the persons of the
late Sir William Flower and his successors, has fulfilled the
scientific mission of the Natural History collections at South
Kensington. The germ of this success lay in the movement
set afoot by Hooker and Huxley to amend and strengthen
the influentially signed memorial that laid the case for science
before the Prince Consort as head of the Kensington Committee.

The two friends joined forces on what Huxley called their
' permanent Committee of Public Safety ' to watch over what
, was being done. Huxley, who professed himself ' thoroughly
roused,' eagerly enlisted the support of the progressive
among the scientific and the scientifically inclined among
public men and editors of the Eeviews, and as for the atti-
tude of the Laodiceans in science he writes with cheery
defiance :

I don't think it is necessary to trouble one's head about
such opposition. It may be annoying and troublesome,
but if we are beaten by it we deserve to be. We shall have
to wade through oceans of trouble and abuse, but so long
as we gain our end I care not a whistle whether the sweet
voices of the scientific mob are for or against me.

A few passages from Hooker's letters may be quoted :

To T. H. Huxley, 1858

My present impression is that a compromise may prove
to be the best thing — anything to keep out of the K. Gore
people's clutches — and that if we could only satisfy our-
selves that the Nat. Hist, would certainly be moved we
should without delay apply for a building in the Eegent's
Park, near the Zoolog. Gardens, so arranged that vast
sufficient Galleries should be filled with enough Birds and
Beasts for the public to gape at daily, with parallel private
side galleries where Naturalists could daily work (and where

was the order of the day. Finally the Government ended its partnership
with the Exhibition commissioners, ?nd became sole owners of the Kensington
site.

A familar nickname for South Kensington and all its works sprang from
an interim iron building erected in 1855, unjustly supposed to be from Cole's
designs ; it was popularly known as the Bromptou Boilers, or shortly ' The
Boilers.'

BEITISH MUSEUM AND KEW 381

the public were never admitted) and where the specimens
would be arranged for work and not for show. . . . Prox-
imity to the Zoological Gardens and its live beasts and
birds is however, I fear, the only pretext that could be offered
for not accepting the K. Gore offer.

The real secret of our anxiety is, not that the separation
from Art at Gt. Eussell Street would be injurious, but that
we would lack support as a National Museum of Nat. Hist,
except we huddled our collections under the wing of art.
This gives our cause a bad look.

I do truly say that we at Kew do not want the Brit.
Mus. Herbarium here at any price ; it is no use to us, and
if it be the means of breaking up the Brit. Mus. Nat. Hist,
collections, or withdrawing support from them, I shall deeply
regret its coming here ; but as an honest man I must say
(with every working Botanist) that it is for the interests of
Botanical Science it should come here ; it would take 22
years and as many thousand pounds to make the B. M.
Herbarium anything like ours here, and there are no men
to do it. Besides which, a working herbarium cannot be
kept clean enough to work with in London ; it must, if
worked with, be exposed for hours daily to dust by great
portions at a time.

So far as the Bot. Department is concerned the Trustees
are in an awful fix, and my opinion being clearly that they
should clean, poison, and stop adding to the Banksian Herb,
and the Govt. should take my Father's as the National Herb.,
keep the plants at Kew and increase it so as to keep it as
far ahead of all others as it now is, I am far too deeply
personally interested in the matter to take any prominent
part with decorum.

I am further for having at the British Museum a Botanical
collection, illustrating Plant life such as Henslow could best
plan and develop, and for which perhaps our friend Lindley
or Henfrey would be a highly qualified keeper. It should
be as popular as Bentham suggests in every respect, but
also as scientific in its details and completeness as the most
profound vegetable Physiologist and Anatomist could wish.
This would cost little, be very instructive to the Public, and
useful to men of Science. It would be unique, there would
be nothing like it in the world. I had often planned such

382 BOTANY: ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS

a thing for Kew, but we are still young, and have far too
much to do to complete what we have on hand.

Were a Herbm. not necessary to Kew, I would say at
once let my Father's go to the B. M., but it is impossible
to work scientifically a garden of 20,000 to 30,000 species,
and name the hundreds of things sent to us to name, with-
out a first-rate Herbarium and Library here, as good as ever
the B. M. ought to be made. ' The seeds sent are often to be
known only by the accompanying dried specimens which
go into the Herbarium, and the latter becomes in a thousand
ways an indispensable adjunct to the Garden and reciprocally
(by being the depository of the plants once cultivated in
the Garden) an integral part of the establishment, and a
record of its progress and efforts, its successes and failures
as a horticultural establishment, all quite apart from its
scientific uses.

The offer of other botanical collections to Oxford and
Cambridge, neither of which was enthusiastic, had already
given opportunity for pushing the cause of science in the
older Universities, where it was still of small account. The
Fielding and Lemann collections were on offer, but there
were difficulties to be overcome. Thus * The Fielding Her-
barium,' 1 he writes to Harvey in January 1852, * is to be
offered to Oxford upon conditions of good keep, accessibility
and extension : terms which I think Oxford won't agree to.'
Moreover the question of extra-mural Trustees and their duty
after the collections had been accepted was a thorny one,
alike to Sir W. Hooker, who had been nominated, and to the
University as legatee.

I cannot help thinking [he writes to Bentham, Feb. 5, 1852]
that these Legacies may be the means of instilling new life
into the Universities; the conditions being reasonable. A
proper representation backed perhaps by P. A. [Prince Albert]
as Chancellor, with the offer of such a Herb, as Fielding's
or Lemann's, should do wonders, especially as, in future, a

1 Henry Borron Fielding, a country gentleman whose health prevented
him from taking any active share in scientific life, devoted himself to botany.
He purchased Dr. Steudel's herbarium in 1836 and the Prescott collection in
1837, bequeathing his entire herbarium and many books to Oxford on his
death in 1851.

BOTANY AT OXFOKD AND CAMBKIDGE 383

Botanical Fellowship or two might be insisted upon, from
whom the Professors should be chosen. Booms and £50
a year should do a great deal for a Herbarium, supposing
it to have the superintendence and zealous curatorship of
a working Professor, such as Henslow would have made
before he got his Father's living, or as Berkeley might now.

Though there was at first no very reassuring answer from
friends in either University, affairs straightened themselves
out. By March 16 Henslow is told that

Oxford is inclined to behave much more handsomely than
we anticipated, offers £1000 for a building, £50 and a good
suite of rooms for a keeper, and £25 for annual increase —
constant accessibility to the public without a Master of Arts
or any other drawback.

On Bentham's advice Mrs. Fielding withdrew some of
her conditions ; the gift was accepted, and before long a
curator was found in the person of Maxwell Masters,1 of whom
Hooker wrote to Harvey :

We are hunting for a curator for Hb. Fielding. I hope
young Masters will get it, a fine lad setat. 20 who has just
finished a most distinguished medical education at King's
College and took medals galore — is son of Masters, nursery-
man at Canterbury, and early passionately attached to
&c., &c., &c., &c., &c., &c. It is only £50 and two rooms
at present and worth no one's having but a scrub's, or a
man who will take zealously to science and trust to provi-
dence for a future competence as a Botanist. I have a great
idea that a good Botanist and good Herb, would advance
science greatly in the Univs. Daddy cannot see it somehow,
but I had Masters out to dinner yesterday and the old Gent,
takes to him — a mere scrub or half educated man would
lower the position of Botanical Science in the eyes of ignorant
bigoted Oxford (I hope I do not offend your High Church ears),

1 Maxwell Tylden Masters (1833-1907) was a pupil of Edward Forbes
and of Lindley at Bang's College, and Sub-Curator of the Fielding Herbarium.
After standing unsuccessfully against Henfrey for the Chair of Botany at King's
College in 1854, he took up general practice, but lectured on Botany at St.
George's Hospital and edited the Gardeners' Chronicle after Lindley's death
in 1865, besides writing many botanical monographs.

384 BOTANY: ITS POSITION AND PBOSPECTS

a well educated and passable Botanist would be tolerated for
his own sake, but a really zealous ditto, well educated else-
where, and commanding the v respect and esteem of men
of science in general, must I should say force a proper
appreciation of Botany in the University.

Similarly a personal conference between Hooker, Henslow,
Lemann 1 (who was preparing to break up his collections and
distribute the fragments where most wanted), and the Cam-
bridge authorities, established the other collection at the sister
University. As he tells Bentham, who arranged the Herbarium :

Henslow scouting the idea of valuing the species or
specimens because they were uniques has told well, and
proved to the Dons that such collections have other and a
higher value than old china. I must say they express them-
selves liberally and well.

1 Charles Morgan Lemann (1806-52), M.D. Camb. 1833, F.L.S. 1831,
F.R.C.P. 1836, collected in Madeira 1837-8 and at Gibraltar 1840-1, and pre-
sented his Herbarium of 30,000 specimens to Cambridge University. He wrote,
but did not publish, a Flora of Madeira. The genus Carlemannia was named
after him by Bentham.

CHAPTER XX

SCIENCE TEACHING I EXAMINATIONS

THOUGH neither lecturing nor teaching in person, Hooker
found a useful educational lever put into his hand by his
twelve years' examinership. In the autumn of 1854, thanks,
he presumed, to the influence of Sir James Clark,1 he was
appointed to examine in botany the candidates for the medical
service under E.I.C. He was already examiner to the Apothe-
caries Company, and writes of the special standard in the
papers set by him in a letter to Huxley.

I should certainly give a very different examination to the
E.I.C. candidates to that for Apothecaries' Company Medal.
The latter, you see, is competed for on Bot. grounds solely^ by
* all England,' and should be a right good tough affair in my
opinion, and very different from a Pass, or Matriculation Ex-
amination. It was not to be expected that you should have
answered half the questions. I did not expect one candidate to
answer 2/3 of them, but just see. There was only one question
that no one answered and that because misunderstood : and
three answered nearly all. I had 6 men, and by far the very
best men I ever tackled ; there was not one bad paper, and
the first three were excellent — the worst answered 2/3 of
the questions (better or worse). You may remark that I
did not put one catch-question, or one that did not involve
general principles. There was not a man amongst them

1 Sir James Clark (1788-1870) began as a naval surgeon, and after suc-
cessful private practice abroad and at home, became Physician in Ordinary to
Queen Victoria on her accession. He served on various Royal Commissions,
on the Senate of the London University and the General Medical Council.
Without adding much to science, he possessed considerable official influence.

385

386 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

that had not studied plants for himself. I had also
another object in my paper, which was the leading men
to study plants rather than books. Every one but Henslow
thinks my questions dreadful because nobody thinks of
them. You must also remember that they had 8 hours ;
and that my object was to give questions requiring
thought rather than memory. What does Busk say to
them?

Continuing the subject, he writes on September 12 :

Sir C. Wood l has written me a powerfully flattering letter,
asking me to accept the Examinership ! This is rather good
after my name has been battledored and shuttlecocked in
the medical papers for the best part of the month as I am
told, for I have not read them yet.

God knows there was no jobbery in my election. Of
course I graciously accept ; and of course I get thanks for
the same, from this pink of politeness who seems a regular
official Mantalini with his ' demnition sweetness.' What are
Busk's ideas on the subject of the examinations ? I have
long held that the Army, Navy, and E.I.C. examining good
passed men of the Koyal Colleges is a piece of the most con-
founded impertinence. As to the Navy Examination we
know what that was and I suppose is ; it has always appeared
to me that the said services should seek from the Colleges
men proved by them to be first-class in their profession, and
then let the Examiners of the services examine for accomplish-
ments and qualifications essential to shed lustre on the service
and improve it. I am going to talk over this subject with
Paget 2 to-morrow, but of course shall take no initiative and
am rather groping my way in utter ignorance than anything
else. The success of my Apoth. Co. examination has put new
ideas into my head, and convinces me that even in Botany
men at the examinations are rather to be expected to exert
their reasoning faculties than their powers of memory. If
we only reflect we shall see that the Oxford and Cambridge
honours papers, and even high class examination and pass

1 Sir Charles Wood (1800-85), created Viscount Halifax on his retirement
from public life in 1866, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord
John Russell from 1846-52, and in 1854 was President of the Board of Control
and from 1859 Secretary of State for India.

2 (Sir) James Paget. See ante, p. 25.

AKMY MEDICAL EXAMINATIONS 387

papers, are of their kind far better tests of the intellect
expended in the attainment of the subject than our Medical
Examinations are.

The outcome of his ideas on these examinations is summed
up in a subsequent letter to Sir C. Lyell :

October 26, 1869.

I was one of the four who, at the request of Sir C. Wood,
originated the system of competitive examinations for the
Medical Officers of the Indian Army, which produced most
extensive and important reforms- in the Medical Schools
(after they had abused us well for our pains !) ; the system
was extended thereafter to the British Army, and now to
the Navy, for twelve years I examined twice a year, in all
branches of Science ! I did not retire till I was appointed
Director here, when the fees of the Examiners were imme-
diately doubled ! — post hoc — I cannot say propter hoc.

It was a very arduous and poorly paid duty. Paget,
Busk, and Parkes 1 were my coadjutors.

For the next six years the letters contain constant refer-
ences to these examinations. They meant a bout of hard work
in January and July, with, say, 600 foolscap sheets to
look through as a first step. Experience showed the frequent
lack of good preliminary teaching and of any single system
of teaching. In 1855 we read of twenty-eight candidates for
thirty places, of whom six were ploughed, ' they were ex^
cessively badly taught, in Botany especially ' ; in 1857, forty-
three men for twenty-two places, again showing much ignor-
ance, while in 1858 the men are on the whole better. But he
was sometimes in despair over the answers given, and writes
to Harvey at Dublin, July 14, 1859 :

I am examining at India House and ask a man what the
value of Duramen is in contrast to Alburnum, and he answers
that Policemen's batons are made of it ! Guess his country.

1 Edmund Alexander Parkes (1819-76) was the first organiser of the
Army Medical School, and the founder of the science of modern hygiene,
especially military hygiene. As an army surgeon he served in India for three
years, returning to London in 1845, and became Professor of Clinical Medicine
at University College in 1849. In teaching and in physiological research
he was equally distinguished.

388 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

If I had asked him the economic value of Eosaceae he would
have quoted Shillelaghs ! Another told me that the freezing
point of water was 50° below zero, and another that the
boiling point was fixed by filling a thermometer tube with
boiling mercury ! What are your Colleges of Surgeons about ?
Some of their licentiates are consummate ignoramuses.

Nevertheless he was convinced of the value of Botany in
medical education, writing to Henslow in 1855 :

I wish very much you could afford half an hour to think
over the subject of ' Botany as a branch of education and
a means of mental culture specially adapted to the early
education of Medical men,' and send me a few notions on
the subject. I am preparing a notice of the mode of con-
ducting the Botanical Examinations for the E.I.C., and
want to drive it into the heads of Medical men and students ;
that it is not with the hope that the Botanical knowledge
obtained will ever be of the slightest direct advantage to
the man in practice that it should be taught, but because
a right elementary knowledge is necessary to the right
understanding of the Pharmacopoeia, Hygiene, therapeutics,
Mat. Med., etc., and especially because the mental training
of a good elementary Botanical or Nat. Hist, course is the
best means of becoming skilful in diagnosis of diseases and
of developing his ideas. I am, however, a bad hand at
expressing my ideas in mental philosophy and 'yet would
like to do it properly.

Thus he was the more bent upon establishing good scientific
teaching and reasonable examinations. He is consulted by
Henslow in 1855 as to the papers the latter is setting in the
Tripos at Cambridge, and later by Harvey on the corresponding
papers set at Dublin. In querying various points he says
to Henslow (March 15) : * I am no scholar, but sometimes
do instinctively sniff out a clumsy expression, and in this case
certainly did not know a good one.' In another case, criticising
the wording of a sentence, ' I do not doubt you mean right,
but it appeared very wrong on the paper.' He also urges
Henslow not to use a descriptive term which had already
failed to win general acceptance among botanists.

BOOKWORK AND EXAMINATION SCHEMES 389

The following undated letter to Henslow further illustrates
his difficulties :

Better not recommend books except perhaps to advise
the study of such a thing as Lindley's Is. pamphlet on
descriptive Botany, which is quite unique, and I think the
men should be told that it is best to work upon the Candollean
system of Orders. I should not recommend any other of
Lindley's works, or indeed any works as works : and the Is.
pamphlet only as indicating a method of working that will
certainly meet the exigencies of the Examiners.

I find yearly the difficulty of having to do with men
who have never been taught on any system, or all on different
systems. I feel the difficulty of recommending books, but I
see in the present condition of the Science and its Professors,
the necessity of indicating a method both of working and of
arranging the Nat. Ords. To make the book work depend
on the coaching up a particular author's work, as Babington 1
proposes to do by Lindley's Elements, would be fatal to any
good examination.

The proper method of examination is further dealt with
in a letter to Harvey, who had just been appointed Moderator
in the College examinations at Dublin.

[March 24/1857.] What is a Moderator-ship ? Steam or
sail ? I like your programme of it, but do, I beg, insist on their
demonstrating characters both on dried and living specimens
of Brit, polypet [alae] and see that their knowledge is founded
on sound Morphological laws, as studied by themselves on
the plants. Henslow has just issued an admirable dried plant
Examination Scheme, write and ask him. You are quite
right to stick to elementary knowledge of British plants,
and however much you change - your subject never lose
sight of the principle of keeping within the limit of what

1 Charles Cardale Babington (1808-95), botanist and archaeologist, who
succeeded Henslow as Professor of Botany at Cambridge in 1861, was especially
enthusiastic as a field botanist, and his Manual of British Botany in successive
editions from 1843 onwards brought the subject from the Linnean stage into
harmony with continental progress in systematic and descriptive botany.
His lectures, however, did not expand with the new developments of botanic
teaching in histology and physiology, and his detailed descriptive work, such
as the Synopsis of British Rubi, ran to an extreme of analysis in basing new
species in minute differences.

VOL. i 2 c

390 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

they ought to know practically and well, and of so conducting
the examination in Physiology (when you take that as a
change) that it shall include Morphology and the Natural
Orders. Do stick to the motive that Botany is a knowledge
of plants and do not budge one inch from that. I am quite
convinced that one of the greatest evils done to science is
the fashion of making men learn solely or chiefly matters
of which they can have no practical knowledge : their
education is thus a forced one, the honors they get are not
for the kind or amount of knowledge which enables them
to make their way on afterwards, and they have been thus
led to form a low estimate of the only useful branches, and
they do not like to hark back upon these afterwards ; and are
deterred from going on with the science for ever after. The
whole subject of education in Science is being better appre-
ciated now that the German school is falling into disrepute.1

The writing of good handbooks was as essential to the
progress of Botany as the elaboration of a satisfactory system
of lecturing.

Bentham's ' Handbook to the Flora of the British Isles '
(published 1858) was a great step in advance, and a letter
to the author while still at work upon it strikes a confident
note (February 16, 1854) :

I am rejoiced at the progress of the British Flora, and
regard its appearance as a new era to British Botany. The
public are really prepared for a change radical and complete.
Your Flora must appear as a Precursor. I shall keep your
letter in the hope that you will work out such remarks as
you embody in it for a good sound introduction to the book.
After all it is doing far more good to publish a Flora that will
set people on the right way to know plants for themselves
than one which aims to tell them everything about them.
I would announce boldly my aim as the desire to put people
on the right track and not to supply them with what they
ought to find out for themselves.

Next came Henslow's work in elementary teaching of
botany. John Stevens Henslow, who was born in 1796,
and was therefore eleven years junior to Sir William Hooker,

1 Compare the reference to Heer's lectures; p. 402.

HENSLOW'S METHODS 391

had been Professor of Botany at Cambridge since 1827. His
chief interest was not in systematic botany, but in the life
history and geographical distribution of plants ; his great
distinction to have been the pioneer of practical teaching in
England and the inspiration of those who came under him.
As a keen observer, he knew the value of learning through
one's own observations and discoveries. The average lecturer
taught the students in the Medical Schools to learn botanical
facts by memory ; Henslow led his students to discover their
facts by their own dissections of plants, and demonstrations
from living specimens. Teaching by things, not words only,
he made his subject alive, and on the same principle, arranged
the public galleries of the Ipswich museum to be a connected
demonstration of types, not a * raree show ' of curiosities.

I am extremely glad [Hooker writes to him, May 10,
1856] to hear such good news about your class-men, and
hope that you will turn out a Botanist or two amongst
them. Pitch into the Dons and bigwigs.

The enthusiasm he awakened among his University students
was renewed among the village children of Hitcham, to the
living of which he was presented in 1838. Here, every Monday
after school hours, he gave them lessons in botany, simple,
accurate, intensely interesting, combined with systematic
dissection of specimens and the making of local collections
and observations. These village lessons were the source and
pattern of the excellent nature-teaching now so widely diffused.
The enthusiasm of the children, the lasting effect in interest,
attention, character-building, were most remarkable.

He was gradually putting together the MS. for a projected
book of Village Botany, which was left unfinished at his death
in 1861, but formed the basis of Professor D. Oliver's x

1 Daniel Oliver (1830) came to Kew at the invitation of Sir Wm. Hooker,
and while working at the Herbarium found time to prepare and deliver, without
fee, lectures to the foremen and gardeners of the establishment, 1859-74. In
1864 he was appointed Keeper of the Herbarium and Library, a post he held
until 1890. He succeeded Lindley as Professor of Botany at London Univer-
sity (1861-88) and received the Royal Medal 1884, and the gold medal of the
Linnean 1893. He was editor of the first three volumes of the Flora of Tropical
Africa, one of the great Colonial Floras projected by Sir W. Hooker. Oliver
was both right-hand man and close friend of J. D. H., with whom his
' omniscience ' was proverbial.

392 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

* Elementary Lessons ' (1863). He also designed a series of
botanical diagrams, with explanations, for use in the National
Schools, then under the branch of the Board of Trade known
later as the Science and Art Department. These diagrams
were prepared at Kew, and Hooker writes of them to Asa Gray
(March 29, 1857) :

Fitch has just completed a most magnificent set of 9
Elephant-folio plates with illustrations and analysis of
about 50 Nat. Ords. and genera designed by Henslow, and
superintended by your humble servant. It is done for
National Schools under Board of Trade.

These met with skilled appreciation in wider circles also.
1 1 find your diagrams/ he tells Henslow, ' greatly admired in
Dublin. Harvey was copying them out in grand, and they
had a very good effect ' ; while another letter remarks, * I like
your little explanatory book ; it will, I hope, do great execution
at the schools.'

In 1858 also :

I met a Eev. J. T. Graves Vat Dublin, a Fellow of Trinity
Coll. Dublin, Mathematician, a man of renown in these parts
who has been employed by Govt. in enquiring on Endowed
schools and other Educational matters. He is immensely
strong on your point of teaching the science of Observation
to all men, especially to the young of all classes, and he has
reported the same to Govt. in perhaps the very words you
would have used.

In formulating this scheme of teaching and condensing
it from his naturally more diffuse oral style, Henslow gladly
sought the help and keen criticism of his son-in-law. The
following letters illustrate Hooker's own sympathy with such
a plan, his insistence on the need for the pupil's perfect under-
standing of the ' hard words ' and definitions which form the

1 John Thomas Graves (1806-70), a great mathematician, whose corres-
pondence gave stimulus and suggestion to his friend Sir William Rowan
Hamilton in his discovery of quaternions. Called to the English as well as
the Irish Bar, he became Professor of Jurisprudence at University College,
London, in 1839, and from 1846 was a Poor-law Inspector for England and
Wales under the new Poor-law Act.

FEIENDLY CRITICISM 393

indispensable tools for scientific teaching, and for accuracy
in the use of them, and — striking personal note — the happy
freedom with which two friends could speak their minds to
each other.

Many thanks for the perusal of the enclosed, which 1
like very much indeed — I have made a few pencil suggestions.

The term systematic Botany is a bad one, but there is
no better in ordinary use ; it hence wants a little amplifying
upon to show that that branch is more than classification.
Morphological is the right, in contradistinction to Physio-
logical, but not adapted to your purpose. Few people
appreciate the fact that Syst. Bot. is the exposition of the
laws upon which plants are formed as well as classified
naturally — somehow they do not.

Have you read Huxley on Methods in Nat. Hist. ? l
How do you like it ? I very much.

My pencil remarks on your sheets are only suggestions.
I like the whole thing very much.

December 12, 1854.

MY DEAR HENSLOW, — The enclosed seems very explicit
and clear ; I have no suggestions to offer but a very few verbal
ones. Would it not be as well to put all the technical
terms in italics, it seems to give them weight ? Under
Flowers, I have put a pencil through ' through arrest of
development ' — as I think it is rather questionable and at
any rate will be canvassed. Can we say that the Papa-
veraceae, having 4 petals and only 2 sepals, is through an
arrest ? this order being formed on a binary plan quite
as normally as other Dicots are on a quinary. If we hold
this to be an arrest of development, we must also consider
the Monocots to be ternary through arrest — or reason in
a circle. The fact is we call 5 the normal number, simply
because it is prevalent : and by the same token 5 being
prevalent in phaenogams as a whole, the Monocots which
are in the minority are as much entitled to be considered
arrests, as are Papaveraceae.

Under Gymnosperms, — * an unfolded scale ' is very am-
biguous, the said scale never was folded ; but if you say

1 On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences. An address
delivered on July 12, 1854.

394 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

that hypothetically it was so, then you had better say * an
unfolded leaf.' I have suggested ' flat or concave ' with
' unfolded ' in brackets.

I do not at all agree with the terms Milkworts, Tutsans,
etc., as English equivalents for natural orders, seeing that
the same name more often applies to the genus only and
most properly. Mallows are Mallows, and their family or
order, the Mallow family or Mallow order. Mallow-worts
means nothing — wort not being a recognised equivalent of
any value, generic or ordinal. I think that by introducing
such terms you lose all the little point English names have
and gain nothing whatever. What is a wort ? in English
surely not a tree, to justify Mast-worts, more especially as
mast is an equivalent to wort, in one sense. Wort I believe
means weed or herb. I am still all for Crowfoot family (or
order), Mallow family, etc., etc.

You will have a little difficulty to adapt a good name
for all, but any genus contained in this family will be right,
whereas the introduction of wort is wrong in grammar and
more wrong in science. Let one of your pupils ask you to
explain why you say an Oak belongs to the Beech family,
or Nut family, or Hornbeam family, or any other contained
genus you may adopt, and you can explain at once, rationally,
and shew that the name conveys definite information — but
what conceivable excuse have you for calling a nut a mast-
wort ! wrong in sense, in English, in sound, and in science.
I think such terms are a retrograde step in the progress
of sound elementary education. ' There then/ as Willy *
says. It would be further exceedingly important to desig-
nate the Nat. Ord. in English, by the samp genus or term
as the Latin ordinal name is derived from — thus ' Cruci-
ferae,' and ' Cupuliferae ' = ' family of cupped fruits/ and
' Primulaceae ' = ' family of Primrose.' You could thus
explain both the Latin mode of giving ordinal names;
together, and save much complexity and loss of time and of
no little confusion too to young ideas, the only explanation
needed being that there is no English inflexion that answers
to the Latin ' Primulaceae ' — in English it must be expressed
by the word order or family affixed or postfixed. Better
than all this would it be to tell them that they can no more

1 His small son, now aged two.

ENGLISH NAMES IN BOTANY 395

dispense with the word Eanunculaceous than with perigynous
if they are going to progress in Botany, but if they are going
to learn only a little, they had better take the English generic
name and add ' Family of ' to it. It appears to me essential
that you should not throw a word or termination away.1

[February 1855.] I have gone over the accompanying
very carefully, but fear it will hardly answer the purpose.
It appears to me (but I may very well be wrong) far too
laboured ; too much is attempted to be taught by each
sentence, they are hence too long and involved ; there is
a constant wandering from particulars to general Laws ; and
a great many too many words just a little too difficult for
beginners. To be so philosophical it should be in aphorisms,
for you cannot be clear, concise, and learned too, in a con-
versational form. My own impression is. that it would be
better to make the demonstration of the Bean first, simple,
clear and to the point, giving no words except the simplest.
I object to * axis,' ' relative,' ' modification,' etc., when super-
added to the necessary and unavoidable technicalities ; each
of these, though familiar to us, being a subject of thought,
to the * village school,' before understood.

Having demonstrated the Bean, etc., you might then go
over it again and another dissimilar plant along with it, and
explain how the buds form, and the leaf buds give place to
flower buds and how the leaves become floral whorls, how
simple leaves become compound, how petals unite, etc., etc.,
but I am sure no pupil can learn all these things at once.

You are so much accustomed to teach with specimens
and pictures, illustrating every point and making everything
clear, that you perhaps forget how much of these advantages
you lose in a book ; and how necessary it is to be extremely
simple in diction and in separating your kinds of information.
In short I doubt if you will succeed in teaching the uninitiated
young structure and morphology at once, which you here
attempt. I further doubt your being able to do a book of
this kind piecemeal. It is a most difficult task the writing
down to the capacity of ignorance. I know it by experi-
ence ; you must weigh every word and prune and clip every

1 'This is a rooted objection, repeated emphatically in a letter to Harvey,
July 1858 : ' I hate the whole system of English names. Why is not
Myosotis and Epilobium better than Mouse-ear (of which there are two), or
Willow Herb, to which there is as good an objection ? '

396 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

sentence to the shortest, consistent with perfect lucidity.
It requires a short severe study and some little regular
attention.

Fanny has been looking over parts of it, and quite agrees
with me that the words underlined in pencil will be so many
stumbling-blocks to village school children and even higher
class ones. In short the whole is not only too scientific but
in too scientific language.

[March 3, 1855.] I am extremely glad to find that you have
not taken umbrage at my severe criticism on your little book
MS. I am always severe and often unreasonably so, though I
do not think I was so in that case. I have often thought that
it is impossible for a really highly educated man to write a
good book for the ignorant, except he be checked by another ;
to write down to a low capacity, or low standard, is of all
things the most difficult. Your present plan is excellent and
will, I should say, answer perfectly if you will rigidly resist
all temptation to digression, long sentences and giving more
than one idea, or fact, to be mastered at a time. I made
large allowances in your MS. for Leonard's copying, and am
fully aware that the lesson was to be learnt by the develop-
ing plants, and therein lay another difficulty, it would be
impossible to arrive at a general accurate idea of ' the
plant ' by such protracted means, and it is by giving such a
general idea of all the main parts and their relations, as
rapidly as possible, that we must begin. In your MS.
there is far too much to be learnt of each organ to allow an
ordinary intellect to grasp the whole at the end of the first
lesson. You talk of a return to collect ' scattered ideas ' ;
now these said scattered ideas are what of all things I would
avoid the possibility of the pupils acquiring. The first
acquired knowledge should be systematic and definite.
[An analysis of eight Lessons follows.]

I doubt your doing with less than these viii Lessons,
but I do not doubt your doing with far fewer words than
you imagine. Fanny says that your diffuseness is your
snare ; I say it is of all clergymen, and of all those who are
much in the habit of writing for the public, with no mentor
or critic to check them, and whose time is their own in the
rostrum. I never read or heard a sermon that I could not
weed of half its words to the greatest advantage of the

I

THE SPOKEN AND WEITTEN WOED 397

reader, mind you, I do not say to the hearer, though I think
I could almost add that too. To write well and concisely
is a rare acquirement, and the pulpit being beyond criticism,
clergymen almost invariably become diffuse and verbose.
In too many cases words are thrown in to fill up the time
allotted to the discourse, partly because the clergyman has
other more important duties and* in many cases because
he has often nothing new to say on his subject. Be all
that as it may, I would avoid in the book the diffuse style
that is so well adapted to lecturing and demonstrating, and
be as sparing of words and concise as is consistent with an
easy style. The aphoristic will hardly do for a school book,
I fear. In lecturing on specimens you cannot so well cloud
your meaning by words, or weary by repetition, because
the fact demonstrated is visible and tangible ; repetition
impresses it on the mind, verbiage gives time to the audience
— but in a school book it is quite different ; here the fact
is not visible or prominent ; you have to impress an idea
or image and repetitions and verbiage take the mind away
from it. Contrast Faraday's x lectures and his writings, and
they are models for each, but no styles can be more dis-
similar. Your MS. was more a lecture in writing — and this
is a lecture on writing — but I really am interested in the
book and feel my own incompetence to such a task so keenly,
that I cannot forbear doing everything I can to put you on
your mettle. You were an admirably clear writer ; perhaps
15 years of a country living has not tended to develop the
faculty. You have all too much your own way in lectures
and the pulpit ; and write your weekly allowance for the
pulpit with nobody to pull it to pieces. Do not fear bothering
me with questions. I like them from you.

I return your MS. with some suggestions. I like its
plan very much, the only apparent defects (and which would
probably be much reduced if read in print) are the attempt
to explain too much as you go along. Facts are one thing,
the rationale of them is another ; and I doubt if you help
the bona fide beginner much by mixing causes with effects.
The beginner must learn by heart a certain number of

1 Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who, starting as Sir Humphry Davy's
assistant, became the greatest discoverer in pure experimental science, was
proverbial for the personal magic of his lectures, especially to the young.

398 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

definitions, and those you do not put before him categorically.
Many men have many minds and my mind always revolted
at having to read up a long yarn about a word, whose meaning
alone in a tangible form I wanted at the time. My own plan
would have been to have left much of what you say in the
first part to a chapter on Morphology. I think too that by
using too many words and attempting too much simplicity,
you involve the sentences and mask their meaning. I did
honestly try hard, and for the life of me could not understand
your definitions of Hypogynous, perigynous, etc.

A similar letter to Asa Gray on the appearance of his
excellent * Elements of Botany ' (March 30, 1857) re-enforces
these points of view. Some loose definitions are criticised,
but the chief one desideratum was an Introductory Chapter
'written in the same lucid, simple, and still accurate and
sober style/ introducing the beginner to some of the more
leading ideas in a practical study of plans — telling him
what to look out for, and giving examples of them. He
must insist also on certain definitions being ' absolutely and
unalterably impressed on every pupil's mind and at their
fingers' ends.' A glossary at the end is not enough.

It is true that ' Organs,' ' Morphology/ and most of these
terms, not all, are defined in the Glossary, but ten to one the
pupil will go through and through the work and be unable
to define ' Anatomy,' ' Organs/ ' function/ ' type/ at the
end of it !

The definition of Physiology is rather loose, is it not ?

' The Science of the Forces that determine the j of

functions.' Your term ' the way it grows ' (act of growth)
is development, which is not physiology but a branch of
morphology. Physiology is Physics -f- Chemistry. It is true
that bad Botanical definers class ovule, growth, and such
things under Physiology, but if so then aestivation, verna-
tion, and every other phase of development comes under
Physiology.

A little might be said on the great advantage of Systematic
Botany as a means of schooling the mind (as good as Mathe-
matics) to habits of close observation, accurate defining, and

VALUE OF BOTANICAL TKAINING 399

diagnosis. Some of our greatest lawyers and medical men
have pronounced Systematic Nat. Hist, as an admirable
training for medical and legal enquiry, in sifting evidence and
disease, etc. etc. Also Syst. Bot., i.e. the Nat. Ord., should
be the prominent goal for the beginner, as they are the ex-
pressions of the Morphology, Structure and all other attributes
of plants. Classifying plants is further an exercise of the
reasoning faculties, always bringing memory and judgment
into play, and we all know * Memoria augetur excolendo.'
.An Introductory Chapter of this kind would invite many
thoughtful pupils to think for themselves, and give a dignity
to the study that teachers would appreciate. These hints,
if worth anything, may help you to a new feature for a reprint.
Another thing must be impressed at the present day, —
that Botany is a knowledge of plants — that Physiology,
Anatomy, etc. etc., are one thing, but Physiological, etc.,
Botany quite another. Also that in examining in Botany the
teacher should never go beyond what the pupil has a practical
knowledge of. Botany is a Science of Observation, and the
present plan of examining pupils in what they have coached
or crammed up is ruinous. They are disgusted at finding that
after taking an honor in Botany, when they want to progress
in the Science, they have to go back to the Elements. If
teachers understood this, they would themselves see the
necessity of learning. Tell them that a child with a butter-
cup could make out whether Torrey 1 or Gray knew most of
Botany, but that neither Torrey nor Gray could tell which
of two children knew most of plants by examining them
on what they had only read. Beading without observation
on the Sciences of Observation is most destructive. The
difference between the modes of teaching required for the
Natural Sciences and Moral Sciences, etc., has never yet been
properly put, and until it is, all hopes of getting the Nat.
Sciences introduced into Elementary Education are illusory.

Allowing for the difference of aim between a handbook and
a course of lectures, there is a close parallel between these

1 John Torrey, M.D., LL.D. (1796-1873), was born in New York, and became a
pupil of Amos Eaton, pioneer of Natural Science. In 1818 he took his medical
degree and practised as a doctor, but devoted his leisure to botany and mineralogy.
He published a Flora of the North and Middle Sections of the U.S.A., 1824, and
a Flora of New York, completed 1843, &c., &c. Professor of Botany in the
Medical College, and at Princeton College, and was also State Botanist.

400 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

criticisms and the advice given in a letter dated February 3,
1857, to Harvey, who in November 1856, being newly appointed
to the Botanical chair at Dublin, consulted him as to the
best scheme of lecturing.

The essence of this advice, based on experience as examiner,
is to give the students a moderate amount of matter, very
thoroughly ; teaching through mind and eye and hand, first
by clear explanation of fundamentals with three or four
examples of each, and exact definition of essential terms ;
next by big diagrams keeping these chosen examples and exact
definitions always before the men's eyes, then by teaching
the men to dissect and draw, examining them with specimens,
as Sir William Hooker used to do, in the second half of each
lecturing hour.

If ever I lectured on Botany to Medical students and
others, I would not give half the matter others do.

Whatever you do, strive to be under the mark in amount
of what you teach, and over it in well illustrating what you
mean.

Never forget that the men have had no elementary
training, and come to you absolutely unfit to take up the
study of Botany, and keep the elements always in view.

Use as few terms as you possibly can, never using one in
two senses, or two for one purpose. I never get a man who
can give me a straightforward answer as to what a seed, a
fruit, or an ovule is. [The answer is given in a] sort of un-
systematic, illogical fashion, showing that those who know
what a seed is have no precise notion of it.

As to the ever repeated insistence on the men knowing
perfectly the definition of terms employed, such as analogy,
affinity, homology, species,

if any one objects, tell those who know them that they
need not look at them, but that in a recent London Exam.,
out of 45 members of the 3 Colleges of Surgeons examined,
not 5 could give a logical, accurate definition of any 5 or
more of these terms, and many of none ! and that without
them a right knowledge of any branch of Nat. Hist, is
impossible.

ON LECTUEING 401

Explain that the philosophy of [the great divisions of
plants] can only be understood when they know what a
seed and its germination is, an axis and the arrangement of
its parts, an ovule and its ovarium.

The course being for medical students :

Illustrate as many Nat. Orders as possible by Medical
plants, showing the drug but alluding only to its preparation
and uses.

Finally, the less preparation you personally make, except
in the way of diagrams, &c., the better ; be certain that
he who has read up for an elementary course is either unfit
to give one, or will fly over the heads of students.

Of existing handbooks, he remarks that Lindley's, dating
from 1830, ' are capital as guides, but antiquated,' and * Hen-
frey's rudiments not bad,' but the work of another popular
writer

the worst I know, containing every fault elementary books
can have, loose, inaccurate illogical, bad English, without
distinction of what is useful and useless to the beginner. . . .
Impress on the men the folly of attempting to go beyond
[these] elementary books except with specimens in their
hands ; and in conclusion din for ever into their ears that
the principal Nat. Ords., properly studied and rightly under-
stood, are the exponents of all branches of Botany, embrace
a knowledge of all, are the application of the results of
all to practice, and are. synonymous with ' Botany ' in its
highest signification.

Finally :

I have been talking a good deal about lecturing, since I
wrote to you, with Huxley, who has come to absolutely iden-
tical conclusions, and is going to alter his course accordingly
at the Govt. School of Mines ; this entre nous at present.
He and I have often talked over the subject, and he is quite
of my opinion that the present mode of teaching is worse
than useless.

The contrast between the old style Botanist and the new
was forcibly brought home to him when in July 1862 he paid

402 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

a visit to Oswald Heer l at Zurich and heard him lecture to
his pupils.

All I can say [he tells Bentham] is that if he is a type of
the old school of German Bot. teachers, I do not wonder at
the Physiologico-Microscopists, Okeno-Schleidenists, carry-
ing the day ; for any more dull and dreary exposition of
Genera and species I never heard, with no specimens in
students' hands, none in the lecturer's, no diagrams, no
pictures, no nothing. It opened my eyes to the real facts
of the great battle between the systematists and Physio-
logists.

The great change in English botanical teaching, when it
came at last, took shape under Huxley's inspiration. He it
was who revolutionised biological teaching in 1872, making
his students study the chief types of animal life not merely
through lectures and books and specimens prepared by other
hands, but from their own observation and dissection of
the actual objects, under the guidance of himself and his
enthusiastic lieutenants, Michael Foster 2 and Kutherford and
Eay Lankester. From animal to vegetable biology was but
a step. While Huxley was away ill in 1873, a similar course
in botany was instituted with equal enthusiasm by another

1 Oswald Heer (1809-83), Swiss investigator of fossil plants and insects.
Educated at the University of Halle, ordained minister 1831. He went to
Zurich in 1 832 and lived all his life there. He studied medicine, but soon devoted
himself to botany and entomology. In 1834 he became Privat-docent and
was the first Professor of Botany at Zurich 1852, and in 1855 the Polytechnicum
there. His first publications were on fossil entomology, 1847 and 1853; and his
first paleo-botanical paper in 1851. He passed the winter of 1854-5 in Madeira.
His Urwdt der Schweiz was published in 1865 and his Flora Fossilis Helvetiae
in 1877.

2 Sir Michael Foster, M.D. (1836-1907), the physiologist, after a brilliant
career at London University, was for some years in practice with his father at
Huntingdon. His career as a teacher of physiology began in 1867 as prelector,
1869, professor at University College, London, and Fullerian professor at the
Royal Institution. In 1870, after acting as Huxley's assistant, he migrated to
Cambridge, first as prelector at Trinity College, then 1883-1903 as professor in
the chair founded for him by the university. He became F.R.S. 1872, and
biological secretary U.S. 1881-1903 ; President of the British Association and
K.C.B. 1899 ; M.P. for London University 1900-6. A close friend of Huxley,
he carried forward his method of teaching, and edited his Scientific Memoirs,
1901. His chief works were a Textbook of Physiology and his Lectures on the
History of Physiology. He was the joint author of Elements of Physiology and
of Embryology.

PHYSIOLOGICAL TEACHING IN BOTANY 403

of his lieutenants, Professor Thiselton-Dyer, afterwards
Assistant and successor to Hooker at Kew, himself a student
of the physiological botany which had made such strides in
Germany, as well as ' knowing plants ' after the fashion of
the older botanists.

Hooker's own excursions into botanical physiology enabled
him to realise the vast importance of this, as an educational
influence, as technical training, and as a guide to the true
relations of plants as determined by descent and kinship.
But to his mind, with its encyclopaedic knowledge of specimens,
there was one drawback to this insistence on the study of
structure and function. ' You young men,' he once exclaimed
to Professor Bower, ' do not know your plants.' l

His appreciation of the change which ten years had brought
about is well shown by his advice to a botanist, then working
abroad, who had been trained in the old school, not to stand
for a botanical chair then vacant in England (1884) :

My impression is, that it would not suit you, without
indeed you have kept up a knowledge and practice of
Physiology, minute anatomy, and chemico-phytology, and
indeed physico-phytology, which now form the staple of the
Botanical teaching, and above all of Botanical examinations
in this country. Botany is no longer a knowledge of plants,
but how parts of plants ' come about ' and what they do !
you begin with yeast, moulds, &c., and the higher you go the
less you know of the whole plants and the more of their
' inwards.' There is no question of the high scientific value
and interest of all this, but the outcome of years of it may
leave a man in utter ignorance of any plant bigger than the
Torula and Mucor he began with. Botany of this sort is
the study of the laws of life, the highest of any : but to pursue
it requires a special education ; and to teach it, a special
practice ; and I do not know if you have had either. I have
not. It is most necessary for the modern physician arid
surgeon ; it is the gate through which he enters the study of

1 Apropos of the knowledge of plants and their uses possessed by the old
field botanists, Mr. Elwes tells a story of how he and Hooker and Berkeley the
mycologist were lunching together, when some new pickles from the West Indies
were placed on the table. Berkeley alone, with his knowledge of Materia
Medica, was able to identify the ingredients.

404 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS

his profession ; this sort of botany, in this respect, plays the
same part in modern medical teaching, that the botanical
course which taught the Natural Orders, &c. did of old.

The botanical teaching of my day was the Student's
first schooling in diagnosis, and it taught him medical botany,
and the origin and history of drugs. Now, diagnosis is
taught clinically, in a way it was not in my time, and a
knowledge of drugs and their origin is left to the druggist ;
and botany is made the introduction to organic chemistry
and physiology in the application to the problems of life in
health and disease.

Our careers are very different from this, and you are
making your mark in yours ; would it not be better to
stick to it ? or only to leave it for something in the same
line?

CHAPTEB XXI

SCIENCE ORGANISATION I SOCIETIES, JOURNALS AND REWARDS

THOUGH the organisation of Science at the Universities and
other centres of education was important, more important still
was its organisation through the learned societies, partly as
meeting places for scientific workers, partly as providing the
means of making scientific results easily accessible through
their publications. Where these were inadequate to the
necessities of the case, established journals of literary repute
might be taken into alliance, publishing a scientific column
regularly, or, in the last resort, a Eeview entirely devoted to
Science might be set afoot. How heavy a burden such non-
original and administrative work imposed on very busy men
was to be learned from experience.

One conclusion to which it pointed appears from a letter
to Huxley in the spring of 1861, when Bentham, who with
characteristic modesty never claimed to be more than an
amateur in botany, was proposed as President of the Linnean,
a post he held from 1861 to 1874.

Kew : Wednesday.

You know my prejudice against professional Scientifics
being Presidents of these heterogeneous bodies : and in
favour of independent men who make a bond of union between
Science as represented by the Society and the outer world
— and who if really Scientific, are so as amateurs. Bentham
is one such, and for the life of me I cannot find another at
all eligible on the whole list.

On the other hand the methods of the societies which
combined Science with * Society ' and lionised travellers before

VOL. I 405 2 D

406 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

making very sure of the value of their reports, were as re-
pugnant to Hooker as they were to his friend Huxley. The
present generation can remember the laughable explosion of
the de Eougemont boom which took place at a meeting of the
British Association : a much more notable personage with a
tale of tropical exploration and hunting and discoveries in
natural history provoked a furore in 1861, followed by a
storm of criticism which has never been definitely settled, the
most balanced opinion being that very probably what he said
was substantially true, but that no less probably his so-called
experiences, which were not borne out by subsequent reports
from local collectors, had merely been gathered from hunters
on the coast.

The man [writes Hooker to Dr. Anderson,1 July 7, 1861]
is a victim of Murchison's lionizing system : an unscientific
bad observer is raised to a first-rate scientific geographical
lion, and after that has to write a book to justify all the fuss
made about him. The poor man is honest enough in pur-
pose, but is dizzy with all that has been done to him and
unable at any time to write — he exposes himself awfully of
course.2

But this Leonine Heresy was not without a medicinal
value.

1 Thomas Anderson (1832-70), botanist, M.D. Edin. 1853, entered Bengal
medical service in 1854. Director of the Calcutta Botanical Garden, organised
and superintended the Bengal Forest Department 1864; left an incomplete
work on the Indian Flora.

2 In November 1862 Hooker received a letter from Gustav Mann, the Kew
collector at Fernando Po, saying that he had been across the country described
by this traveller, and that his accounts were all unreal. Mann himself suffered
under another 'lion' of the Geographical Society. This was Sir Richard
Burton, Orientalist and traveller, who, Hooker tells Darwin, ' has in a public
despatch, filched away all poor Mann's credit for the ascent of the Cameroons,
calls it his expedition, planned and carried out by him, and calls Mann his
volunteer associate. I never read anything so gross in my life. Poor Mann
had set his heart on the thing for 2 years, had failed the first time, and was
actually leaving Fernando Po for the ascent, when Burton arrived at F. Po
as Consul, did leave and had ascended the Mt. several weeks before Burton,
following him, was at its foot ; having prepared the way and provided guides
and everything. I am quite disgusted, but hardly know how to act. I dislike
and despise the Geogr. Soc. way of going on so much, that I do not like to
bring the matter forward there, and a.s to having a quarrel with Burton, we all
know what it is to touch pitch.'

THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 407

I rather like [he writes on June 2] to keep the Geog. Soc.
as a sort of seton upon science : it draws all odium for
scientific lion-hunting, toadying and tuft -hunting away
from the Linnean, Koyal and Geological — only that the
latter are too fond of following in wake ! For my part I
eschew them all now, and intend to keep them and their
society at arm's length.

And somewhat later, rejoicing that he was not on the
Committee of the Geological, he remarks to Huxley : ' I am
quite accustomed to seeing things done " more Geologico " —
in fact the Geolog. Soc. and its attributes have been worth
their price to me in the valuable introduction it has proved to
Helter Skelter science and business.'

Through the earlier years of this decade Hooker was specially
concerned with the reorganisation of the Linnean Society.
His object was to see the Linnean take the same position with
regard to Natural History as the Eoyal Society with Physics.
He had been elected a Fellow in 1842, and was chosen a member
of the Council in 1853, serving in this capacity for twenty-four
years, during fifteen of these as Vice-President. Once on the
Council, he endeavoured to carry out much-needed reforms.
The famous Linnean collection had fallen into a bad state ;
Hooker's offer to help rearrange it the year before, when he and
Thomson were sometimes meeting at the Linnean, had not
been taken up : doubtless owing to Kobert Brown's opposition
to any change. The printed reports of proceedings presented
their subjects in confused order, so that specialists had difficulty
in finding what they wanted. It was most desirable to separate
the reports, according to their kind and weight, into Proceedings
and Transactions (a reform in which the Linnean was antici-
pated by the Koyal Society, thanks to the efforts of ' the
small band of us yclept the Philosophical club '), and to divide
botany from zoology. Experience in other countries had
shown this to be absolutely essential, for the sake of the
botanical and zoological public alike, who were now forced to
buy reports in which they had no interest ; and for the sake
of simplifying the already complex bibliography. Moreover,
' though you and I,' he assures Huxley, ' as joint editors may

408 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

work well on a mixed Journal, the chances are that others
would not/ among 'the hundreds of details that belong to
both, i.e. to neither.'

[References to the subject appear in the letters from
November 1853. The Linnean had just elected a new president
in Thomas Bell,1 who held that office for the next eight years.
Great things were hoped from his known administrative
ability and his keen desire to resuscitate the Society. Hooker
could recall one meeting in the old rooms in Soho Square when
only five members were present to support the President and
Secretary. The list of contributions from British botanists
during the last ten years compared unfavourably with those
made to other journals. The Secretary was chronically hard
up for papers ; not unnaturally, since ' for such advantages
can the Botanists be expected to sail in such a coal barge,
where zoology is little better than rats and cockroaches ? '
The meetings therefore offered small attraction. ' If some-
thing is not done the Society will certainly fall to pieces.' But
* I see no prospect of anything being done till you come up,
and Lindley gets on the Council ! ' (To Bentham, November
1853.)

However, one after another the essential reforms were
carried, despite temporary half-measures interposed by the
President in order to meet Brown's uncompromising opposi-
tion to every point of principle and detail, whereupon Hooker
exclaims, * Save me from a vacillating man of all others,' but
confesses afterwards, 'He is so good-natured and anxious
that everything should go square that it is impossible to
quarrel with him.' At the crucial moment, however, the
President backed up the reformers, pacified Brown, and finally,
with a rich man's liberality, guaranteed that the free distribu-
tion of the new Journal to all Fellows should have a fair trial,

1 Thomas Bell (1792-1860) was distinguished as a dental surgeon and a
zoologist. At Guy's Hospital he was for long the only good surgeon who
applied scientific surgery to diseases of the teeth. He was most widely known
for his popular Histories of British Quadrupeds, of British Reptiles, and British
Stalk-eyed Grustaceae, as well as his edition of White's Selborne, a place where
he spent his old age, having bought White's house, The Wakes. As Secretary
of the Royal Society (1848-53), and as President of the Linnean Society
(1853-61) he did excellent administrative work.

CENTEALISING SCIENTIFIC PEKIODICALS 409

while to meet the ensuing expenses of reform, whether in
publications or keep of library, MSS., and collections, £1000
was promptly raised among the Fellows, which * showed the
vitality there was in the old trunk.'

The position of the Society was still further improved
in 1856. A great stir had been made * to get Govt. to
give us Burlington House as a site for the five chartered
Societies who promote abstract Science.' Now the Treasury
granted the Linnean apartments in Burlington House, whither
the Koyal and the Chemical went also, while the Geological
and Astronomical refused to move from Somerset House.

Now that the Linnean was placed in juxtaposition with
the Eoyal and on an equal footing as regards position and all
other outward matters, it only needed a little active aid from
its members to raise it to its former position, and Hooker
was indefatigable in stirring up his fellow botanists to contri-
bute papers. As he wrote to Harvey (November 1856) :

I have always considered that the service it rendered to
science between 1790 and 1830, by purchasing the Linnaean
collections at its own cost (for £3000), and by publishing
gratis to its fellows 20 quarto illustrated volumes of important
matter that could never else have seen light, were claims
enough upon every man of science to support it.

But the resuscitation of the Linnean Society was only a
step towards a larger scientific object. This was to induce
Naturalists to concentrate their publications into well-estab-
lished periodicals and if possible to check the indiscriminate
scattering of their papers in numerous journals, many of
which were virtually locked to science. It was a most serious
evil, and he adds roundly, * The number of badly edited and
badly supported journals is quite incredible, and the present
practice of cramming Zoological and Botanical researches
into one periodical increases the evil many-fold.' Not that
the reformers had any intention of interfering with the pro-
vincial societies or Natural History journals, albeit true of
some that vehement exertions whip them into a spirited
beginning, only to fall away soon and remain burthens upon

410 SCIENCE ORGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

science. Their immediate purpose was to establish the Linnean
on a sound basis, and cultivate a catholic spirit amongst
naturalists. * The crying evil,' in Hooker's words, * is that
Naturalists are profoundly indifferent to one another's wants,
and so long as each is regardless of whether it is reasonable
to suppose that his fellow Naturalists will get access to his
publications, science must drift into confusion.' Let the
Linnean then provide the means of rapidly publishing abstract
researches with the certainty that they would soon be in the
reach of all European and American Naturalists. Then
the time would come when all the best papers on such
subjects would as certainly be sent to the Linnean as the
French ones to the Paris Academy. In the same way, if
circumstances compelled the dropping of the Kew Journal
of Botany, the best of its material would be absorbed in
the Linnean, with its wider circulation, to the advantage
of science.

Another valuable piece of centralisation planned was
a compte rcndu from Burlington House, with a classified
index of all important papers contributed to the various
societies in the United Kingdom. In all these ways the
minor societies might be brought together, while the highest
flight of hope saw the Eoyal and Linnean publications issued
together.

During the years of reconstruction, Hooker was unflagging
in his support of the Linnean Journal, calling on his fellow
workers to help, and receiving many promises. Even so it
was difficult to keep all up to concert pitch, as appears from
an urgent appeal to Henslow, apparently written in 1859.

I now therefore beg and entreat you not to leave us in
the lurch any longer ; it is of greatest importance that
authors of repute should contribute to the first volume of
the Journal, and of all those who promised me two years
ago to contribute, and who spurred me on to get up the
Journal, scarcely one has kept his word. The responsibility
of the thing very much lies upon my shoulders, and I am
now calling upon those who induced me to take it, to keep
their words : but some of the best are dead ! and as to

THE LINNEAN JOUENAL 411

others, these are promises which they do not see the moral
obligation 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) reiterated 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 plan 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 1 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. HOOKER.

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.' 2
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
William Hooker, though unremittingly busy in his old age, had
grown careless and uncritical in his editing, and his son had no

1 ' Preliminary Essay upon the Systematic Arrangement of the Fishes of
the?Devonian Epoch,' Mem. Geol. Surv. of U.K., 1861.
Nka To Mr. Bolus, Feb. 4, 1873, who sought election to the Linnean (see
ii. 4).

412 SCIENCE OBGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

time to revise his editorial work. Indeed, he saw clearly that
the Kew Journal could not advantageously continue, and with
the help of old and trusted friends like Bentham and Harvey
and Asa Gray, persuaded his father to give it up.

But the Linnean Journal was restricted to working men
of science. To reach a wider public, to spread the general com-
prehension of scientific ideas, seemed very important to the
advanced wing. To this end a scheme was organised, mainly
through Huxley, whose energy was in touch with the literary
as well as the scientific world in London. From 1858 onwards
a fortnightly scientific column was arranged for in the Saturday
Review,1 to which Hooker was too busy to contribute, replying
to Huxley's invitation as follows : •

Kew: Wednesday, 1858.

I have long been under an engagement of honor to
Lindley's Gardeners1 Chronicle, a paper that has acted most
liberally by me, and for which I have not written a line for
9 months, and have no present prospect of doing anything
for, though I really ought and should. Now I cannot bring
myself to the scratch to do articles (and however simple
I am well paid even for notices of Botanical Events and
translations of short foreign announcements) ; how can I
expect to screw myself up to write pregnant columns (for
they must be bellyfulls) for the Sat. Review ?

Besides all this, as my non-original- work- duties increase
here, I proportionately crave to be at original work. I want
to get up good papers on obscure and difficult Natural Orders,
and such work is quite inconsistent with reviewing.

I quite feel the want of such a class of articles as you
propose and feel my own selfishness in withdrawing ; but I
doubt if the good effects would be at all commensurate with
the time and labor that we should expend, and I am quite
sure that both you and I would be much happier without
such trammels. Further I am confident that the articles
would in our cases be contributed at the expense of original
work, and we should thus ' seek in certain ill, uncertain
good.'

1 It is amusing to find the Saturday, for all its excellence on the literary
side, condemned as ' dreadfully sententious and priggish * and amateurish in its
politics, whence its sobriquet of Pall Mall Gazette.

THE NATURAL HISTORY REVIEW 413

In 1860 a wider opening offered. Three years before that,
the Natural History Review had been] established in Dublin,
its moving spirit and chief owner being Dr. Wright, whilst
amongst others interested in it was Harvey, to whom Hooker
wrote in candid condemnation of the first number and in par-
ticular of a careless survey of Hooker's views on Natural Orders.

I beg that you will read what I have said, and tell me
if you are not wholly mistaken in your suppositions. If that
is the way you are to review Botanists' labours for Dublin
Review I think we had better keep up the Kew Journal in
self defence.

Indifferent success attended the Journal in its Dublin
home. After nearly three years Dr. Wright proposed to trans-
fer it to London, and to associate Huxley in the editorship, with
practical control of the scientific side in his hands. Though
the latter saw in the new scheme nothing but extra work for
himself, it promised much for the interests of science, * con-
sidering the state of the times and the low condition of natural
history publications (always excepting Quarterly Mic. Journ.).'
For three years he continued at this post, till overwhelmed
by ever increasing work ; then, paid editors being appointed, he
handed over to them the responsibility of the ' commissariat '
of the Review, which ran for two years more.

To limit the amount of this extra work, however, he had to
get co-editors. Writing to Hooker a full account of what had
been done, he remarks :

Now up to this point you have been in a horrid state of
disgust, because you thought I was going to ask you next.
But I am not, for rejoiced as I should be to have you, I know
you have heaps of better work to do, and hate journalism.
But can you tell me of any plastic young botanist who
would come in all for glory and no pay, though I think pay
may be got if the concern is properly worked. How about
Oliver ? And though you can't and won't be an editor
yourself, won't you help us and pat us on the back ?

To the new Natural History Review Hooker, however, both
contributed and offered criticism.

414 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.
To T. H. Huxley

January 4, 1861.

My only fault with the * Keview ' is its brevity as I told
Currie to-day — I am extremely pleased with it and shall
have some mild review for next number I hope if you have
space. I still think there will occur a few cases where
you must translate the German title — at least the German
Botanists do often invent titles that are unintelligible except
the book be read ! It is the most useful Eeview I ever saw.
Your article is very exhausting of all you propose, clear as
to argument and extremely well put ; the first three pages
are also very happy, especially the prop, relative to man's
duty. It will be a balsam to many short-witted and honest
but timid enquirers.

Another point in which the organising spirit made itself felt
was that of charitable funds for science. For such there was
only the Civil List to fall back upon, and the demands made
on it were ill regulated. The Treasury would be puzzled by
receiving four applications at once for Natural History pensions
— all the claimants being described as ' distinguished men.'
Under such conditions it was useless to bring forward another
who had not claims for Government aid.

Now a very deserving case occurred in the end of 1858,
of a microscopist who had done excellent work, but had not
achieved public distinction. To Hooker this hardly seemed
a case for a Government pension, if it had been possible to
obtain one. It was, however, a case for personal help from
scientific men. A strong appeal was made on general grounds
for £500 to buy an annuity, with the result that the amount
was more than subscribed twice over. Instead then of sinking
the whole sum in an annuity much larger than was proposed,
a wider scheme was put forward — namely, to invest the capital,
pay the annuity originally proposed to the beneficiary during
his life, and in the end secure the capital as nucleus of a general
scientific charitable fund, to be increased by voluntary sub-
scriptions. Subscribers were given an option as to the destina-
tion of their own gift. With hardly an exception all agreed on
the larger plan.

STATE VAILS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS 415
The following passages illustrate his point of view.

To the Bev. M. J. Berkeley

January 9, 1859.

I am quite sick and ashamed too of this constantly
begging Govt. for pensions for persons whose claims can in
no way be called national. Science suffers by the refusals
we get, and really national claims suffer too. We should
do much better to have a private fund for such unfortunate
men as A., B., etc. whose most meritorious labors are neither
sufficient to raise themselves to scientific hero-worship nor
are directly beneficial to the Arts or otherwise. I do not
think it fair to apply to the nation except in cases of great
eminence or services of great practical value. It is the duty
of Govt. to encourage and stimulate the first and to reward
the second, but if the Govt. pensions such men as A. and
B., they must also pension no end of literary characters with
equivalent claims and less chance of private help. Few
people look at this in a sensible manner, they regard pensions
as State Vails to be scrambled for in the most undignified
manner.

To W. H. Harvey

I see too, what I specially dislike, a sectarian view of the
case arising — it is the Microscope versus all science ; or
Nat. Hist, versus all other branches. I strongly object
on all grounds of policy and fairness too, to the establish-
ment of a * Naturalists' ' fund, except indeed the Physicists
prefer to have a separate one — when I shall gladly join the
Naturalists ; though even then I should feel myself in
honour bound to join a Physical Science one too. Any
attempt to segregate Nat. Hist, will do it great harm : it
cannot stand alone, it owes the Microscope to Phys. Science,
and all Physiolog. Botany too. Their narrow-minded views
are the bane of science.

As to the particular encouragements to Science that con-
sisted in the bestowal of medals for distinguished work accom-
plished, he came to find the whole thing unsatisfactory, after
it had fallen to him both to receive and to allot these. The
great difficulty lay in holding the balance between individual

416 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

distinction and the claim of each branch of science for recogni-
tion in its turn, between rewarding the man who had arrived
and encouraging the man who was working his way up.

Official recognition of this kind was very different from
a worker's acknowledgment of his predecessors' labours ;
that was a proper recognition to receive, and indeed mere
honesty to give. Personally, he was quite unconcerned if he
found, on occasion, that certain continental botanists ignored
the prior work of himself or his English friends, though he
condemned such lack of frankness. ' I always feel,' he tells
Asa Gray (March 29, 1857), * that we must so often unintention-
ally ignore one another's observations, that we can ill afford
to make the least of .those we do know of.' The only thing
that struck fire from him was neglect of his father's merits
or the discourtesy of failing to acknowledge his abundant
generosity.

The first of the letters that follow on the award of a Koyal
medal is in reply to a letter from Huxley, which is given in
the ' Life of T. H. Huxley,' vol. i, chap. 8, under date of
November 6, together with a response as generous as Hooker's
from Edward Forbes. Huxley, who was on the Eoyal Society
Council, explained to each of them, his close friends, why he
could not vote for one to the exclusion of the other, and there-
fore voted for both !

November 7, 1854.

MY DEAR HUXLEY, — I am very much obliged for your
kind note although quite uncalled for either as apologetic
or explanatory, for I fully appreciated and approved your
springs of action. I quite enjoyed having a competition
and should have been very sorry for the sake of science
and my own that no one else had been proposed. Of course
I do not in any way look upon my claims and Forbes's as
coming into competition, but do upon the claims of Botany
and my etceteras and Palaeontology and Forbes's etceteras
as having come into direct competition. There has been
but one honour given to Botany by the K.S., that is the
Copley medal to Brown, whereas Zoologists, Palaeontologists
and Geologists galore have been honoured over and over
again. I have always thought and still think that both

THE AWAKD OF MEDALS 417

Lindley and Bentham in this country deserve a medal,
infinitely before myself in Botany — men who are famous
abroad but thought comparatively little of in this country
from various motives. I should have been better pleased
still if you or some other naturalist had proposed Forbes,
for Grove 1 has no more real appreciation of Forbes's or of my
claims than Graham 2 or De la Eue 3 have, and acted simply
out of a vague sense of Geology being something more physical
than Botany. In an abstract point of view I think Forbes's
claims far superior to mine : but the E.S. should not look
solely to abstract claims, but seek to distribute their rewards
judiciously over all classes of science and the different
branches of the classes, e.g. taking a hypothetical case — a
man who (like you) works out a point of abstract science
during the difficulties and discouragements of a voyage, has
in my opinion an equal claim at least with a man who works
the same in his easy chair ; even though the latter works
it better.

Bell told me of all the proceedings after I left Council
on Thursday and spoke with undisguised satisfaction and
pleasure of the parts you had taken.

Ever, dear Huxley, yours,

J. D. HOOKER.

Anything in the nature of sectionalism in making these
awards was very repugnant to him ; and he was doubtless

1 Sir William Robert Grove (1811-96), a man of science and judge, waa
educated at Brazenose College, Oxford, subsequently receiving the D.C.L. in
1875, and the Cambridge LL.D. in 1879. Ill-health, which checked his early
career at the bar, gave him time to follow his scientific bent. He became a
member (1835) and subsequently Vice-President of the Royal Institution, and
Professor of Experimental Philosophy in the London Institution. His invention
of the gas voltaic battery in 1839 brought him election to the Royal Society the
next year and a Royal Medal in 1847. His most important work on the Correla-
tion of Physical Forces (1846) anticipated Helmholtz's essay on the same
subject. Later, his scientific eminence brought him much legal work in patent
cases. He was raised to the bench in 1871, retiring in 1887.

8 Thomas Graham (1805-69), chemist ; M.A. Glasgow 1824 ; Professor of
Chemistry, Glasgow, 1830, at Univ. Coll., London, 1837-58 ; Master of the Mint,
Keith prizeman and Gold Medallist of the Royal Society, first president of the
Chemical and Cavendish Societies; F.R.S. 1836, and twice vice-president;
Bakerian Lecturer 1850 and 1854; D.C.L. Oxford 1853.

8 Warren De la Rue (1815-89) was one of those successful men of business
with whom science came first. He was the author of various successful in-
ventions, both for commercial purposes and for scientific research, and was
especially distinguished for his work in celestial photography.

418 SCIENCE : OEGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

prompted by memories of this kind when, after privately
naming certain botanists as worthy of a medal, he wrote to
Henfrey in 1859 :

I may tell you that I am opposed to the whole system of
medalising, as being quite beneath the dignity of real science
and of the Koyal Society ; but if it is to go on, I shall hope
to see it well carried out.

Beyond the question of scientific recognition of science
work, lay the other matter of public recognition by knighthoods
and the like. This concerned him later; but to summarise
his opinion, services, not scientific eminence as such, should
be ' rewarded ' by distinctions.

Several letters illustrate his eagerness that due honour be
paid to his father ; the first is one to Bentham on his receipt
of the Eoyal Medal (November 20, 1859).

The first matter is the E.S. medal ; I, and all other
Botanists, are equally indignant with yourself, at my Father's
merits being overlooked in the distribution of [the] Copley
medal, the only one they could offer him — this is wholly
Brown's fault, and will I fear never now be mended, greatly
as it has been desired and tried for. The Copley is the only
medal that could be offered him, and that medal is theoretically
all but exclusively confined to great discoveries, or great
generalizations of proved value to future investigators. I
have long fought for its being given to general scientific
merit of half a century or upwards — hitherto in vain.
Happily the 2 Koyal medals are in so different a category
that they do not clash with the Copley, and they are further
confined to our countrymen ; but for this, your and my and
Lindley's having a Eoyal medal would have been more than
invidious. With regard to the claims of your line of research,
it is true that in Botany they have (thanks to Brown) been
altogether put aside, but those of a parallel character and
value have always been acknowledged in Zoology and
every branch of Physics ; and ' better late than never,'
is all I can say to the E.S. in your case — no medal was
ever more richly deserved and it was I am told given
unanimously.

EECOGNITION FOE HIS FATHER 419

To the Rev. M. J. Berkeley

1858.

I do not know whether I ever told you that there has
been for years a hitch about electing my Father into the
Academy at Paris, a matter now regularly jobbed. They
have long felt that they ought to do so, but time has crept
on and they have only cared to toady their own people.
As it is, Wallich's place is not yet filled up ! ! because one
party want my Father, another me, and a third (God help
the mark) Parlatore III1 I have written privately to
Decaisne (who is most honorable) to tell him that I must
not be thought of by any one, for that it would be both an
injustice and personal grievance to put me before'^my Father.
I could not of course allude to the matter myself to any
one but Decaisne (whom I knew from Brown and personal
knowledge that I could trust), but it may be possible for
you if you have occasion to write to Montagne to hint to
him how astonished people are that my Father's claims are
overlooked so long by the French Botanists. They are
very welcome to stultify themselves by putting Parlatore
before Bentham, Thomson, yourself, Harvey and half a
dozen other men I could mention without including myself,
but I cannot stomach this treatment of my Father. Please
keep this matter private, and

Believe me,
Ever affectionately yours,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

To Dr. Anderson

July 2, 1860.

Excuse my mentioning that any allusion to my Father
in acknowledging your obligation to the Kew Herbarium
(in Aden Florula) would gratify him very much. It is
sometimes forgotten that he is its author and owner,
and I know he has on such occasions felt hurt at the
omission.

1 Filippo Parlatore (1816-77) was born at Palermo ; Director of the Royal
Museum of Natural History at Florence and Professor of Botany. He is best
known in England for his monograph on conifers and his unfinished Flora
Italiana. He was President of the Royal Tuscan Horticultural Society and of
the Botanical Congress in Florence, 1874.

420 SCIENCE ORGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC.

Similarly to Harvey, July 1859, on the publication of his
' Thesaurus ' :

I do not know on what principle you put Herb. Hook,
to MacKaya bella, not to any other species, implying that
that alone was in Hb. Hook., indeed I think that Hb. Hook,
should be put to all those plants that were sent originally
to it, and of which Herb. T.C.D.1 received duplicates,
especially seeing how indefatigable my Father has been in
getting up correspondents for your books. ... I would not
mention this were it not that such trifles are made bones of
contention and that my Father has himself diverted the
current of Cape contributions to T.C.D. to a considerable
extent.

1 Trinity College, Dublin.

CHAPTER XXII

MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

SEVERAL letters bear on his methods of work and illustrate
his tendency to bring anomalies under established principles
instead of inventing new principles to suit the exception ;
his passion to verify things for himself ; his critical frankness
in dealing with ill-founded ideas combined with readiness
to accept well-founded criticism. Others are of personal
interest.

Kew : Wednesday, Sept. 20, 1854.

DEAR BENTHAM, — I have just been examining a mon-
strous Stachys sylvatica with a long 4-lobed ovary consist-
ing of 2 fore and aft carpels, i.e. one carpel with its back
to axis and 4 parietal ovules in pairs at the sutures, thus
(diagram).

I think this reduces your Labiatae to the ordinary type
of carpellary structure. Was it not you ? who once quoted
Labiatae to me as opposed to Brown's marginal carpellary
theory of origin of ovules ?

I am a far better Tory than you are and like laws. I
on principle object to nature having one law for carpellary
produced ovules and another for free central ones. I would
rather go the whole hog and call all placentation axial and
all ovules produced on the axis, or adnate portions of it,
or branched adnate portions of it, running along edges of
carpellary leaves, than to hold to one law for the majority
of plants and take another for the exceptions. In Botany
there are no end to the * morphological differentiations '
(as Von Baer calls them in Zoology) which result in the
most complete congenital obliteration of all traces of original

VOL. I 421 2 E

422 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

design in the construction of compound organs. I had a
talk with Lindley the other day about axial placentation,
and he immediately knocked me down with Schleiden's
argument derived from the ovule of Taxus being absolutely
solitary and terminating a branch — this vexed my soul ;
for I confess to the most perfect distrust of Schleiden, which
leads me to forget his writings, and I did, when reminded
of it, remember his dwelling on that very point. After two
days I modestly ventured to examine Taxus myself and
behold, I found two ovules in every one of the first 3
buds I opened, and neither terminal, and when only one
occurred it was lateral. Each had a rudimentary scale
like ovarium. So much for that argument. On the other
hand I can quite understand such a congenital arrest of
organs in Taxus as should result in an apparent terminal
ovule, without making a special law in the Vegetable King-
dom to account for it. I have also a monstrous Primula
with parietal placenta and ovules ; the Pink or Carnation
is another common case in point and so on, all new facts
tend to reduce the exceptions to the carpellary theory and
none cut the other way.

I have commenced the V.D.L. Flora, and find it my fate
to destroy species as I go on, and the more carefully I examine
the more to fell ; on the other hand I am extremely gratified
with the multitude of good, new and undescribed species
in the Australian Flora.

Passages may be quoted from two letters to Henslow
which are too long to give in full. Henslow, struck by
an anomalous structure in Nelumbium and several curious
points new to him, and unaware of the light thrown upon
these points by many observers, had founded an explana-
tion of them on the structure as it was before him, and
had assigned not only Nelumbium, but Nymphaea, to the
Monocotyledons. ^ Hooker had lately examined the germina-
tion of all the genera, and his lively criticism was directed,
not against the facts observed, anomalous though they
were, but against the reasoning, where there was so much
evidence, direct and indirect, to be reckoned with on the
other side.

NELUMBIUM : A PAEADOX 423

3 Montague Villas, Richmond : January 24, 1855.

DEAR HENSLOW, — Thomson and I are aghast, and
horrified, and thunderstruck, and doubled up at your con-
clusions about Nelumbiaceae. Here have we just printed
off the result of the most long and patient study, of all the
characters of all the genera, from the embryo, germination,
rhizome, etc., etc., and come to a definite conclusion, that
all these are in all respects dicots ; and here you come
in, and examining dried seeds of Nelumbium alone, knock
all our results on the head, ruthlessly, remorselessly,
wickedly and wantonly, perhaps with malice prepense !
Only fancy, I have just printed 8 pages of arguments
to prove that all are Dicots, root, stock (root-stock),
and branch, leaf, flower and fruit ! This is a blow to
Flora Indica. Alas for Flora Indica, we shall go into
mourning.

Joking apart, do you know that the point you have
settled (?) is the most difficult and most disputed in all
Systematic Botany, that it has occupied the attention of
observers from Malpighi to Trecul, Hook. fil. & Thomson ;
that D. C., Kichard, Planchon, Gertner, Asa Gray, Lindley,
Henfrey, several Jussieus, and others have made a special
study of it, and that within this very few months Trecul
has published long essays on the subject ? Like every
other subject of. the kind it cannot be settled by an exami-
nation of one organ or series of organs, but requires a very
careful consideration of an immense number of facts in
the comparative anatomy of plants. . . . Whether right or
wrong in your supposition, you have, I assure you, good
2 months' reading and study before you would be justified
in publishing on the subject ; except indeed you have
discovered some very novel fact. Thomson's and my belief
is, that the resemblances to Monocots are pure analogies
and nothing more ; you must remember too that upon
whatever individual point you may be inclined to ground
your arguments in favour of Monocots, you have an enormous
mass of evidence in favour of Dicots to subvert, besides
the direct affinities with Papaveraceae, Berberidaceae, and
Banunculaceae, which I do not see how you are to get over.
This one fact should engender caution, that Nymphs, have
direct relations with these Orders, and none with any Orders

424 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

of Monocots whatever. . . . Even Trecul, who considers
the rhizome of Nymphaea as exogenous, agrees that the
embryo is strictly dicotyledonous ! I have examined all
the genera in germination, Euryale, Victoria, Nymphaea,
and Nelumbium, and these are all germinal, exorhizal, and
dicot. in the process, besides the reticulated leaves and a host
of other characters that you must find some explanation of,
under your hypothesis.

. . . You may console yourself with the fact that there
is no snare so great as an anomaly of this kind, in the way
of a correct appreciation of the affinities of families. Of
all branches of Botany the Systematic requires the most
extensive knowledge of structure, and the most careful
consideration of the relative (far more than the positive)
characters afforded by the organs. Just look at Lindley's
heterodoxies with all his knowledge, all arising from seeing
only one side of the question. The older I grow and the more
I study the affinities of plants, the more ignorant I feel,
for it is a most comprehensive study. This is my homily
on Nymphaeaceae.

Richmond : Saturday, 1855.

DEAK HEN SLOW, — Many thanks for your exposition of
Nelumbium. I think you have got hold of as pretty a
paradox as ever graced the pages of Schleiden ; however I
will not prejudice your observation till I examine again.
My great objection was however not against your making
Nelumbium Monocots, which I always thought beyond
assault, and which has never been assailed but by yourself,
but Nymphaea, the structure of whose embryo and plumule
is so totally different from your analysis of Nelumbium,
that if your theory holds good then Trecul's paradox will be
exactly reversed by you and Nelumb. will go to Monocots,
and Nymph, remain in Dicots ! ! ! I think however that
your genius and originality have here led you deep into the
slough of Paradox and that your emersion when it comes,
will be with a rapidity directly proportioned to the buoyancy
of your good understanding and the density of the said
medium + the resilience resulting from the rapidity with
which you descended. ... I might have turned Buddhist,
Eomanist, Hindu or Mahomedan on half the evidence during
the course of my travels.

METAPHYSICAL VAGAEIES 425

A slightly condensed translation of Braun's 1 ' Rejuven-
escence of Plants ' appeared in 1854.

To T. H. Huxley

September 12, 1854.

I have been groaning over ' Rejuvenescence ' que Diable !
When is this German rubbish to end ? Do read the first 20
pages and tell me your candid opinion as a scientific man :
I confess to a want of poetic feeling or at least of that turn
of it that appreciates aesthetics in its modern application to
spiders and toadstools, or also (and really in this case to my
sorrow) of power to grasp metaphysical subjects, and what
some think high-class imagery too, and so I really would feel
it a personal favour if you would tell me whether I ought
to understand, or admire, or see any depth in, or at least see
nothing that should convince me that there was no depth in,
the first 20 pages of that blessed production, Braun's Re-
juvenescence. Mind you, I am a personal friend of Braun's
and like his real scientific work extremely, I cannot applaud it
too much, but there appears to me a wide difference between
exact studies upon the physiology and structure of crypto-
gamic plants, in which he excels, and upon the laws that
regulate the development of organs, in which he is also good
(though often fanciful), and these wild vagaries on the con-
nection of life, soul, porridge, mouse-traps, and the divine
essence. Braun's forte is mathematical precision and, like
many other men of like mind, he cannot (at least so I think)
distinguish between truth and nonsense when he takes up
speculative subjects ; after all perhaps I am fighting with a
shadow and I have a notion that after the 20th time of
reading Henfrey's execrable parody of the original, and after
[Black ?] (who is in Scotland) comes home, if I get him to en-
lighten me on the German, I shall find that Braun's mountain
will sink into a mole-hill and that I shall find he is only
clothing very old ideas in very cumbrous and far-fetched
garments. I am far from condemning the Ray Club for

1 Alexander Braun (1805-77) was born at Regensburg and educated privately
till 1815, when he was sent to Carlsruhe. He contributed to botany while still
a schoolboy. After study at Heidelberg (1824); Munich (1827) and Paris, he
became Professor (1832) and Director of the Natural History Museum at
Carlsruhe and later at Berlin. He wrote many papers ; his most famous work
is Das Individuum der Pflanze, Species, Generations, <&c., 1853.

426 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

translating these things, but I do condemn several of the
translations as utterly unworthy of the Club and of England
and as giving us the worst repute throughout Europe for our
knowledge, or rather ignorance, of the spirit and language
of Germany, and I protest boldly against such work as Oken,
Braun, Schleiden, Meyer, and others, being given to the
British public, without one word of explanation and without
a sound preliminary essay on the subject, pointing out what
can be understood from what cannot be, by 99/100 of the
readers, let these be ever so clever or all (like me) ever so
stupid ! It would surely be much better to offer a little of
the money spent on the laborious translation and printing
of the worthless parts (the repetitions and verbiage and tru-
isms and trash with which all these works abound) to a good
preliminary essay and good notes. Good God ! are these
authors such Oracles that we must translate every syllable
and render letter for letter, lest we lose a drop of their saliva,
or a whiff of their flatulence ? Darwin says he does not
pretend to comprehend it ! I have been reading Braun's
Prize Essay on ' The Individual* in Plants,' and like all other
Prize Essays, you can see it is written for a Prize, only over-
does and mystifies what, in the only sense we can grasp it, is
a very simple subject.

Braun reminds me of a kitten playing with its own tail.
I could not help taking a dose of your Individuality Lecture
after it as a curative.1

The following undated note, written while wife and family
were away in the summer of 1856, is the echo of a contro-
versy then proceeding in the Annals and Magazine of Natural
History. Huxley, in his Eoyal Institution lecture * On Natural
History as Knowledge, Discipline, and Power,' delivered on
February 15, 1856, had shown by various examples the
inadequacy of Cuvier's doctrine, passed on by uncritical
compilers, of a necessary physiological correlation of organs
which acts as an infallible guide in the restoration of fossils.
Given a tooth, then follows the shape of the jaw, the shoulder
blade, the forearms, the claws ; the diet and habit of the animal.

1 ' Upon Animal Individuality.' A Friday evening discourse delivered at
the Royal Institution, April 30, 1852. See T. H. Huxley : Scientific Memoirs,
vol. i.

CUVIEK CEITICISED 427

What then, says the critic, of the sloth ? What structural
distinction between herbivorous and carnivorous bears ? The
principle, 'valuable enough in physiology, is utterly insuf-
ficient as an instrument of morphological research.' Falconer
attacked him in the June number. Huxley replied in July.

[June ?], 1856.

DEAR HUXLEY, — I have been dissipating the disconsola-
tion of my solitude (rather fine that) by reading old Quarter-
lies as I nutrify and assimilate (better still) and find in xli.
313 a passage that will amuse you and rile Falconer — ' Under
the influence of this delusion " the necessary conditions of
existence " the deservedly celebrated Cuvier is found asserting
that any one who observes only the prints of a cloven hoof,
etc., etc. — it is worth your reading.

Ever yours,

J. D. HOOKER.

In the letters next given, a masculine view of housewife
philosophy blends with consideration for a * kitchen revolu-
tion ' which postponed a visit to the Huxleys. Mrs. Huxley,
be it remembered, was for a long time something of an invalid.

Kew : Sunday [Nov. 1859].

DEAR HUXLEY, — My wife and I are going to arrange with
Mrs. Huxley about our going to you on Wednesday week,
anent which we abjure the dinner. It is all very well for us
(you and I) to think and say what we please about it, but
even the most modified dinners are sources of disquiets in-
numerable to ladies who are not well known to one another.
I know from experience how it worritted my wife when she
was in poor health, to have to provide for only one or two
people whom she did not know ; it generally knocked her up
for the next day and she often knocked up before the evening
was over. They will be anxious about matters that we care
nothing about, let them go ever so far wrong ; and about
matters that cannot go wrong except by miracle, but then
you see they do believe in more miracles than we do and
that's the philosophy of it.

Now, as Hooker merely dated his letters * Kew ' or ' Kew
Gardens,' Mrs. Huxley had no address at which to write to

428 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

Mrs. Hooker. Being constrained to send his wife's second
letter, as he had sent her first, under cover to Hooker himself,
the Professor, while roundly asserting that * the first lieu-
tenant scorns the idea of being " worritted " about anything,'
took occasion to poke fun at his friend : * The obstinate manner
in which Mrs. Hooker and you go on refusing to give any
address leads us to believe that you are dwelling peripatetically
in a " Wan " with green door and brass knocker somewhere on
Wormwood Scrubbs, and that " Kew " is only a blind.' (See
* Life of T. H. H.,' i. ch. 17, under the erroneous date of 1861.)

Kew Gardens : Saturday, November 19, 1859.

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, — When you are wanted you
will find out where I am. Very soon I shall have a half
sheet of probabilities for you to calculate for me (in which
you may find that x = 0).

I have elected to dwell in obscurity for past 3 months
and should like to continue to do so for the future, and shall
try to. I have neither house, wife; nor children,1 and were I
not as uxorious as a guinea-pig, and philoprogenitive to a
fault, I should not sigh for change. I am living with my
ancestors who take their turns of taking to bed — it being
now the Mater who is prostrate, with a bad leg. As to
going to town, I have not the smallest idea of doing so till
my wife comes to wake me up, which will be when the house
is ready for her and she for it, and Henslow ready to part
with her, — he being absolutely lone now but for her.

I have avoided suicide by working extremely hard with
my head, hands; and legs, have finished 2 papers for
Linn. Trans.; 2 for Linn.- Journal, the Tasmanian Essay
which has run to 130 pages, and the Flora of that ilk in 700.
Except a week in Norfolk where I geologised 3 days with
Lyell and Gunn, I have been nowhere but for an occasional
Sabbath (I forget how to spell it, but know when it comes)
to Hitcham.2

1 Mrs. Hooker and the children were staying with Professor Henslow at
Hitcham, while the house into which they were moving was being painted.

2 A little later he tells Huxley how, besides his own ordinary duties and
works, he had in one week * revised proofs for five different authors' works,
contributed stuff for two lectures [by non-botanical friends] and precious stuff
too ! and read three authors' MSS., and reported on a long fossil paper.'

Amid ' all this mental rumpus ' without apparent end which made him

MANUAL WOKK : HOTHOUSE PESTS 429

I read the history of the unctuous meeting of Philos.
at Aberdeen and have read the severe remarks of barbarians
on the toadying and tuft-hunting and buttering. Judging
from titles of papers only, I should say there was never
so much good matter in science brought to a head at once.
Whilst you were sporting your science I was for 6 hours
a day engaged in the philosophical pursuit of distributing
86,000 duplicate named Indian plants. I liked it passably
well ! I could think all the time and to some supposed
purpose too. A good daily allowance of purely (or almost
purely) manual work upon scientific materials is a most
wholesome thing. I have thought my best thoughts when
collecting and arranging, and now that I do not intend to
collect or arrange any more, I find myself a fool for having
snubbed these mechanical exercises that have secured the
opportunities of opening up so many trains of ideas, that
would otherwise never have* fructified. , , ,

Huxley had asked for specimens of some insect pests from
the hot-houses of Kew.

I send a brood or two of common mealbug, a piece of
old cactus with Cochineal Cocci, and a few leaflets of a fern
with .' Scale insect ' on it.

Fortunately we cannot supply you abundantly by this
post, as my Father and I have had such rows with the
foreman and gardeners about the prevalence of these beasts,
that they are nowhere very abundant in our houses just
at present. Asking us for Cocci is like asking a decent
Boarding School Lady for a few crabs and other Pediculi
from her pupils ! However for Science's sake we will for-
give you.

Unnecessary questions are a trial. He writes to Professor
Henslow :

January 20, 1855.

Many thanks for your letter ; I have been bothered
out of my life with enquiries about Gynerium argenteum,
and of all the vvs she is the most troublesome. If

altogether dizzy with his own and his neighbours' affairs, there was a grain of
comfort : ' I have but one grim abiding source of satisfaction — I don't lecture
and I never will.'

430 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

Sir J. K. would only read the Gardeners' Chronicle, he will
find out all about the plant and that the male is not now to
be had at Kew — any more than apple flowers are at Xmas.
I like your account of Sir J. K., he promises well, but these
people are always promising well, and they make me as
snappish as a turtle by asking questions that are answered
a hundred times over in the weekly periodicals. Some
other people bother me in like manner about Bhododendrons;
and 1 am tempted to say * read my book and you will find
out all about them ' ; it is hard to have to write books and
read them to the public afterwards !

A similar case occurs years afterwards.
To T. H. Huxley

December 2, 1869.

A. is a good soul, but is cursed with a Microscope.

I proposed a tax on microscopes some years ago, exempt-
ing Professors only: Eecommend to him a mild course of
study — to be followed by a reperusal of your lecture, after
which you may tell him safely that he may write again !

The following touches on the sense of home. In 1854
Bentham had just decided to give his valuable herbarium to
the nation and leave his beautiful but remote home in Hereford
for Kew. With characteristic self -depreciation he had even
contemplated giving up botany altogether, but the Hookers
urged him to join them at Kew, where he could have the run
of their own herbarium and library, and help to bring out the
Colonial Floras projected by Sir William. Hooker had sug-
gested this already, writing in 1853 :

Do you know we often speculate on your coming to live
in Kew, with plenty of botanical society for yourself and
of friends for Mrs. Bentham ; how glad we should be of you.
You are suffering from a common calamity in the country :
the migration of neighbours, and one you cannot guard
against and which will grow with your years. If I saw any
prospect of an advantageous settlement of your collection
at Kew I would urge your cutting Pontrilas and having a
small establishment here. I think you could live here com-
fortably for £600 including as much fly-hire as you pleased.

BENTHAM AND KEW 431

Then, were your Herb, at the K. of Hanover's and your
Library with yourself, you might get on very comfortably.
This will be my resting place no doubt, and I do not think we
should quarrel, and I am sure our better halves would hail
the event. If you should think of such a change (and it
strikes me that feeling as you must, the comparative solitude
of your present position, you may do so) I need not say how
happy I should be that you put it into execution.1

To George Beniham

February 16, 1854.

MY DEAR BENTHAM, — I am heartily glad that your mind
is made up now, as I cannot but in my humble judgment
think that it is so for the wisest and best in every point of
view. I have turned the matter over in every possible way,
as I have been going through the daily dull routine of
distributing tickets and specimens for ' Herb. New Zealand '
and ' Herb. Ind.' or ' Hook. fil. and Thorn.' I do not wonder
at your regret in leaving Pontrilas, seeing that I have always
felt leaving a home, however bad, and even for a better. In
your case, so far as the change is concerned of house, yours
will not be for the better, as you certainly will not get so
good, large and airy a one here, and I fear nothing so much
as your feeling the change. Still as I have always become
attached to a home however bad, I quite expect that you
will warm to a small abode here. It is very odd, but I left
my detestable cabin on board the Erebus with real regret,
and no less my wretched tent in the Himalaya : not from a
maudlin romantic regard, but because I felt I had been happy
and comfortable (after a sort) under their respective shelters
and fulfilled so much of my destiny under them as was
appointed to me without wishing or caring for better.

Whenever it was possible, during this period, a summer
trip to Switzerland, then a more primitive playground than in
these days, was planned. The Hookers enjoyed making up
a small party of intimate friends, travelling in cheerful com-
panionship and with the economy that attends on numbers.
One such group which set out in 1852 became immortalised

1 In 1855 Bentham moved to London, taking a flat in Victoria Road,
whence he visited Kew daily.

432 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

in their inner correspondence as Brown, Jones, and Eobinson
after Doyle's delightful Tourists. Brown was Harvey ; Jones,
Hooker ; and Eobinson, Thomson, then established at Kew with
the Hookers. In the autumn after their return the first
letter to Harvey (November 4) opens :

MY DEAR BROWN, — Your letter greeted us well and we
were greatly delighted to receive it. Eobinson says ' he
would not like to insure your scrag in Tipperary ' ; Jones
says he would, petikularly Mrs. Jones says so.

And a few days later :

Mrs. Jones begs to report that all at Kew are flourishing ;
Mr. Eobinson especially is in high feather, and evidently
much the better for his Swiss trip. Has Mr. Brown heard
that Auguste Balmat is expected in London next month ?
The Miss Martineaus informed Jones of the fact, hoping he
might be able to assist in finding some employment for him
during his stay in England — a difficult affair.

A thick yellow fog necessitates the writing of these lines
by .candle light ! Finally Mrs. Jones begs her kind regards,
and will be very glad to see Mr. Brown at Kew again some
day.

Afterwards the nicknames were regularly kept up in per-
sonal messages about ' Mrs. Jones ' and * the little Joneses,' or
in planning future trips, as in 1858, when Mrs. Hooker, after
drawing up a plan of campaign, adds :

Now do, Mr. Brown, join your faithful friends the Joneses
on this beautiful little tour, which looks so charmingly
tempting on paper ; it would add so much to our pleasure
to have you with us. We don't mean to be away more than
a month, and I shall set to work soon to lay it out in days,
so as to get it all in comfortably — and I'll keep all the
accounts, and you shall have no bother at all, but just
enjoy yourself, and I am sure it will do you a great deal of
good. Don't say no all in a hurry, but take time to con-
sider. Joe sends his love.

It was a year when, owing to press of work, Hooker confessed
he grudged the very time for a holiday, and suggested as a

HOLIDAY TKAVEL 433

variant to stay * two or three quiet weeks at some cheap, out
of the way place (Tyrol or Pyrenees) and work up some of my
florating materials, and afterwards go on to Sardinia or not.'

My pleasure [he writes to Harvey, July 20, 1858] would
be to go to only 2 or 3 places and spend a week at least at
each — as one week at the Distel-Alp or elsewhere in Saas
valley — one in valley of Ansasca, a day off, and one some-
where else, hard by, doing some work at each and enjoying
some very moderate walks at each. I have no love of climb-
ing any more, or of cleaving glaciers, but I should like
wandering for an hour or two in a day about such places
out of the way of tourists or tripping excursionists.

But alternative plans had to be made nearer home, for
Mrs. Hooker could not go far away from Bath, where her
aunt, Miss Jenyns, was lying seriously ill.

Thus a few days later :

We proposed the Cornish tour because my wife would be
as near Bath there as here. I am charmed with your Kilkee
plans, not so Mrs. Jones who has an aversion to the sea, no
taste for that seanery and besides Flea rhymes with Kilkee.
The great objection is however that it is as far from Bath
as Switzerland. There is also the Hewmeedity of W- Ireland,
and 16 days' wind and rain out of a fortnight, plus colds
and neuralgia, is no joke on a holiday tour.

' But whatever be decided,' he adds, * I am like you, I
bargain for the sea or the snow — all else is dull, flat, tame,
stale and unprofitable.'

So again botanising is a leading attraction in the unfulfilled
holiday plan for 1859, and he declares to Harvey :

I would ten times rather go to Cadiz than to top of Mt.
Eosa for a month ; specially as there is something to be got
and much to be seen in Spain, and especially if the trip
brought in the contrasted regions of the Atlantic and Medi-
terranean coasts, followed by the crossing of the Pyrenean
pass to the Biscayan coast, so as to secure comparative
results beyond the mere numbers of species.

434 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860

In 1855 the Great Exhibition in Paris, rival of its English
prototype of four years before, drew everyone to France.
' When are you going to Paris ? ' he asks Henslow on June 1.
* The Benthams have taken lodgings there for 6 weeks. I am
all in uncertainty whether I go at all or no. I am desperately
busy.' After the fashion of such shows, it was not half com-
pleted by the end of the month ; still ' I hear that it is really
a very fine sight indeed already, and that the public are
grumbling unreasonably and unnecessarily.'

On July 3 he writes to Bentham in Paris that he has * partly
plotted a trip to Germany with Nat. (Lindley) * about the
middle of August,' adding :

I really do not know what to say about going to Paris ; I
can't speak French you know, and am indomitably repugnant
to exert myself in conversation. I am pretty ashamed of
my ignorance, and hate myself quite sufficiently for my in-
dolence and mauvaise honte not to wish to expose myself to
my own reproaches. You that wrote a book on Logic may
unravel this if you can. Then too I do not care to go without
Fanny ; altogether, in short, I am in a muddle. I did half
promise to go with Henslow, but he is disgusted with his wax
models having collapsed. I do not feel happy at the thought
of going anywhere with this huge Indian collection on hand.

Eventually he joined Henslow at the end of September,
on his way back from a visit to Germany, for the Queen was
going to Paris for a week in mid August, and the place would
be impossible for lesser folk.

From this trip he returned on October 3 * via Paris, from
Vienna, Tyrol, Como, Mt. Eosa, Alps, Oberland, &c. (in inverse
order).' The journey is described in the following letter by
Lord Lindley :

The Lodge, East Carleton, near Norwich : June 19, 1912.

DEAR LADY HOOKER, — Many thanks for your kind
letter and the Photograph of Sir Joseph which I am very
pleased to have.

1 Nathaniel Lindley, son of Dr. John Lindley, Ph.D., F.R.S., the Professor
of Botany at University College, London ; LL.D., D.C.L., Fellow Royal Society
and British Academy ; called to the Bar 1850 ; Master of the Rolls 1897-1900 ;
Baron 1900.

A TRIP WITH LOED LINDLEY 435

I have no notes of my trip with Sir Joseph in 1855, but
I have a lively recollection of its main incidents. The cholera
was raging and we were fumigated on the frontier of Italy on
the Stelvio Pass. Milan was stinking with Chloride of lime ;
Venice was deserted, and the Scientific meeting at Vienna
which Sir Jos. was to attend was put off. We saw the
caves at Laibach and went to Breslau to see Goppert's
celebrated collection of Amber containing seeds, insects, &c.,
which Hooker was very desirous of seeing. We wound up
our trip by staying a week inTParis to see the Great Exhibition
there and got home penniless.

Our trip cost us £50 apiece ; and we often saved hotel
bills by travelling at night when passing through unin-
teresting country. I could talk French and German well
then — I wish I could now ! Hooker had introductions to
Scientific men, but I cannot recall their names — Humboldt
and Koch, I think, at Berlin ; a Botanist at Vienna, Goppert
at Breslau, and several in Paris. I think there was some
one in Dresden and another in Munich ; and we went and
spent a night with a friend at a house on a lovely lake not
far from Munich, but I forget the name of the Man and the
place. Von Martius may have been the man, but I am not
by any means sure.

I wish I could help you further. We met Henslow and,
I think, a daughter of his when in Paris, and stayed at the
same Hotel.

CHAPTER XXIII

LETTEKS TO DABWIN, 1843-1859

IN one of his letters Darwin makes special mention of pre-
serving his friend's letters. The answers to scientific questions
are detached and placed among the memoranda of that subject ;
the other parts are put among his general correspondence, so
that it would only be a matter of half an hour to rearrange
them in case of need. In spite of his care, however, a large
number of the earlier letters from Hooker have disappeared
wholly or in part. From the remainder I give a selection to
illustrate their correspondence before the appearance of the
' Origin.'

Darwin's first letter to Hooker (December 1843) is printed
in the ' Life of Charles Darwin,' ii. 21. He had then sent his
Galapagos collections to Hooker through Henslow, who had
had them in keeping (see ' More Letters of Charles Darwin,'
i. 400) ; the next in sequence, which answers the following
of Hooker's, is given in 'More Letters of Charles Darwin,'
i. 39.

J. D. Hooker to C. Darwin

December 1843.

The Galapagos plants are far more extensive in number
of species than I could have supposed, and are the foundation
of an excellent Flora of that group : Mr. Henslow has sent
with them those of Macrae which hardly differ from yours.
I was quite prepared to see the extraordinary difference
between the plants of the separate Islands from your
Journal, a most strange fact, and one which quite overturns
all our preconceived notions of species radiating from a

436

EANGE OF PLANTS 437

centre and migrating to any extent from one focus of greater
development.

I do not think there is in the North any instance of the
floras of two such remote spots as Kerg. Land and Cape
Horn being identical. Two Floras appear in the Northern
Hemisphere, the American and the European. The former
is confined to the American Arctic shores and islands, the
latter to all Arctic Europe, Asia and Greenland : Western
Arctic American to the W. of the great chain of the Kocky
Mountains, and North of the Oregon Biver may also belong
to the European Flora and is likely to, but I have not
compared, having no materials in the Erebus. The abrupt
line of demarkation is most remarkable in Baffin's Bay and
Davis Straits, the most common European Heathers and
some other plants being found abundantly along the Eastern
shores and islands of those waters, but never on the Western.
Of course a multitude of plants are common to both Hemi-
spheres, which makes it in one sense the more remarkable
that two or three of the types of Northern European Botany
should not cross to the Westward of Longitude 60° W.

I have been progressing with the Antarctic plants, using
yours, King's and my own at once, and each according
to the Nat. Ords., beginning with Banunculaceae, where
the value of every scrap tells better than it is possible to
suppose. The little Cardamine or Cress I prove, by com-
parison with about 50 states of it running through the whole
continent of S. America, to be the same as the most common
European weed, C. hirsuta. This is not wonderful, but it
is, that Winter's Bark, Drimys Winteri, should extend
through the whole continent of S. America and Mexico, from
25° N. to 56° S. It is true that the extreme states vary,
and apparently specifically, but take the regular series of
specimens, beginning with my own Cape Horn ones, your
and King's Fuegian, Bertero's and Bridge's and Cuming's
Chilian, the Brazilian ones of many collectors ; Peruvian
and Bolivian States from others ; and finally, end the list
with the Mexican, and no one (not even the most determined
species-monger) can make them specifically distinct. It
is further proved by the later Brazilian Botanical authors
considering their species the Chilian, and contemporaneous
Mexican writers, not aware of this last re-union, uniting

VOL. I 2 F

438 LETTEKS TO DARWIN, 1843-1859

theirs to the Brazilian. I do not suppose that there is
another plant of so great a size having one third as great
a range in Latitude.

The Govt. have not as yet granted anything towards
my publication, but I hope they will ere long. Not being
a good arranger of extended views . I rather fear the Geo-
graphical distribution, which I shall not attempt till I have
worked out all the species, especially as I hope that more
facts of as great importance as the range of the Winter's
Bark may turn up. With many happy returns of this
season,

Believe me, my dear Sir,

Your most truly and obliged,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

We have just had a pretty little Barberry of your Chiloean
collection \Berberis Darwinii] engraved for the Icones Plan-
tarum, as it will not come into the Antarctic Flora, save in
a note.

Early April 1845.

I do not doubt the Flora of the Sandwich Islands being
very peculiar, but the difficulty is to settle what amount
of new species or of new genera produces peculiarity. One
species will sometimes render a whole vegetation peculiar
in the eyes of some. In some instances, which I mentioned
to you before, and which Hinds l has wholly overlooked, the
Flora of the Sandwich group is quite singular, in the pre-
ponderance chiefly of Lobeliaceae and Scaevoleae (if I
remember) ; they are not however likely to strike a casual
observer or to give a feature to the vegetation. Wilkes is
probably indebted to his Botanist for the observation, which
is just : no missionary book, nor does Cook (I think) nor any
other unpractised observer, particularize the group as having
any peculiarities of vegetation, but the contrary. I have
not read Wilkes yet. Our ideas of peculiarity are most
loose, we have no standard ; in the first instance we must
know the absolute numerical amount of peculiar species ;
this must ever be the primary point, the leading fact ; all

1 Richard Brinsley Hinds (d. before 1861) was surgeon to H.M.S. Sulphur,
and made the first collection of Hongkong plants which reached England. He
Wiis author of The Regions of Vegetation, 1843, and edited the botany of H.M.S.
Sulphur's voyage, andcontributed several papers on shells to various publications.

PECULIAR SPECIES AND OCEANIC ISLANDS 439

other causes of peculiarity, as a preponderance of species,
genus or higher group, or insulation of individuals, &c.,
&c., must be secondary considerations. Except Brown and
Humboldt, no one has attempted this, all seem to dread the
making Bot. Geog. too exact a science ; they find it far
easier to speculate than to employ the inductive process.
The first steps to tracing the progress of the creation of
vegetation is to know the proportion in which the groups
appear in different localities, and more particularly the
relation which exists between the floras of the localities, a
relation which must be expressed in numbers to be at all
tangible.

Edinburgh : July 1845.1

Bother variation, development and all such subjects !
it is reasoning in a circle I believe after all. As a Botanist
I must be content to take species as they appear to be, not
as they are, and still less as they were or ought to be. You
see I am annoyed at my own incapacity to fathom or follow
the subject to any good purpose (open confession is good
for the soul).

I think I can give you plenty of instances of peculiar
genera with several good species in very small islands. [A
list follows.]

I have always felt opposed to Bory's (who is a great
Gascon ! but not to be despised) views of the variableness
of insular species. I certainly have no good evidence in
favour of the loose statement I made and which corresponded
with a vague idea I held, of insects being scarce on islands ;
yet 13 species is surely very few for Keeling if size is to be
regarded ; how often may you not find 13 on your own
window ? Kerguelen Land has only 3. New Zealand and
V.D.L. are certainly poor — in Trinidad (of Brazils) I saw
only 3, I think, a Hemerobius and the House flies and Cock-
roach, introduced from a wreck : Canaries and Madeira are
poor, I think ; Cape de Verds are too dependent on the W.
coast of Africa to judge from. Nothing struck me as so
marvellous as the appearance of 4 Insecta and many Arach-
nida you mention as on St. Paul's rocks. Still I agree with
you on the main point that such few as there are would be
enough for impregnation if they only went to work about it.

1 For Darwin's answer, see More Letters, i. 51.

440 LETTERS TO 'DARWIN, 1843-1859

I cannot prove that there is much hybridising l in nature,
but do not see why there should not be, as we do not doubt
that species require the pollen of other individuals, exactly
as in the higher animals you must not ' breed in ' (I think the
term is).

I cannot hook my Kerguelen trees or climate on to the
vacillating temperature of S. America : many thanks for
the information though. Do you connect the union of the
Conchogeographic districts at the Galapagos with the
currents ?

Every young Irish Yew bears berries ; there is a sort of
Irish Yew in Ayrshire which I believe, like the Goddess
Diana of the Ephesians, dropped down from Heaven, and
picked itself up in a garden ; when I hear whether it bears
berries I will tell you if she be equally chaste. If the Yew
had been Italian and bows made it would have been dedi-
cated to Diana.

And now to bother you for the last time. The re-appear-
ance of plants in certain situations is a curious phenomenon
of which instances are multiplying daily in this neighbour-
hood : there are doubtless series of seeds in some grounds
lying dormant but not dead : what a curious principle life
must be and what an uncomfortable abode it must often have.
Cutting open railways causes a change of vegetation in two
ways, by turning up buried live seeds and by affording space
and protection for the growth of transported seeds : so that
it is often very difficult to determine to which cause the
appearance or superabundance of a plant is attributable.
The Dutch Clover case is constantly quoted, but the Stirling
Castle one is more curious. The King's Park was dug up in
about 1650 ? during the 1st rebellion ; wherever the cuts were
made for encampments, the Broom appeared, but in a year
or two disappeared. In the rebellion of 1745, it was again
encamped upon and again Broom came up and disappeared :
it was afterwards ploughed and immediately became covered
with Broom, which has all, for the third time, vanished.

To conclude (I have been reading Scotch Sermons !)
how curious that water plants should be so widely dif-
fused. Water must have been a mighty agent in dissemina-
tion ; not only though are these diffused but are diffusable.

1 The word is used in the sense of the later ' cross-fertilisation.'

VALIDITY OF SPECIES 441

Aponogeton, a Cape plant, not native of cold regions, bears
a freezing every winter in our ponds : no one would have
dreamt of it.

Edinburgh : July 1845.

I am exceedingly glad that 1'Espece [by Godron] has
interested you, and will try and get you a copy from Mon-
tagne, through whom my father received this. I am not
inclined to take much for granted from any one who treats
the subject in his way and who does not know what it is to
be a specific Naturalist himself. Those who have had most
species pass under their hands, as Bentham, Brown, Linnaeus,
Decaisne, and Miquel, all I believe argue for the validity of
species in nature ; they all direct attention to the cases where
salient characters are unimportant, though taken advantage
of by the narrow-minded studiers of overwrought local floras,
and these facts, thus noticed as cautions to others, are taken
up by such men as Gerard, who have no idea what thousands
of good species there are in the world. Nature may have
both made and muddled species ; we shall never know what
are species in some genera and what are not. Generally
cultivation will prove the validity of a species ; Gerard says
that ' varieties of apples, &c. are more distinct than many
species,' but how soon all revert to crabs ; again, the wheat
is always adduced as a permanent variety of some unknown
plant and it ought on that account to rank as a species, but I
do not think so because it will never run wild ; it is to me
very marvellous that the wheat seed is destroyed by being
left in the ground of our country and that we see so little
next year on a field that has supported millions of ears during
the present..

Gerard evidently is no Botanist, he talks of having
found both Prunus spinosa and Eubus rusticans without
spines. Now spines are only abortive branches, and their
absence or presence is never, of itself, a botanical character ;
as a spine is not an organ per se : and again, no Eubus ever
had or ever will have spines ; the prickles of Eubus are mere
appendages of the cuticle and have no organic connection
like spines with the pith and wood of the plant : species vary
in the prickliness, just as they do in hairiness, according to
the amount of spines or hair produced ; but they vary in
spininess according to the number of branches that are

442 LETTEES TO DARWIN, 1843-1859

checked in growth which is much affected by want of

moisture. You are right then to query that bit about the

plants developing spines in bad soil ; for they only lose the

power of nourishing the new leaf buds sufficiently and do

not develop a new organ. (Hence hairiness is of more

importance than spininess in distrib.). The Persicaria

becoming hairy when removed from moist places is natural :

hairs are believed to be provided as hygrometric appendages,

to modify respiration and transpiration, water plants don't

want them. It is facts such as the Irish Yew presents that

afford fair ground for argument on such a topic. Noting

instances by tens or hundreds of variation in individual

species is nothing new ; few have an idea of the labour

required to establish or destroy a species of a mundane genus.

You have a Senebiera from Tres Montes, its capsules are

much larger than the common S. pinnatifida, but that is so

universally diffused a plant and so variable in the size of

its leaves that at first sight no one would be inclined to

grant specific dignity to the Tres Montes plant from the

capsules. It struck me to put this subject to a Geographical

test, the result is, that the S. pinnatifida is probably a native

of the Plate alone, whence it has spread by ships all over

East and West America, all West Europe near the coast,

in fact both shores of the Atlantic, from Britain to the Cape

and from Patagonia to Canada, wherever ships touch and

cultivation ensues, and on W. from Valparaiso to California,

wherever ships go, but through many hundreds of specimens

there is no variation whatever in the size of the pods, and I

therefore conclude that the Tres Montes plant is the W.

coast representative of the E. coast plant. Now though

De Candolle had hinted that S. pinn. was an American

plant, he did not define its limits and retained two or three

identical plants as different species which came from out

of the way localities : to define its limits I had not only to

consult all floras where it was described, but all where it

was not, for such a mundane plant creeps into every flora.

My troubles did not end here, for I had no Valparaiso

Senebiera, and Bertero has an undescribed one from that

port, which is alluded to as S. diffusa, Bert. MSS. I naturally

concluded yours was this, but thought I would write to

Brit. Mus. to confirm it, for fear of accident, but Bertero's

APPAEENTLY PECULIAE SPECIES 443

was genuine pinnatifida, he gave it a new name taking for
granted it was a new species. So as 8. pinnat. does not at
Valparaiso vary into big pods I am more persuaded that
yours is a representative species of W. coast of N. America.
That neutral territory of representative species you ask
about is just what I want to work out, but it needs great
materials.

Ever yours most truly,

J. D. HOOKER.

The following comes between Darwin's letters given in
M.L. i. 411 and 414, of which the latter is dated April 10, 1846.

One of the great objects I had in view in my notion
above alluded to [of the distrib. of Galapagos plants] was
to group the plants according to their derivation, and I have
a class in reserve for ' apparently peculiar species, possibly the
altered forms of introduced plants.' It is quite true that in
most islands there is a lot of very dubious species, by no
means to be confounded with their countrymen, and not
polymorphous in the said island, but wofully near certain
continental congeners. Thus I would divide the Galapagos
plants into 4 • groups : 1. Ubiquitous, e.g. Avicennia.
2. Of nearest continent, as Baccharis. 3. Possibly altered
state [illegible]. 4. Original creations, as Pleuropetalum
or Scalesia. The third group may not be a large one in the
Galapagos (according to my notions) but its acknowledged
existence is a matter of some importance. In the cases of
Madeira, the Canaries and Azores, said group 3 must be very
considerable. Such however is the difference of opinion
amongst Botanists as to what should or should not be a
species, that the question in any shape will be a troublesome
one, though not on that account to be dismissed unconsidered.

I stumbled on a splendid fact the other day, that the
Lycopodium cernuum is only found in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of the hot springs in the Azores. When alluding
to its distribution at p. 114 of my Flora I dared not mention
that it was not known to be an inhabitant of Madeira or the
Canaries, as I thought it must turn up there ; now however
I do not expect it and feel sure that the presence of this
torrid plant in the Azores is due to the hot springs. What
I am most pleased at is the apparent proof of the universal

444 LETTEES TO DAKWIN, 1843-1859

suspension of the sporules of this genus in the air and the
consequent strengthening of my hypothesis, that the genus
should be decimated sparing only every tenth ! Of course
it is a strong fact for migration, and for the existence of the
impalpable spawn of Fungi, &c., in all air.

I have been more coolly analysing the bearings of the
Forbes Botanical question l lately, and with the distressing
result, that I fear I must haul out of all participation with
him. You will think me unstable as water, and I must
blame myself for speaking too much without thinking. It
is not from a reconsideration of his facts and arguments
that my faith is weakened, but from an independent exami-
nation of the Flora of the N. Atlantic Isles and W. U.
Kingdom, which shows that there are plants in those regions
which have been more put to in getting there than the
Asturias ones need have been. Such are the American
plants, Eriocaulon septangulare in the Hebrides and W.
Ireland, American Neottia in S. Ireland, and Trichomanes
brevisetum in W. Ireland and Madeira, all of them American
plants not found further E. on continents of Europe or
Africa. Also the Gymnogramma Totta, a fern of the Cape
only in Madeira and Azores, and Myrsine africana, which
positively skips from the Cape across all intermediate
Africa on one side to Abyssinia and on the other to the
Azores ! I hope to be allowed a conversation with Forbes
on the subject, for really with his Sargassum weed, &c., he
is going too far.

It is very easy to explain on what sort of ground Botanists
make one class of plants higher, and as easy to prove them
futile by their results. I do not however think your objection
valid, urged on the grounds of Owen's observations on
organs which are developed in the animal kingdom,2 but
which organs are valueless for systematic purposes, if present
even, in the vegetable. It is upon the modifications of the

1 Viz., that several Spanish plants in Ireland could not have been trans-
ported by any known agencies ; hence they supported the argument for a
Miocene continental extension between Ireland and Spain, and from Spain to
the N. Atlantic Islands.

2 A. St. Hilaire used a multiplicity of parts — e.g. several circles of stamens,
as evidence of the highness of the Ranunculaceae : Owen conversely used the
same argument to show the lowness of some animals, urging that the fewer
the number of any organ by which the same end is gained, the higher the animal.

The subject of ' high ' and ' low ' is touched upon further, pp. 460, 463.

HIGHNESS AND LOWNESS IN PLANTS 445

sexual organs and their accessories that all the Nat. Orders
are denned. The organs of locomotion afford the Botanist
no characters, those of digestion next to none : and the
mode after which the various component parts of a com-
pound body (a plant) are arranged is valuable only for the
3 highest groups, Monocot, Dicot, and Acot, and not absolute
even amongst these. Generally speaking, in Botany highness
and lowness are synonymous with complexity and simplicity
of structure. I can hardly conceive either simplicity or
complexity of one particular organ indicating the rank of
a being in the scale of creation.

November 1851.

Coprosma is almost peculiar to N. Zealand, and for the
life of me I do not know how to draw the line between there
being only one species or 28 ! — it covers the country in
every form of herb, bush and tree, from sea to mountain
top, — but it is no worse than Eubus, Willow or Kosa are
in Gt. Britain, and on the whole I ignore Bory's theory.1
Generally speaking, the N. Zealand species are as well or
better marked than the European, or the Australian, where
Eucalyptus and various other genera are not to be surpassed
in Protean dispositions. For the rest, recent discoveries
rather tend to ally the N. Zeald. Flora with the Australian
— though there is enough affinity with extratropical S.
America to be very remarkable and far more than can b&
accounted for by any known laws of migration. I am
becoming slowly more convinced of the probability of the
Southern Flora being a fragmentary one — all that remains
of a great Southern continent. A second species of the
otherwise strictly great S. American genus Calceolaria has
turned up in N. Zealand, and of the two only genera of N.
Zeald. Leguminosae, one, a tree (Edwardsia), is common to
Chili and N. Zealand and to no other countries — the other
is confined to N.Z. and allied to nothing. Several of the
truly wild grasses are European I think, and yet not found
in Australia !

Hitcham: June 1854.

Will you oblige me with your ideas of what constitutes
highness and lowness in the Animal Kingdom ? e.g. in

1 See p. 439.

446 LETTEES TO DAKWIN, 1843-1859

plants I should say that a high development in the scale is
indicated by special adaptations of organs to the discharge
of functions, great deviations in those organs from the type
upon which they are constructed. Thus Eanunculaceae
are low in the scale because the floral organs are apt to run
into one another and revert to the type (a leaf) on which
they are constructed — because calyx and corolla are so
often alike — stamens often reverting and the follicles present
little deviation from a leaf folded on itself. Hence Mono-
petalous flowers are higher than polypetalous, inferior
ovaries a higher type than superior, Dicotyledons than
Monocot, Exogens than Endogens, &c., &c.

Darwin's answer is given in ' More Letters/ i. 76 : the
distinction he draws lies in the amount of morphological
differentiation and the division of physiological labour. (See
below, p. 463, letter of December 26, 1858.)

Darwin had been making out various Grasses from book
descriptions, and sent one that baffled him for identification.

Richmond, Sunday.

MY DEAR DARWIN, — Your grass appears to me to be
Festuca pratensis, and agrees as ill with the descriptions as
most plants appear to do. How on earth you have made
out 30 grasses rightly is a mystery to me. You must have
a marvellous tact for appreciating diagnoses. I am sure
that I could not have done it. I very much rejoice at your
feats, as it will afford us many subjects of interest in common
when we meet again. I think that some structural points
would interest you — as that of the inflorescence of Grasses.
Amongst facts of interest which will one day be licked into
shape pro or con species and migration, is that of the South
Coast of Australia. I have just made a resume of the
Australian Leguminosae, about 900 species. Of these some
450 inhabit the South West Corner, Swan Kiver, &c., and
about 300 the South East (New South Wales, &c.), but there
are not 10 species common to both ! Now what can migra-
tion be about, trans-water or trans-land ? — and what a
busy time of it Dame Nature has had in making so many
species, whether by creation or variation.

I am busy at Indian Compositae. There are two very
common English Thistles, a small one, Carduus acanthoides,

APPKOACHING DARWIN'S VIEWS 447

and a big one, C. nutans. I never heard of their being
supposed to be varieties by any one, and they differ in many
points ; but the Himal. specimens are all of an intermediate
form — its small states identical with acanthoides, its large
with small nutans. These facts shake species to their
foundation — but according to my view of species, as con-
trasted with other systematists, there are sore few of them.
In fact if there were a possibility of bringing your and my
opinions to book, it might prove that we were not so far
divided. The more I study the more vague my conception
of a species grows, and I have given up caring whether
they are all pups of one generic type or not — that the main
forms remain so long distinct; that we may through their
characters trace their distribution, is certainly all we can
expect to prove in our day ; and the laws of that distribution
more than we shall establish in our life-time.

I have a glorious fact for you. A tropical species of
Cyperus (polystachys) and a tropical Fern, Pteris longifolia,
grow in the hot soil of the Volcano of Ischia and nowhere
else in Europe or the Mediterranean : see Hooker's Journ.
Bot. for Nov. 1854, p. 351 (it is on Athenaeum table). Now
I can wriggle out of the Fern case by allowing ubiquitous
meteoric dispersion of Fern spores, but the Cyperus is a dis-
gusting and detestable fact that disgusts my soul within me.
I must however have a bite at you if I can, and so will ask
why if the Cyperus and Pteris got there no other migrants did ?

March 2, 1855.

I am going on with the Tasmanian Flora and find the
subject very interesting. Some of the scarcest and most
local Alpine plants reappear on the isolated summits of the
Australian Alps, and thence too I have the English Sagina
procumbens, which, as far as I know, has not been found
in the South Hemisphere, except in the Falklands (this
wants study though). I am also preparing as I go on for
a general work on Geogr. distrib. of the whole Australian
Flora — this is ambitious, but it is really the most extra-
ordinary thing in the whole world. The Flora of Swan
Eiver, i.e. of extra tropical S.W. Australia, will I believ
turn out to be the most peculiar on the Globe and specifically
quite distinct from that of N.S. Wales — also generically to a
much greater degree than any two similarly situated areas.

448 LETTEES TO DAKWIN, 1843-1859

[For Darwin's answer see C.D. ii. 44, which leads to the
following] :

To Charks Darwin

[March 1855.]

[Wollaston] 1 adduced one fact as opposed to Forbes'
Atlantis theory, which is Ophrys, an abundant S. Europe
genus of many common species, but unknown in Madeira.
Now this has such minute seeds and such millions of them,
that if the Madeira plants were transported aerially, one
cannot conceive the absence of Ophrys. To me such cases
as Ophrys are extremely important, as indicating a sequence
in the creation of groups, for if Ophrys was as abundant and
wide-spread when Atlantis existed as now, it must have
been there too then and we take for granted would be now ;
on the other hand, assuming the wind as the agent, if Ophrys
had existed in Europe as long as the other species that are
common to Europe and Madeira, its seeds must have got
wafted across.

The fact of apterous coleoptera strikes me too as extremely
curious and reminds me of an old remark I made that not
only the few beetles of Kerguelen Land were apterous but
the only lepidopterous insect in the island was so too !

Your final cause for so many insects being apterous is
very pretty and no doubt good, but how does it square with
the fact, that so large a proportion of Desert (Sahara,
Pampas, Australian) Coleoptera are apterous — that in fact
where wings would be most wanted and where it is to be
assumed that great areas must be traversed for either
animal or vegetable food, that there the insects have
smallest powers of locomotion — that where the deer, birds, and
carnivora have the longest legs the insects have the shortest.
Had the Madeira coleoptera unusually strong powers of
flight, would we not have said that this was to enable them
to make for shore again after being blown out to sea ?

I have just (thanks to Bentham's kind aid) concluded a
good and complete catalogue of the Australian Leguminosae,
and shall probably work it yet. There is but one European
species, the common Lotus corniculatus ; it abounds in

1 Thomas Vernon Wollaston (1822-78), entomologist and conchologist ;
M.A. Cambridge 1849; F.R.S. 1847; made collections and published works
relating chiefly to the coleoptera of Madeira, in addition to other writings.

WINGLESS INSECTS 449

marshes of N.S. Wales and Tasmania, but is not found wild
elsewhere out of Europe that I know of in the Southern
Hemisphere — these are the extraordinary facts that will
not be accounted for. Out of full 800 species I do not
think that there are a dozen common to South-East and
South- West Australia ; whole well marked genera, containing
many sections and species, are absolutely confined to S.W.
Australia. There is nothing like this in any other part
of the world : it is utterly astounding, and though I thought
myself well up in the Australian Flora, I was not prepared
for this to such an extent. Also taken as a whole the Flora
of Tasmania does not present so many species hardly distinct
from S.E. Australia as it ought. The Tasmanian species are
either very distinct, or quite the same, and what is most
curious, this applies as well to the alpine plants, though the
climate of the Australian Alps must be a good deal different
from that of the Tasmanian ones.

There is another point to be worked in your apterous
insect case — viz., the proportion of apterous European species
in Madeira great or small. If over-sea migration were the
means of peopling Madeira with insects, then the European
species should be winged ones. There is still another point.
Do you suppose that the majority are apterous because the
winged ones have been blown out to sea and perished
miserably ? Eeally these questions are like Cerberus and
his heads — the more arguments one disposes of the more
rise up in your way.

Kew : November 9, 1856.

I have finished the reading of your MS. [on Geog. Distrib.]
and have been very much delighted and instructed. Your
case is a most strong one and gives me a much higher idea
of change than I had previously entertained ; and though,
as you know, never very stubborn about unalterability of
specific type, I never felt so shaky about species before. The
first half you will be able to put more clearly when you polish
up. I have in several cases made pencil alterations in details
as to words, &c., to enable myself to follow better — some of
it is rather stiff reading. I have a page or two of notes for
discussion, many of which were answered as I got further
with the MS., more or less fully.

Your doctrine of the cooling of the tropics is a startling

450 LETTEKS TO DARWIN, 1843-1859

one, when carried to the length of supporting plants of cold
temperate regions, and I must confess that, much as I should
like it, I can hardly stomach keeping the tropical genera alive
in so very cool a greenhouse. Still I must confess that all
your arguments pro may be much stronger put than you have.

I am more reconciled to Iceberg transport than I was also,
the more especially as I will give you any length of time to keep
vitality in ice, and, more than that, will let you transport
roots that way also. Many of these subjects which I never
myself studied for myself, I wanted put in the systematic
form you have put them, for proper appreciation.

I think you might support your cause by making more use
of Gulf streams- and oblique lines of transport — you appear
to dwell too much upon meridional lines of migration. This
mode of travelling at once suggested the query, are the
Arctic and Antarctic American genera more allied than the
Tasmanian and Siberian — the former offering every possibility
in continuous land — the latter none? It also makes you
appear to shirk the question of transport from East to West
or vice versa. You offer no explanation of the vegetation
(not littoral) of Abyssinia and India Peninsula being so
similar ; or of the Carnatic, Ava, and N.W. Australia being
in so many points alike ; of the curious parallels or represen-
tatives between Madagascar, Ceylon, and the Sunda Islands.
In short meridional migration alone occupies you. Nor do
I like putting Iceland, Faroe, and Spitzbergen out of the
category of the glacially peopled countries, and leaving
Shetlands, Orkneys, Scotland in it ; this is however a trifle.
Ch. Martins' 1 arguments seem to apply no more to these
islands than to any other area continental or insular. If
they presented any anomalies as the presence of Lapland
plants or Greenland ones, I might then believe them to be
peopled by accidental migration — but if Icebergs are to be so
powerful why did they bring no Greenland, American, or
other plants to these islands which are so well situated for
the purpose ?

Thanks for A. Gray's letter. I do rub my hands and
chuckle (like Lyell) at the happy idea of my being caught in a

1 Charles Fran?ois Martins (1806-89), born at Paris; geologist and botanist.
He was Gorrespondant de 1'Institut, Hon. Professeur a la Faculte des Sciences at
Montpellier, where he was Director of the Botanical Gardens. He wrote on
the Creation of the World and on Topography.

' PHILOSOPHICAL BOTANY ' 451

paradox. I know the human soul loves paradox, even to
miracle, and that this love of it is only one of the curses of
Science, but Lord bless you, my dear Darwin, it is the greatest
paradox in the world to think of Conifers as anything but
very high in the Vegetable Kingdom.1

April 11, 1857.

If you knew how grateful the turning from the drudgery
of my ' professional Botany ' to your * philosophical Botany '
was, you would not fear bothering me with questions.
The truth in its primitive nakedness is, that I really look for
and count upon such questions, as the best means of keeping
alive a due interest in these subjects. I indulge vague hopes
of treating them some day, but days and years fly over my
head and all I do is done in correspondence to you, but for
which I should soon lose sight of the whole matter.

Harvey's observations on Fucus varying much and yet in
some way under most different conditions goes with me for
a good deal and I would endorse it. ...

There are I think heaps of such cases, they have so often
struck me, that one of my sketched out methods of treating
the Indian plants common to W. Europe and India is by
dividing them into :

1. Identical unvarying species.

2. Identical variable species.

(a) Variations equal and similar in both countries.

(b) Variations unequal, or dissimilar, or both.

In answer to Darwin's letter of June 25, 1857 (C.D. ii. 102)
about the curious character of the seedling leaves in young
Furze, after quoting some parallel cases, he proceeds :

A great stumblingblock in development to me has been
the very great differences between the cotyledonary leaves
of plants, even of the same Nat. Order. Leguminosae for
instance : this has always prevented me from understanding
the embryonic development in plants being so good an
evidence of affinity as in animals. Comparative develop-
ment would appear to begin with the post -Cotyledonary
leaves, and the Cotyledonary may be regarded as placenta ?
amnios ? &c., which vary in allied animals. Is this not a

1 Sec also the letter to Asa Gray, p. 480.

452 LETTEBS TO DAEWIN, 1843-1859

shadow of a generalisation ? I have often recommended
germination and first formed leaves as the most interesting
enquiry a young Botanist could take up, and particularly
urged it upon G. Henslow.

Towards the end of the year, when about to visit Down,
he sought some Darwinian information from his old friend
Berkeley.

Have you ever made any observations on inducing
varieties by playing tricks with plants ? as by high manuring
wild species; plucking all their flowers off for several years;
pruning; &c. Darwin wants to know who has done such
things;

Writing on January 12, 1858, Darwin refers to his own
former belief, and Asa Gray's strongly expressed opinion,
that Papilionaceous flowers were fatal to his notion of there
being no eternal hermaphrodites among plants. He now
brings forward evidence to show that in this class of plants
cross-fertilisation takes place through the visits of bees, and
that since the latter were introduced into New Zealand, clover
had begun to seed, which did not happen before. Several
questions arise for Hooker to answer.

January 15, 1858.

The Leguminous affair is extremely curious, I am quite
gone over to your side in the matter of eternal hybrids and
hermaphs. Carmichaelia and Clianthus have closed flowers,
and hence probably require artificial hybridization, but
Edwardsia has exserted genitalia and should not be a parallel
case. With regard to the Wellington Clover case, it really
looks too good — my impression is that Wellington was
hardly a colony before 1842, and that there could not be
sufficient clover cultivation there before that to warrant
any conclusions, but I may be wrong. At any rate I should
like some definite details of the state and extent of clover
crops before 1842, say in 1839-1840. I will show your
letter to Sinclair who will be here to-morrow.

None of the New Zealand Legumes have flowers quite
as small as clover, though those of Carmichaelia and of
Notospartium are very small. Is it not dangerous to assume

BEES AND CLOVEE 453

that Humble bees would not visit small flowers in New
Zealand, because they do not in England ? In England I
fancy the more numerous and active hive bee forestalls the
Humble bees in the matter of small flowers — if indeed the
Humble bees do not visit the latter. They surely visit
Heather flowers in Scotland ?

It would indeed be curious if a relation could be traced
between no bees and no small flowered Leguminosae, but
you must remember the strange absence of small Leguminosae
in Fuegia, Falklands, and the Pacific Islands generally.
The question hence becomes a very involved one and forms
part of a larger one, viz., is there any relation between the
Geog. distrib. of bees and of Leguminosae ?

Bent ham's late researches into the British Flora have
so greatly modified his views of the limits of species, that
in my eyes they invalidate the results of local Floras very
materially. He has completed the MS. of his British Flora,
having studied every species from all parts of the world,
and most of them alive in Britain, France, and other parts
of Europe. Well — he has turned out as great a lumper as
I am ! and worse.

Then did you see a paper of Decaisne's on Pyrus, trans-
lated in Gard. CJiron. about 3 weeks ago — in which he adopts
Thomson's and my views of species and says that if he had
to monograph Plantaginaceae again he would reduce whole
sections to one species and of course as many species, i.e.
marked forms, would then rank as varieties. Now it was
Decaisne (a most admirable Botanist) who on receiving the
Flora Indica, wrote me most kindly and earnestly begging
me to reconsider my mode of viewing species, and hinting
that I was going to the devil. All this does not directly
affect your results, but it shows that you should draw them
from materials of all kinds — local and general, and from
systematists. . . .

[The following is in answer to Darwin's letters of February 9
(M.L. i. 107) and February 23 (C.D. ii. 110 and M.L. i. 107),
suggesting that the small genera vary less than the large.]

February 24, 1858.

I will answer your query about big genera, deliberately,
in the affirmative and give answers. I have Jbeen .thinking

VOL. I 2 Q

454 LETTEES TO DAEWIN, 1843-1859

a great deal on amount of variability in great and small
genera, and find it exceedingly difficult to explain logically
the practical reasons there are against Botanists making
varieties of well marked species, i.e. of small genera. Many
of the small genera still kept up would never have been made
at all, had the whole of the Natural Order as now known been
known when those genera were made. E.G., in Europe
we have, say 3 very different members of a large unknown
Asiatic group of plants, certainly 100 species : of these 3
as many genera are made in Europe : but after getting all
the 100 Asiatic species, though these show that the said 3
genera are naught, we do not therefore cancel them, but in
9 cases out of 10 we group the Asiatic species as best we can
under the 3 European genera. A thousand unphilosophical
reasons occur, of considerable (present practical) weight to
keep up the said old genera.

We must never forget that Systematists have two very
different ends to meet : 1. To provide a ready nomenclature
without which the science cannot advance and which we
change as little as possible — and further use every means
to avoid even a necessary change — so important is it for
all to get up the nomenclature, and so bulky and complicated
is this nomenclature. 2. To arrange the members of the
Vegetable Kingdom scientifically, which is only done for
the sake of scientific followers. Now we repeatedly find
that to express our views scientifically we must break up
the whole nomenclature, and rather than do this excessively,
we confine ourselves to stating our views without acting
upon them. In no respect do we sacrifice more to the
utilitarian purpose of nomenclature, than in keeping up
small bad genera.

Practically no one (except a few of us) hesitates to remove
a very distinct species of an old genus, especially if its
characters are constant and it is an invariable plant, and to
make of it a new genus, just because it is more unlike its
20 neighbours than they are unlike one another. The
probabilities in this case are that the 20 are varieties of
8 or 10, and being variable have varieties made of them-
selves, whilst the one constant plant goes to a new genus,
and is a small genus with no varieties.

Again, practically very few do up an old genus of one

LAEGE GENEEA AND VAEIABLE SPECIES 455

or a few well marked unvarying species, especially if its
generic name is a very familiar one, hence Amygdalus,
Prunus, Cerasus, are kept up, though certainly not good
genera in a scientific view of Eosaceae. Few plants are more
variable than Hawthorn — it is a small genus dismembered
from Pyrus, but no British author makes varieties of it.
Genera in short are almost purely artificial as established
in Botany : some are objective like Salix and Bosa, i.e. every
ignoramus recognises them and they are called natural
genera, good genera, &c., &c. Others are subjective, they
require a special knowledge of the Order to which they
belong to know them — ignorami do not recognise them :
such are genera of Grasses, Cruciferae, Umbelliferae, &c.
But between what the ignoramus does recognise and does
not there is no limit ; and the first rate Botanist, working
upon a partial knowledge of a group, is only in the position
of an ignoramus after all. His two very distinct groups of
an Order are to him two genera ; had he the whole species
of the Order he would never have recognised the groups at
all, as groups. This is a terrific screed.

[Darwin replied on February 28 (M.L. i. 105) and March 11
(C.D. ii. 102), and Hooker responded] :

March 14, 1858.

I quite see in what respects local Floras are much the
best suited to your purpose ; or rather, how they would be so,
if they were worked out upon the same principle as the general
Floras, but the fact that they are not so, and that they are
hotbeds of bad big genera, is a very serious objection to the
use of them.

I shall be however most curious to see the results of
Bentham's British Flora. He reduces the Eubi to 6 species,
I think (and about 11 varieties, I suppose), which gives
you a small very variable genus, whilst Babington has
28 species or so, besides varieties — so Callitriche, of which
Babington has several species but which Bentham reduces
to 1 with 2 ? varieties. You must however take care not
to get entete with your results. I shall certainly go over
the Tasmanian Flora for your sake, and see whether or no I
should not have noticed varieties to many small genera, to
make their species consistently worked with the big. I am

456 LETTEKS TO DAKWIN, 1848-1859

quite sure I should. The object of these books, you must
remember, is not to tell everything about a plant, and
perhaps least of all to tell the amount of their variation, but
to lead others to : — 1st, name ; 2, affinities ; 3, distribution ;
4, uses — and so on. As a rule the amount of variation is
a speciality affecting the species differently in different
localities, and is therefore only recorded when the omission
of its record might lead to the non-recognition of the plant
by the character. All plants are variable : see how the
descriptions teem with ' vel,' ' aut,' ' et,' &c.

The long and short of the matter is, that Botanists do
not attach that definite importance to varieties that you
suppose ; they do not treat large and small genera equally
and similarly, and the sum of inequalities thus produced
tends to make the species of small genera look more invariable
than big.

Had I been doing the Flora Indica .as I should have
done with an eye to making it a descriptive book of variation,
I should most certainly have added varieties to most of the
small genera, thus — , .

Naravelia a and &, Ceratocephalus a, b, c, d,

Adonis a, b, c, Caltha a, fe, c, d,

Callianthemum a, 6, Isopyrum a, &, c,
Aquilegia a-z,

to render them equivalent to the varieties in Clematis and
other big genera, and confounded your statistics.

Just look and see how much more frequently we notice
under the monotypic genera, its variations and variability,
than we do in the polytypic (excuse the coined phrase).

So my dear Darwin do not be in a hurry with your con-
clusions. I am quite sure that had monotypic genera or
oligotypic been at all materially less variable than polytypic
it would not have escaped the sagacity of men like Linnaeus,
Brown, D. C., or Bent ham, and that it would force itself
on the attention of any cautious observer.

March 18, 1858.

You have set me thinking much on varieties in great
versus small genera. I am obstinately inclined to take
general monographs for data in preference to local Floras,
for the general works alone seem to me to give a fair chance

LOCAL FLOBAS AND VAEIETIES 457

of the species being uniformly treated, because local Floras
consist of : 1. Local plants — these we agree are not so
variable as mundane plants.

2. Mundane plants, of which only one form is found in
the said local area, and which are hence not treated as
variable in the Flora of that area.

3. Mundane plants, of which two or more varieties are
found in the area.

Now as you increase your area the small local (i.e. in-
variable) genera do not reappear, but the small mundane
genera do with an increased number of variations, and
the large mundane genera with their variable species also
relatively increase. Is this not so ? Be that as it may,
I have just got Weddell's monograph of Urticeae back
from binder, and as I told you that I thought it would
prove as unexceptional food for analysis as may be, I
have roughly tabulated the results and enclose them,
Weddell has reduced both the large and small genera
enormously and consistently, and I attach the greater
confidence to his work from the close accordance between
the relative number of species to variation in large and
small genera.

Again, if the species of small local genera are themselves
local, it follows that we procure fewer specimens of the
species of such genera than of large, and hence make fewer
varieties. This any general Herbarium shows. A genus of
one species presents only a single specimen much oftener
than a genus of 10 species does only 10 specimens.

Again, suppose I am naming by comparison or otherwise
a species of a large genus, I find it agrees a little with many
species, exactly with none, but most nearly one — I hesitate
and am in difficulty and my tendency is to make a var. of
that it is nearest, all the more if the latter is itself variable ;
but in naming in the same way a species of a small genus I
find no such difficulty — it is perhaps not exactly like the
species to which I refer it, still it is not the least like anything
else. So I made a var. of my first plant partly lest my
successor should refer it to any of the other species which
it resembled from missing it under the vars. of that I
refer it to, but in the second case no such precaution is
necessary.

458 LETTEKS TO DAEW1N, 1843-1859

In the early summer, Hooker had read in MS. Darwin's
discussion of ' what to call varieties.' Cheered by his criticism,
Darwin subsequently sent for further criticism what he had to
say about genera, in the discussion of ' the " Principle of Diver-
gence," which with " Natural Selection " is the keystone of
my book.'

Kew : July 13, 1858.

I went deep into your MS. on variable species in big and
small genera and tabulated Bentham after a fashion, but
not very carefully. After very full deliberation I cordially
concur in your view and accept it with all its consequences.
Bentham's book confirms you, though with modifications.
The larger genera I believe to be groups of more presently
variable beings than the small and I think you have quite
made good your point. Still I would not abandon the argu-
ments against, for I still think that the disposition or rather
the necessity of making more book varieties in large genera
than in small is a very important fact.

I have also well considered Bentham's Exceptional
Orders, and am inclined to attribute that also partly to his
idiosyncrasy ; upon thinking well over his method of writing
I have often seen that he will make rather hastily a new species
in a larger genus of which a vast number of good species have
recently turned up. The mental process is : * Such and such
a country teems with Astragalus or Pedicularis (which he has
himself first elaborated), here is a new province of that country
just supplied us with a lot of specimens and the chances are
that heaps of them are new, and that more specimens will
rather tend to prove doubtful new species to be distinct than
the contrary.' It is not easy to explain to you how fully I
appreciate this tendency in another person — but I am con-
vinced it is so, and that that is the key to the Benthamian
Exceptional Orders. This does not, however, apply to
WeddelTs Urticeae which I must tabulate more carefully.
This was the case when Bentham and I did the Afghanistan
and Thibetan Astragali and Pediculariae — he pronounced
many new which I thought varieties, always saying : ' Oh
that country is the headquarters of Astragali, you must
expect heaps of novelty.'

In some passages of your MS. you rather underrate I

AGKEEMENT AS TO LAKGE GENEEA 459

think the influence of associations of this and other sorts on
descriptive systematists.

On re-reading your MS., I find the same objections as
before, viz., that you overrate the extent of my opposition to
your method. My great desire was to put every possible
objection as strongly as I could. I did not feel myself a
dissenter or opponent to your views, so much as a non-con-
senter to them in the present state of my knowledge, nor till
you had weighed my objections which I thought of greater
weight than I do now.

July 15 [1858].

The E.I.C. Examinations are cutting my time to shreds
which must account for some of the incoherence of the fore-
going. I have had more time for thinking over the subject
at odd half hours and have endeavoured to grapple with the
whole question. That point of the hypothetical behaviour
of large genera when on the decrease puzzles me.

As a corollary to your law, large Natural Orders should
have fewer genera in proportion to species than small ; i.e.
fewer definable groups. Cruciferae, Compositae, Umbelli-
ferae and Grasses bear you out in this — true no end of genera
are made in them, but they are bad — other Natural Orders
are opposed.

I think I have thought of a better reason than you give
for whole Nat. Ords. being worse for your purpose than local
Floras — viz., 1. That conditions do not go on varying with the
area beyond a certain point ; there are limits to the combina-
tions of climate and soil. A genus inhabiting 1000 square
miles will survive such and such conditions and under their
influence form x species ; — all these conditions may occur in
100 miles of the said area, and adding the other 900 miles adds
no more conditions. 2. Many large genera are absolutely
confined to the tropics or to temperate regions or to dis-
tricts and do not stand in the same relation to one another as
the mundane genera do. This I think you have expressed,
but not more clearly than I have. This would lead me to
suggest the propriety of working one or two of your Floras by
purging them of stragglers and such plants generally as are
typical of other climates and exceptional in this — of stragglers
in short — e.g. Panicum. I think this process would intensify
your results.

460 LETTEBS TO DAEWIN, 1843-1859

Darwin submitted a definition of the great groups into
which flowering plants are divided. Hooker in reply defines
these, and adds :

If you take reproductive organs as test of highness
or lowness, then Coniferae are top of Vegetable Kingdom;
if you take coverings of those and neglect the organs
themselves, you may place them below Monocots, but in
so doing you neglect the vascular system, germinative and
embryological characters which are all as in Dicots, not as
in Monocots.

P.S. — I am very busy with the Introductory Essay to
the Tasmanian Flora, and am dealing with the Australian
as a whole. The only thing that will strike you is that
the vast majority of the trees are hermaphrodite ; this
arises from the preponderance of arborescent hermaphro-
dite Orders (Myrtaceae, Leguminosae) and absence of
Amentaceous.1

The great preponderance of local distinct species in the
Flora I must hook on to the destruction of seeds somehow,
restricting the multiplication of forms. In the Swan Eiver
Flora, where an incredible number of species are crammed
into a very small area, the climate and soil seem most un-
favourable to the germination of seeds by nature, and further
the most local and peculiar Order, Proteaceae, ripen very
few seeds and are a long time about it.2

I however want you to print before I make up my mind
to go into this subject. I also want you to print that I may
take up your refrigeration doctrine, to which I think I should
have come clumsily at last by myself as the only way of
accounting for the spread of European species to Australia.

It is curious that so many more European species should
be in Australia than in Fuegia and S. Chile, especially con-
sidering the enormous distance of Europe to Australia and
no continuous mountains.

1 This exception to the rule, proved in England, New Zealand, and the
United States, that trees have their sexes separated more often than other
plants, is noted in the first edition of the Origin, p. 100. In the sixth edition,
the qualification is added, that 'if most of the Australian trees are dicho-
gamous, the same result would follow as if they bore flowers with separated

* For Darwin's caution on this point, see his reply to this letter given
in M.L. i. 445.

THE TASMANIAN ESSAY 461

Put end of string on globe on England and other end on
V.D.L., and it will run through the most continuous masses
of land on globe ; it is the greatest stretch of all but dry land
that you can find, and I can connect the Botany the whole
way by mountains of (1) Borneo ; (2) Java and Ceylon
and Penins. Ind. ; (3) Khasia ; (4) Himal. ; (5) Caucasus ;
(6) Alps ; (7) Scandinavia. I can thus connect botanically
England with V.D.L. better than I could Canada with
Fuegia !

Kew : December 21, 1858.

I am and have been working hard at my Essay and
make about as slow progress as you say you do. I am
utterly staggered by some of the facts of distribution : here
is wild rice and lots of other plants identical with the Indian,
in N.W. Australia, several hundred miles from the coast, and
there is a most typical American plant (not found in India)
from the same locality. I have now got together about
500 tropical Indian species in Australia, many of them very
peculiar, besides many generic types almost all Peninsular
Indian, not Malayan or Javanese types, but plants of the
sandstone ranges of Australia and India. Now though
there are several wet-country Australian types (not species)
in Malayan Islands and Peninsula, there are none in the
Indian Peninsula, nor are there any of the hundreds of
Australian sandstone and dry tropical types in the Indian
Peninsula. Now I never can believe that 500 Indian plants
got transported by existing causes to tropical Australia, and
that the said causes did not return one tropical Australian
Acacia, Eucalyptus, Stylidium, Proteacea, Goodenia, Casuarina,
or Eestiacea, &c. to the Indian Peninsula.

Weeds, herbs, shrubs, and trees of many Indian families
have gone S.E. to Australia and nothing has come back.
N.B. Eucalypti, Casuarina, and Acacias grow magnificently
all over the Peninsula where planted and ripen loads of seed.

You kindly promised me the loan of your Chapter on
transmigration of forms across tropics and I should be
glad of it. I am grievously troubled to know at what date
to assume this transmigration ; am I safe in assuming that
the Antarctic types entered Australia at same Epoch, and
what was general character of Australian Flora at that

462 LETTEES TO DABWIN, 1843-1859

Epoch ? Jukes,1 I find, speculates in his sketch on Australia
being two groups of islands ; was your review on Water-
house anterior to this ? 2

Highlands of Abyssinia will not help you to connect the
Cape and Australian temperate Floras ; they want all the
types common to both and, worse than that, India notably
wants them. Proteaceae, Thymeleaceae, Haemodoraceae,
Acacia, Eutaceae of closely allied genera (and in some cases
species) are jammed up in S.W. Australia and C.B.I. [Central
British India] ; add to this Epacrideae (which are mere § of
Ericeae), and the absence or rarity of Eosaceae, &c., &c., &c.,
and you have an amount of similarity in the Floras, and
dissimilarity to that of Abyssinia and India in the same
features that does demand an explanation in any theoretical
history of Southern vegetation.

I still hold to a large Southern Continent characterised
by these and the Antarctic types. Perhaps during the
Cretaceous and Oolitic periods some of these types existed in
the N. Hemisphere also ; — hence the Araucaria cones in
Oolite, Banksia wood of the sands at Chobham (what age
are they ?) and cretaceous fossils supposed to be Proteaceae
in Belgium, &c. ???

Are the coal and sandstone fossils of Australia Palaeozoic ?
and is there in Australia a gap in the Geolog. series between
these and modern tertiary beds ?

I also still regard plant types as older things than animal
types. I have a fossil Araucaria cone from the Oolite iden-
tical to all appearance with A. excelsa of Norfolk Island,
and the Chobham fossil Banksia wood is identical with
Tasmanian. I do not suppose specifically in either case,
but that such highly organised types should be so similar,
indicates a great age for them as types.

[For Darwin's answer, dated Dec. 24, see C.D. ii. 142.]

1 Joseph Beete Jukes (1811-69); an admirable field geologist and writer, a
pupil of Sedgwick, did pioneer geological work in Newfoundland, 1839-40, and
spent four years on H.M.S. Fly as naturalist to the expedition which surveyed
N.E. Australia. Keturning to England in 1846, he joined the Geological Survey,
and in 1850 became Director of the Irish Survey. His book referred to in the
text is A Sketch of the Physical Structure of Australia, 1850.

a In this unsigned review of A Natural History of the Mammalia, by G. R.
Waterhouse, vol. i., in the Annals and Magazine of Nat. Hist., vol. xix., 1847,
pp. 53-56, Darwin had speculated on the S.E. and S.W. corners of Australia
having existed as two large islands, and only recently been joined. (M.L. i.
448.)

§ HIGHNESS ' OF AUSTKALIAN VEGETATION 463

Kew : December 26 [?], 1858.

I wish we could have a little work together. When
shall we ever get to a reasonable agreement ? I am horrified
to find that you think Australian forms lower than Old
World ones ; because under every, method of determining
high and low in Botany the Australian vegetation is the highest
in the world.1

1. The proportion of Phanerog. to Cryptog. is infinitely
greater in Australia than elsewhere (this as being a mere
condition of climate I do not give much for).

2. Monocot. to Dicot. are in same proportion as else-
where.

3. Petaloid (higher Monocot.) are in greater ratio to
Glumaceous in Australia than in Europe.

4. The four Orders of Dicots, considered by different
systematists as highest, are Compositae, Myrtaceae, Legu-
minosae and the Eanunculaceous, including Dilleniaceae
&c. Now, I believe (I have not tabulated yet) that all
these are in greater proportion and more varied in Australia
than in any other country.

5. Then, granting with the heretical J. H. ! that Conifers
are highest Phaenogs., and they are as numerous and most
varied.

6. There are very few Monochlamideous or Achlamideous
Dicots in Australia.

Now I have been using your line of argument to my own
purposes in this fashion : ' Granting with Darwin, that the
principle of selection tends to extermination of low forms
and multiplication of high, it is easy to account for the
general high development and peculiarity of Australian
forms of plants, these being the remnants of an extensive
Flora of great antiquity and which covered a very extensive
and now developed Southern continent, &c., &c., &c.' How
often do I say all our arguments are two-edged swords.

Again, some Australian plants are rapidly running wild
in India, as Casuarina, and I believe several Acacias in the
Nilgherries and some other Leguminosae.

We cannot argue anything by contrasting the multiplica-

1 Replying on the 30th, Darwin explains his meaning to have been the
competitive superiority of the Old World plants when they met the Australian
(M.L. i. 114). See also the letter to A. Gray of January 2, 1858, p. 480.

464 LETTEES TO DAEWIN, 1843-1859

tion of European forms in Australia and New Zealand with
the absence of the converse in England ; our spring frosts
account for the difference. In South Europe I believe
various Australian forms are rapidly becoming naturalised.
Consider too the current of export of European agricultural
notions and plants to Australia and consequent alteration
of conditions and that nothing of that kind comes back to
Europe.

Your letter has interested me more than any you ever
wrote me (because we are both ripening I hope), but it staggers
me too. It opens a much wider question upon which I have
often pondered in vain and have hoped latterly to have
made more of : it is this — are we right in assuming that
the development of plants has been parallel to that of
animals ? I sent out a feeler in the concluding notices of
my review of A. De Candolle where I indicate my view
that Geology gives no evidence of a progression in plants.
I do not say that this is proof of there never having been
progression — that is quite a different matter — but the
fact that there is less structural difference between the
recognisable representatives of Coniferae, Cycadeae, Lycopo-
diaceae, &c. and Dicots of chalk and those of present day,
than between the animals of those periods and their living
representatives, appears to me a very remarkable fact. . . .

CHAPTEK XXIV

ON SPECIES

ILLUSTEATIONS of the way in which Hooker's own conceptions
of species and their problems took shape may be drawn from
his correspondence during this period. He viewed the question
from two sides, for he was the shining exception who gave
point to Darwin's complaint : 1

How few generalises there are among systematists.
I really suspect there is something absolutely opposed to
each other and hostile in the two frames of mind required
for systematising and reasoning on a large collection of
facts. (C.D. ii. 39,)

His mind was scientific in both the wider and the narrower
sense. It combined observation with generalisation, the need
for orderly detail with the equally impelling need for principles
to give these ordered details an intelligible interpretation.

The primary object of science is order, and order is expressed
by classification. A perfect classification seeks its basis in
all the criteria gradually brought to light by research. Collec-
tion, labelling, grouping by external likeness is not enough.
Each advance in scientific order expresses more truly the
inner workings of nature, and to improve classification, there-
fore, is of more vital importance than to add to the store of ac-
cumulated material. Thus a group given individual importance
on inadequate grounds became an offence against science, and
obscured yet further the dark question of the origin of species.
To reason on the ill-defined was hopeless. And so ill-defined

1 See further, vol. ii. pp. 18, 26-31 ; Essay on the Distribution of Arctic Plants

465

466 ON SPECIES

were species that it could be cynically said by one of the older
school that a species was anything that had received a specific
name. Hence; in the botanist's phrase, it was better to reduce
one bad species than to make a score of new ones.

The sense of this was strong upon Hooker even in his
student days, the days of botanical tramps through the British
Isles ; as he writes to Harvey in 1845 about a much disputed
variety of heath found in Ireland and in Spain :

Erica McKayi I never thought distinct from tetralix
and have many dried intermediate states. Many a battle
I had with Balfour in Connemara on the subject ; he would
never own it a variety, even when I showed him living
specimens. I did not and do not give in to Bentham's
verdict, as he knows well, who retains the species in con-
sideration of the glabrous ovarium.

This view of species was only accentuated with time. The
more material he worked over, the greater the amount of
variability found. Conversely, to establish the limits of a
species properly, required the examination of a vast amount
of material. As he begins the Indian Flora with T. Thomson,
where his aim is ' to introduce some order into the confused
mass of bad genera/ he tells Bentham (October 15, 1852) :

Except for an enormous mass of species and specimens
it would be impossible to come to a right conclusion as to
their limits, yet the species are very distinct indeed when
species, however close they run to one another ; it is very
pretty to see different species running into analogous varieties
and yet holding their characters.

So he gets ready for Col. Munro, the authority on grasses,
' a huge collection of duplicates, which will be absolutely
essential in working up such genera as Arundinellai' (1853.)

It is the same with the Laurels :

Nees has certainly overdone the species greatly, but that
is not to be wondered at, or visited severely, as it is impossible
to do them satisfactorily without flowers, fruits, and leaves,
and a host of specimens. (To Bentham, September 3, 1854.)

MULTIPLICATION OF SPECIES 467

1 Many specimens/ he exclaims to Bentham, when he finds
two of his new New Zealand species are old Tasmanian ones
(July 30, 1856), ' always break down characters/ and he avows,
' it is a bad sign of genus when it is extremely difficult to refer
new species to any of the others/ (February 5, 1852.)

Long before he impressed the fact on Darwin (p. 457)
he was well aware that those who deal with an incomplete
flora or a small number of specimens are apt to define isolated
varieties as so many new species. Accordingly, to arrive at
trustworthy fact, these irregular results of the * personal
equation ' among describers must be regularised, at whatever
cost of labour in examining new or re-examining old material,
and so he groans at discovering in the work of a voluminous
botanist ' an unfathomable gulf between him and right under-
standing.'

A few examples may be given of his dealing with the
excessive multiplication of species and the consequent over-
lapping and confusion.

On September 24, 1851, just when the last boxes of his
Indian collections have arrived, he tells Bentham :

Klotzsch [then in Berlin] offers to make a frightful
mess of the Ehododendrons, cutting the genus into 20 and
placing varieties of one species into two or more genera,
and allied species into each throughout ; it is dreadful ;
he wants me to be partner in his crimes.

Three months later he describes himself as ' swimming in
synonymy/ and on March 20, 1852, writes to Harvey :

What a glorious Grass-man Munro is ; he reduces my
father's Herb, to about 1600 species ! I quite expected
they would come down to 2000.

Six days later :

Munro has named nearly all my Paniceae and finds 5
new species ! I think I should have sent them to Steudel,
who (Munro tells me) is going to make a monograph of
Panicum alone, containing 500 species ! Munro and I
made 86 as I think in Herb. Hook,

468 ON SPECIES

De Vries has just finished a monograph of Angiopteris,
making 60 species out of what Daddy, I, and Jock Smith
call 1. What with De Vries, Klotzsch, and Steudel we shall
have Phaenogamic Botany messed like Algae, except we
show a bold front.

Again; November 4, 1852 :

We have pitched into Clematis. Steudel has 40 Indian
species, Wallich 18, and we 12 ! And yet we have all
Wallich's ! Koyle's ! ! Edgeworth's III1 etc., etc. species.
The fact is that there are only 15 species in India and
that's a plenty ! The M. Indica will cut up ridiculously
small.

And there is a world unsaid in the brief ejaculation (May
18, 1858) : ' So Sender2 makes 106 Oxalises— humph.'

To Col. Munro

September 9, 1853.

I have rough polished Berberideae and had such a job
to get through the B. vulgaris and aristata groups, which
by the way I cannot distinguish specifically from one another.
I quite expect great opposition in the first group and I may
state once for all, that I take no person's opinion on them as
worth a snap, who has not studied the varieties of B. vulgaris
itself ; and no one who has not can have any idea of what
they are ! I have also carefully studied all the garden species
of the N. Hemisphere.

Madden 3 came here two days ago and spent the morning.

1 Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (1812-81) was an Indian civilian who
had studied botany under Graham. He contributed papers on the botany
of India and Aden, and on the Indian Caryophyllaceae to the Flora of Brit.
Ind.

2 Otto Wilhelm Bonder (1812-81). He was the author, or part author, of
several works, Plantae Preisscanae, 1844-7 ; Revision der Heliopticleen, 1846 ;
Flora Hamburgensis, 1851 ; Die Algen des tropischen Australians, 1871 ; Algae.
Ost. Afrikanae, 1879 ; and Algae Australianae hactenus cognitae, and he assisted
Harvey with his Flora Capensis.

» Edward Madden (d. 1856). He was Lieut.-Col. Bengal Artillery, and
President of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, F.R.S. Edinburgh. He col-
lected in Simla and Kumaon. He published Brief Observations on some of the
Pines and other Coniferous Trees of the Northern Himalaya, in the Journ. Agric,
Soc. of India, 1845, and a Supplement to it in 1850, and Nepal Plants in
1856. The genus Maddenia Bosaceae was called after him by Hooker and
Thomson.

DESTRUCTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES 469

I showed him the Berberis which confounded him ; his
only objection (or crotchet) was the simple racemed form
of aristata, as different from the panicled form of the same
plant. These two he had studied living and found them
always distinct though growing side by side ; I showed him
loads of specimens he could not decide between ! but the
fact of his having found them distinct side by side outweighed
all others. Now what are we to give for such facts ? They
are most important, but are we to admit every collector's
(however good a botanist) testimony on such a point, as
of specific importance ? Thomson thinks lycium the only
good one on the same grounds, whereas Madden vows he
found these passing into one another every way. I took
asiatica for the best marked of them all, and that again
Madden denies in toto. I wish you would kindly tell me
what your own * particular variety ' was amongst them.

In September 1853 he tells Munro :

I am travailing through an Essay on ' Species, their
distribution and variation/ for the New Zealand Flora
Introduction [' which I hope;' he afterwards tells Bentham,
' will be read, though I cannot flatter myself it will be of
any great use '], chiefly intended to open students' eyes to
the great leading facts of the case and to inculcate caution,
or they will have their Flora in a pretty mess, for it is a
frightfully variable one.

But his apparently destructive tendencies were really con-
structive. He tells Harvey (January 1852) :

I am combining very many species with Tasmanian and
South American plants — many are identical without trace
of change, which led me to claim some variation for others
which belong to very widely different genera. . . . The up-
shot will be the total bouleversement of our previous ideas of
the extent &c. of the Flora and a very close alliance indeed
with Australia. I am really extremely anxious to get the
thing well done, but greatly doubt people's being satisfied
with my destructive propensities, which however are far
more really constructive than those who have few materials to
work from and judge by can form any idea of.

VOL. I 2 H

470 ON SPECIES

His care in working out species detail is illustrated by a
friendly scolding of Harvey in 1859 for rejecting on inadequate
grounds the identification of an African cress, Cardamine
africana, with the widespread C. Mrsuta, whose range is
described in the letter to Darwin of December 1843 above.

Criticism should at least be as well equipped as the opinion
criticised.

[Kew : February 19, 1859.

MY DEAK HAEVBY, — I am really sorry for your disappoint-
ment with the lithographer, it is very disheartening, though
by the way it is I fear only a righteous and well merited
retribution for your most unjust, ungenerous, ungracious,
and unphilosophical attack on my Cardaminologia. Thwaites
makes the Ceylon C. = hirsuta, sud sponte, uiithout any
hint from me. He sent it thus named years ago before the
Enumeration a was conceived of ; though I altogether agree
with him.

Who are you ? that you, without seeing my materials,
say that africana and hirsuta cannot be the same. You
might at least go over my evidence before you condemn. I
just wish that you had spent as many hours over the wretched
weed as I have. I assure you that when I did the N.Z.
Flora I spent several mornings at that plant alone, and had
spent a long time at it when I did the Antarctic, and have
since on doing the Indian plants ; always with the same
result. I do not demand infallibility, but I have a right in
common with every man of science that my conclusion be not
put aside without my evidence being examined. You who
know Plocamium coccineum and Ceramium rubrum might
be careful I think of Cardamine hirsuta in another man's
books ! Scolding apart, my belief is that C.h. is one of those
plants of which you may make 20 species or one, if you
make 2 you must make many more, and seeing that C.
africana is in my apprehension joined to hirsuta by inter-
mediate forms of habit, of foliage, of inflorescence, and of
pod, it ranks according to my philosophy as a variety and
not as a species. As soon as geological or other causes have
destroyed said intermediates then I will make it a species.
If each Botanist is to insist on keeping two dissimilar things

1 Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniae, Thwaites, published 1859-64.

KEVOLUTION IN INDIAN BOTANY 471

species because he has not uniting forms, though others say
they have, then there is an end of the matter.

Ever yours affectionately,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

Finally, in March, after showing how they are at cross
purposes in the matter, he concludes :

The principles we should go on are to unite what nature
unites wherever she may have done so, and not to assume
that she ought to have done so elsewhere. However, as I
am sunk in the sink of creation of species by variation you
may do what you like with the Cardamine.

So in February he tells Bentham :

I have made sweeping reforms in the New Zealand Flora,
upon which I am quite hot and am egregiously pleased and
interested ; somehow I have taken greatly to working out
species and genera and examine a great deal more than I
used to.

It was the same with the Introduction to the ' Flora Indica1
by himself and Thomson.

So complete a bouleversement of all former nomencla-
ture perhaps never occurred to any considerable Flora since
Linnaeus' Vegetable Kingdom. It has, however, been im-
possible to avoid doing battle with all our predecessors'
species, whose utter disregard of one another and of any
other part of the world's Flora but India has produced in-
extricable confusion in many cases. (To, Munro July 1853.)

The said Introduction [he tells Bentham in 1853] is to
be a tremendous long essay on all things botanical in general
and Indian in particular ; we have taken up the subject of
Indian Bot. Geography in a comprehensive manner, and
have gone at great length into geographical divisions and
the collections and some works of our predecessors. Also
we have several pages on the study of systematic Botany in
general, and the use of Herbaria ; the prevalence of bad
species ; narrow prevalent ideas of variability and too much
stress laid on habit. In all this we do not expect you to

472 ON SPECIES

agree, but for my part I am convinced that time will prove
our estimates of species very false indeed. I do not know
a greater snare than that of habit ; we take an ideal of a
herb, tree or shrub, and carry it with us through all countries.
Take the common oak, what is its habit apart from the
English park variety ? Compare it with the Scotch oak in
the Highlands or the long gaunt things that flourish at the
Cape of Good Hope. We have been doing up our Indian
Coniferae and find Juniperus excelsa quite identical in all
botanical characters with Sabina, chinensis, Dahurica,
virginiana, occidentalis and several others, as was indeed
pointed out by my Father, Fl. Bor. Am., and again by Spach
who goes much further. Now supposing these to be all
the same, will any one tell me what is the habit of the species ?
Suppose them different if you please and I answer that in
the Himalayas the one species assumes the habit of all
the others.

Take the ordinary Scotch Fir in Switzerland ; what is
its habit ? certainly not that of the Scotch plant ; nor of
the German ; it is a curious fact that I rarely could recognise
by the eye our common English trees in Switzerland, so
altered is the habit. I wish you could have gone with us
to Dropmore 4 months ago, to have seen the cedars of all
sizes, hues, habits, and shapes : all of Lebanon and amongst
them all the Deodar, looking anything but a very distinct
variety. Lindley was quite taken aback and has been mum
ever since about Deodar and Lebanon being different species.
To-day Ephedra has brought the same thing under my notice
and I would far rather take C. A. Meyer's only (and micro-
scopic) character from the micropyle to distinguish helvetica
from vulgaris than any amount of difference of habit. I
am quite disquieted with the fictitious nature of characters
as now given in books. There are in said book of Meyer's
4 species without a single character important or unimportant
between them. To take Endlicher's Coniferae ; is it not
pure fraud to go on enumerating species with specific
characters that are mere play upon words ? and this without
a syllable of remark or excuse. What single character is
there for any Taxus but baccata ? — the keeled scales of the
bud is all he gives and it breaks down in T. baccata !

The deeper I go the more convinced I am that Brown

DISTINCT CENTKES OF CKEATION 473

is right, and that there are not 50,000 species of flowering
plants known. Wallich has 8 names for Pteris aquilina,
and I do think he has two names for f of the species in the
early part of his catalogue, besides Don's, Koyle's, Edge-
worth's, Eoxburgh's, and often De Candolle's. This how-
ever is an old story. I admire your great caution and
desire to curb my rabid radicalism : but the tide will turn
one day and the reducing species will go on apace, and then
the reaction will be terrific. After all there is something
to be said for me. I am a ram avis, a man who makes his
bread by specific Botany, and I feel the obstacles to my
progress as obstacles to my way to the butcher's and baker's.
What is all very pretty play to amateur Botanists is death
to me.

The following letters to Asa Gray deal with the Introduction
to the New Zealand Flora.

Kew : Wednesday, January 26, 1854.

MY DEAR GRAY, — I was extremely pleased by your letter
last night, and quite as much with the mere fact of my treating
of the subject having been thought worthy your attention,
as with the many too flattering things you say of it. Such
Essays attract so little attention in this country, that one feels,
at least I did, that I was writing for the dead more than for
the living, though amongst other men Agassiz had a promin-
ent seat in judgment before me. After all I regard the whole
Essay more as a resume of general impressions than a speci-
men of close reasoning, for of the latter, in truth, the subject
does not admit. There is not a single argument that will not
cut both ways, and may not be turned pro and con species,
specific centres, &c., &c. Your turning my arguments
against myself on the point, that two originally created dis-
tinct species so similar as to be almost undistinguishable,
may exist in two widely sundered localities, is an awful
staggerer, and I have always felt it to be the most impractic-
able objection of any to the possibility of determining what
is and what is not a species. I have touched on that very
point at ch. 2, § 2; towards end. ' These considerations; etc./
but perhaps too gingerly, also in the Fl. Antarct. I think, see
Empetrum. I combat this theory more upon principle than
upon facts ; — once admit it and the flood gates are opened

474 ON SPECIES

to species-mongers, and it is cast in your teeth every
moment, as an argument for making every slight difference,
if only accompanied with geographical segregation, of specific
value.

Nevertheless I am quite aware that such species must
exist ; I do not deny, nor would I blink, the evidence in
favour of it, nor that it is the gravest of all objections to the
pronouncement upon species in our present state of know-
ledge. I therefore admit its application to practice only in
exceptional cases. The long and short of it is, that if you
admit two centres you may as well admit all Agassiz, you
cannot draw the line, and Geographical distribution is hence
a vain study, the connection of life with the revolutions of
our globe and with all the physics of nature is naught, and
nothing can come of its pursuit but the temporary gratifica-
tion of taste and ingenuity.

I am amused by fancying you ' fall into the snare you lay
for another ' — the following, which shews how all these argu-
ments cut two ways. You say generic resemblance is a strong
point, and not enough dwelt upon. I grant it fully. I
suppose I thought it too hackneyed, though it is far from
being so in a philosophical point of view. But you go on with
consummate sangfroid to tell me of Dorking fowls and Manx
cats, starting off at a tangent without rhyme or reason !
This I grant too, but let me ask you what would be done by
Gould or Agassiz with a Dorking fowl, if it were shot and
skinned in the Andamans and brought from thence as its
only habitat ? Not only would a new genus be made of it,
but its toes would lead to a deal of pen, ink and paper, analo-
gies, affinities, relations, &c., &c., &c. Ditto with the Manx
cat, an osteological specific character would be found for it
as easily as Cuvier found one for the Falkland Islands rabbit,
which had not been 30 years out from Europe ! Oh dear, oh
dear, my mind is not fully, faithfully, implicitly given to
species as created entities db origine, but it is to the im-
perative necessity of sticking to one side or the other and,
without being bound by it, referring, arranging, and reasoning
by it. I take that side which, though apparently the most
narrow and prejudiced, is the only one which really keeps
the mind open to investigate, which co-ordinates all the
elements of geography, system and physiology, and which

SUPPOSED SPECIFIC CEITEEIA 475

keeps the observer's attention alive to the importance of
studying collateral phenomena.

I have long been aware of Agassiz' heresies. His opinions
are too extreme for respect and hence are mere prejudices.
They are further contradicted by facts. Lyell and I have
talked him over by the hour. Lyell and Agassiz are great
personal friends. I always think Agassiz an extraordinarily
clever fellow and a treasure too as a scientific man, but
there are many people whom personally we like and men of
science too, but whose views on individual points are best
left alone. Giving too much attention, even to oppose, the
startling views of such people rather encourages them, and
there is an inherent love of getting fame at any price, i.e.
getting notoriety, amongst these French, Swiss, and Italians
that leads them to commit themselves on such questions.
The long and short of it is, that we have too many clever
people in the world, too few sound ones. When you Yankees
take up the higher branches of Botany more generally you
will turn out far more and better work than we do, for
you are a far better educated, sounder, more practical
people, and I look to you for the great discoveries, come when
they may.

Is your N. American Larch different from ours ? Is there
more than one Yew in the world ? How many Junipers
have you ? Coniferae are I am sure much more variable
and widely distributed than is supposed, and whilst all our
commonest wild and cultivated Junipers, Yews and Scotch
Pines are telling us by every specimen that their habits
vary with every local circumstance, we are still quoting
habit as a specific character for Coniferae. I showed Bentham
two yews in a hedge at Pontrilas [Bentham's house in Wales]
side by side, of which he owned that specimens from each
would make two species, and their habit was so different,
that were they growing side by side in a garden, the habit
would have confirmed the difference. Take Juniperus
communis, I found it in the Ehone valley growing like
recurva of India, with a straight trunk and conical coma.
As to our Deodar avenue of Kew, it is the seediest, most
ragged affair you ever saw, many of the trees far more like
young cedars. These were all seed raised ; had we planted
cuttings as nurserymen do, of the most weeping glaucous,

476 ON SPECIES

long leaved stirps, what a different thing we should have
had. I do think habit a perfect snare with many people ;
we stereotype an ideal habit and refer everything to it. Of
the many people ready to swear and declare that they can
never mistake an Oak, Beech, &c., &c., by habit, how many
can prove their words ?

You say that we are not to pronounce species the same
because they are united apparently by certain forms of each
— I grant this fully, but how are we to act upon it and deny
local Botanists specific value to their small fish ? This is no
good argument ; a better one is, that we do not know which
is the originally created state that you call the type, or that
I call the connecting form. E.G., You may say Cedar and
Deodar are distinct though apparently united by a few
exceptional forms of each. I say no, the exceptional inter-
mediate forms present no new character different from
either. The original type cedar was intermediate in character,
but is extinct, one extreme form is retained, driven to the
top of Mount Libanus, and hence called Libani. Another
extreme form is retained in the humid Himalaya. We
cultivate the Libanus stirps which retain to a certain degree
its rigid character, but often lose it. We also cultivate
the Deodar stirps, and because beautiful we propagate by
cuttings from the states most typical of Deodar, i.e. most
extremely unlike Cedar, and propagate the error by artificial
means.

Kew : March 24, 1854.

DEAR GRAY, — Very many thanks for your capital long
letter, which begins by agreeing with me that, ' the subject
does not admit of close reasoning ' ; and goes on with as
pretty a specimen of admirable close, clear, and accurate
reasoning as I ever wish to peruse. I only wish you had
taken up the subject instead of me, for you throw out your
grapnels with a judgment and precision that put my loose
ratiocination (is that the word ?) to shame. You must
(probably do) know that I am one of those cross grained
fellows who, after building up a tall tottering castle, get
sick of it and can't bear a kind friend coming to prop it up ;
neither do I like an enemy to knock it down ; so there is
no pleasing me but by praising my castle in the abstract,
whether it stands or falls.

STYLE AND SUBSTANCE 477

I entirely agree with all you say about representative
species, and groan over the hitch in deciding what we are to
agree to call a species in such cases. I also fully agree that
the fundamentally of the argument derived from generic
resemblance is not fully appreciated by myself ; one is apt
to overlook its real whole weight, from being accustomed
to bear it, like atmospheric pressure. It is per se unanswer-
able, and hence put aside for less valuable facts that afford
scope for reasoning and debate. I am hence the more glad
that I wound up my chapter with the quotation from you ;
for which I do not deserve the credit which I hope others
will attach to its introduction. I put it in as much for the
sake of strengthening my argument by quoting one known
to be so able to judge as you are, as for what it said. I
believed in you in short, quite as much as in what you
wrote.

To Asa Gray

March 29, 1857.

My Father has just asked me to review Berkeley's Intro-
duction to Cryptogamic Botany for him a little in detail. It
is no joke to read it to begin with. It is a wonderful book,
chock full of observations, full of reflections, full of able
thought, accurate analysis, as carefully and honestly done
as a book can be, and a result of a mastery of the subject
which I believe no other man living possesses. Unfortu-
nately it is abominably written and arranged, and the really
admirable correlations of facts and phenomena in the
different organs and orders of plants dealt with in the most
higgledy piggledy fashion. It is like a country parson's
sermon all over, without a beginning, middle, or end, the
leading ideas are here, there, and everywhere, bound together
by the jolliest rigmarole of conjunctions, prepositions and
adverbs. These parsons are so in the habit of dealing with
the abstractions of doctrines as if there was no difficulty
about them whatever, so confident, from the practice of
having the talk all to themselves for an hour at least every
week with no one to gainsay a syllable they utter, be it ever
so loose or bad, that they gallop over the course when their
field is Botany or Geology as if we were in the pews and
they in the pulpit.

478 ON SPECIES

Witness the self-confident style of Whewell 1 and Baden
Powell,2 Sedgwick 3 and Buckland. Berkeley has avoided
this latter snare but has got thoroughly imbued with the
idea that it matters little how his matter is served up. The
book, however, pleases me amazingly ; there is a lofty tone
throughout it, an aiming at the highest principles and an
earnest desire to make his readers think for themselves as
much as he does for them.

Bentham's resume of our views will appear in the Journal
Linnean. The Germans have got to dreaming on the subject
as usual, and A. Braun is groping amongst the blacks for
the characters of the whites. There is a story somewhere
of an Englishman, Frenchman, and German being each
called on to describe a camel. The Englishman immediately
embarked for Egypt, the Frenchman went to the Jardin
des Plantes, and the German shut himself up in his study
and thought it out ! How can Braun, who has no practical
knowledge of large masses of species, know where the generic
idea and name is to be fixed, how far, in short, systematic
language is to be carried into the subdivisions of plants ?
Seemann has got some twaddle about whether genera are
objective or subjective, a point easily disposed of, Rosa

1 William Whewell (1794-1866) was the famous Master of Trinity, Cam
bridge, from 1841, of whom Sydney Smith said that science was his forte and
Omniscience his foible. He had held the chairs of Mineralogy and Moral
Philosophy, and his memoirs of the Tides had won a gold medal from the Royal
Society in 1837. His universality of learning was shown in his History of the
Inductive Sciences (1837), and his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840),
which, his friends recognised, produced a greater effect on study than any
specialisation of his. His other celebrated work, Of the Plurality of Worlds,
appeared ID 1853.

2 Baden Powell (1796-1860) was Savilif>n Professor of Geometry at Oxford
from 1827. He wrote especially on radiant heat, optics, and the general history
and study of science. A liberal churchman, he took his part in theological
controversy, and was a contributor to Essays and Reviews. Among his best
known books were those on the Unity of Worlds, Natural Theology, and the
Order of Nature.

3 Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was one of those men whose influence was
due as much to his warm affections as to his powers of preaching, teaching,
and research. As Woodwardian Professor of Geology from 1818, he reorganised
geological teaching at Cambridge ; was President of the Geological Society
1831, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1851 and the Copley in 1863, and
refusing other preferment, became Canon of Norwich. His research into
British geology resulted in the establishment of the Cambrian system ; but
though a pioneer in his own department, he was unreceptive of new and pro-
gressive ideas, such as Lyell's uniformitarianism, and vehemently opposed
Darwin.

CKITICISM BETWEEN FEIENDS 479

being clearly an objective genus, as is Salix and a heap
of others, whereas almost every genus of Umbellifers is a
subjective idea, and a confoundedly bad one too.

Mutual criticism took the liveliest form between these
best of friends. The allurement of paradox has already been
referred to, p. 450 sq.

To Asa Gray

1857.

Many thanks for your letter and the swishing review of
Berkeley. It serves him right, but he certainly will not
like it. He has made no remarks on my review in the
Journal of Botany ; I suppose that like another friend of
mine (the last letters of whose name are Asa Gray) he thinks
I am wrong when I find faults !

I am charmed with your criticisms on my ideas of
Physiology, &c., &c. Your ideas remind me of a firework
called the serpent which makes fiery circles, — ascends, makes
more circles, — descends, then flares up and goes out. Mine
you may compare to a similar work called a whirligig cracker,
which does the same in a less methodical form. They both
end as your ideas may end — in a blaze, a bang and a stink.
We neither understand one another nor our subject in one
another's eyes, and the stink of each alone remains to each.
I shall be very glad to take any amount of vital force when
I find any one else doing so. With me it stands in the
same relation to other forces that magnetism does to heat,
electricity, sound, sight ; each of which is a tertium quid
investigated by the following up the laws of the others.
With you Physiology = Biology, with us they have a
totally different meaning. I mention this to show you how
far we are at cross purposes in diction. Development =
growth, I agree and generally use the latter term, but it
is raw and undignified.

Heaven defend me from my friends ! I put Bentham
up to Eanunculanths ! I who cannot tolerate English
names in any shape ! They are Henslow's children, and
bad, though the best ; being infinitely better than ads,
worts, and aceae. I think Bentham right to adopt them,
because they are now solemnly sanctioned by her Majesty's
Government, no less, for the delectation of National Schools ;

480 ON SPECIES

and as the Henslow diagrams will be the great engine of
instruction for schools, ladies, parsons and the like, it would
meo sensu be most unwise of B. to have ignored them or
adopted any new-fangled ones. I hate and despise the
whole English system both for ordinal and generic names.
You know how difficult it is to get any really good books
put into Govt. circulation, and it would be a most serious
drawback to the good Bentham's would do were he not
to make his uniform with the system in vogue. These
things are trifles to us, but terminology is a serious affair
to the classes the book is intended for ; so whatever you
do, do not put Bentham off using anihs. I advised say-
ing Kanunculaceae — Kanunculus family, and in brackets
(Eanunculanths) after.

To Asa Gray

January 2, 1858.

Yours of the 19th has just arrived and gratified me very
much. I am, I need not tell you, in the habit of saying at
least as much as I think, when I have fault to make or find,
for I hate to let it be supposed that I have held back any
growl, or grudge, or stone of offence in hat or pocket.

I am glad that you have taken up the Balanophoreae
matter and that of high and low specialization. I hope you
note that I do not commit myself to the theory of perfection
being expressed by consolidation, but state all hypothetical^.
I wish I could see my way clearly through the maze of high
and low amongst Dicotyledonous Exogens. Formerly I felt
inclined to exalt Tiliaceae, Malvaceae and Euphorbiaceae,
and to assume as the highest type of flower that which has
(1) complete series of whorls ; (2) those whorls all distinct
from one another ; (3) each whorl being of numerous
members ; (4) each member being highly specialized ; (5)
each carpel to contain many perfect ovules and albuminous
dicot. seeds ; — thus in short returning to DC. Still the
question remains, is a large imperfect group to be placed
at the top of the vegetable ladder because one or a few
of its members presents these attributes in greater degree
than any other vegetable does ? — this cannot be conceded,
and so the whole fabric falls to the ground. Destroy all
Euphorbs, except the monandrous genus Euphorbia, and
all clue to its affinities and rank are lost. We must there-

HIGH AND LOW DEVELOPMENT 481

fore turn to higher considerations than mere organic com-
plexity and perfection of whorls and make these secondary —
when the physiology of the reproductive organs at once
suggests itself and Gymnosperms jump up from the bottom
of the scale to the top ! for they superadd to the perfect
Phanerogamic reproductive apparatus an exaggeration of
that of the highest Cryptogam, and this without showing
the slightest trace of low development in trunk, embryo,
pollen or ovule, and without displaying any of the peculi-
arities which keep Cryptogams below Phaenogams, except
always the want of a stigma, which does not imply how-
ever any modification of pollen or pollen-tube ! ! !

I am atrociously busy, as, if you knew anything about
me, you would know by this long letter.

The Floras of New Zealand and India are based on the
acceptance of the reigning belief in the fixity of species. The
change takes place between 1855 and 1859, when the Australian
Flora was published, more especially, as has been pointed out,
after the full argument of the Origin was first put together
in 1858 and resolved the chief difficulties which his own work
had left unanswered.

Thus he avowedly adopts a new principle in his Introductio n
to the Tasmanian Flora, which he explains in the following
letters to Harvey, whom he is consulting as to affinities between
the Cape Flora and the Australian, to Asa Gray and Bentham.

Kew : Sunday, January 1, 1859.

DEAR HARVEY, — I am labouring right hard at the
Introd. Essay on Australian Flora,1 whose only hope of
utility is the quantity of curious stuff it may contain ; for
as to elaborating from it a theory of the origin, etc., of
Australian Botany, it is hopeless, I fear. What I shall
try to do is, to harmonise the facts with the newest doctrines,
not because they are the truest, but because they do give
you room to reason and reflect at present, and hopes for the
future, whereas the old stick-in-the-mud doctrines of absolute
creations, multiple creations, and dispersion by actual causes
under existing circumstances, are all used up, they are so
many stops to further enquiry ; if they are admitted as

1 First volume published 1859.

482 ON SPECIES

truths, why there is an end of the whole matter, and it is
no use hoping ever to get to any rational explanation of
origin or dispersion of species — so I hate them.

January 6, 1859.

I am determined to start in my investigations on a
different principle and to try and square all my facts with
(or arrange them by) the most modern doctrines without
therefore adhering to or accepting those doctrines. The
old theory of absolute creations, of single individuals or pairs
is used up ! Grant them, and what's the use of arguing any
more ? Grant too that all migration has been effected under
existing relations of sea and land, and there is an end of
that matter, we may whistle for another force to effect
migration, other than the known agency of animals, winds,
and waters. If we are to assume nothing but these, we are
stumped ! If the course of migration does not agree with
that of birds, winds, currents, &c., so much the worse for
the facts of migration ! No religious creed could be more
exigent, exclusive, and repressive. I should be wrong to
say I disbelieve these doctrines simply because they do not
explain my facts, so long as they do not contradict them.
I should be as wrong to say that I believe them so long as I
think that other doctrines may explain the facts as well or
better than these. I now then start on the assumptions :
(1) That all vegetable forms are in a state of unstable equili-
brium. (2) That the rate of change and extent of change
vary at different times and places, depending on physical
conditions, i.e. on extent of surface to change over and of
conditions of surface to promote and perpetuate change.
(3) That the majority of main types of existing forms have
survived all Geological changes from the Palaeozoic era
downwards to our time. (4) That during this interval
many of these type forms have migrated from one hemisphere
to another, some of them remaining specifically unchanged,
others generically, others subordinately. (5) That during
their migration they have expanded and contracted, i.e.
sometimes thrown off constellations of varieties that (by
selection) have become new species, at others few, at others
none. (6) That during some epoch there has been any
amount of change of land and water.

This does not touch the aboriginal condition of all

A NEW WOEKING HYPOTHESIS 483

types, i.e. of species, my object being to account for existing
distribution.

These hypotheses square with all my facts, for from
them you would expect to find : —

I. That, as regards extent of variation, all existing
plants are made up of two classes or assemblages, (1) A large
number of species so distinct from one another that no one
doubts their constancy or disputes their limits, and which
we cannot connect with others or with one another except
by intercalation of an immense series of intermediate forms
that do not now exist. (2) Of a vast assemblage that range
themselves in clusters of variable forms so slightly distin-
guished that no two Botanists agree as to their limits, and
any one admits that one, or a few, small characters alone
distinguishes each from its allies.

II. That, as regards rate of variation, some forms have
remained specifically unchanged from the Oolite downwards,
others only generically, whilst others are more changed still.

III. That Australian forms are found only in the old
rocks of Britain,

IV. That the Moras of sinking (Volcanic) islands contain
a larger proportion of distinct types than those of continents.

V. That some of those types are not at all represented
on the continents, others only on the nearest continents.

VI. That the further the island is from the continent
the greater is the peculiarity of its Flora.

VII. That the number and variety of ordinal types is
as great in the S. temperate Zone, where there is so little
land, as in the North.

The numbers and proportions of orders (and numbers
of genera too ?) remaining the same in both. This I can
understand if you will allow me in the South as large and
varied an available surface as Europe, Asia, and America
present ; for if you were to destroy 2/3 of Europe, N. Asia,
and America you would not reduce materially the number of
genera, nor of orders at all, but a vast number of species
would be destroyed.

To Harvey

March 1859.

I am delighted to hear of the progress in Thesaurus and
Flora [of the Cape]. You are a brave man indeed. I am

484 ON SPECIES

groaning and growling and making an awful ado about
my Introd. Essay to V. D. L. Flora, which is a heretical,
hypothetical, clumsy, laboured, cumbrous rigmarole of what
I believe to be the correct ideas not yet fully developed,
owing to backward state of science.

To George Beniham

Kew : July 17, 1859.

The Introd. Essay goes on very slowly indeed, many
thanks for your valuable hints, I have modified some of my
expressions (which conveyed more than I intended) accord-
ingly. On two points you and Gray are rather hard.
You expect me to prove or make out my case, and Gray
calls me hasty, precipitate, etc. Now my case is no more
capable of proof than the opposite doctrine of separate
creations, and I do not pretend to be able. I think I show
better cause for its probability than creationists can for
theirs, but this a matter of opinion : at any rate the
doctrine is conceivable and there is an immense deal in
all the steps that lead to it ; whereas all the avenues to
further research are blocked by the opposite. On this point
and on Gray's objection I have said a few words in the con-
cluding paragraphs which you have not yet seen. Thwaites
has written to me on the subject evidently on Thomson's
suggestion, for Thwaites was once a devoted variationist
and I suppose is so still, though he writes cautioning me
not to commit myself. One of your arguments against is
favourable to me, if logically pursued, viz. that as to the
age of man being illimitable, and yet never exceeding a
certain amount, viz. 1-200 years. Were then Methusaleh
and his contemporaries different species ? Then again as
regards Camelopard and shorter legged animals of its tribe
— their difference in that respect is not so great as between
a Skye terrier and Greyhound. After all the case is quite
analogous to the Science of Geology ; Lyell's views of
uniformity of action and immense periods were laughed at
by those born and bred to the doctrine of successive cata-
clysms in a world only 6000 years old, and I cannot help
feeling that the difficulty in this case of species is to conceive
time enough ; that however is not an impossibility, but that
of special creations of highly organised beings is an impossible

INTEODUCTION TO TASMANIAN FLOEA 485

conception. I am much influenced too by the progress of
Physical science and * Natura nihil facit per saltus.'

To Beniham

August 8, 1859,

Very many thanks for your last letter, and the notes
on the Essay. I have revised the paragraphs on anomalies,
but not altered much, as I think that such as they are, the
peculiarities of the Flora are much more objective than of
any other Flora, and more pervade the whole vegetation. . . .
I was afraid of overdoing the peculiarities, and have failed
to do them justice. I agree with you that my allusion to
them is not sufficiently/ discriminative. Take Eucalyptus
altogether as a genus and it is really a remarkable vegetable,
considering the number of forms its Bark assumes ; that
alone would make it notable.

VOL. i 2 1

CHAPTEE XXV

THE MAKING OF- THE ' ORIGIN ' I SCIENCE AND
FRIENDSHIP

MODERN Science dates from before or after the * Origin of
Species/ The publication of the book was, so to say, the
Hegira of Science. By it the science of living things was
revolutionised and every other branch of natural science was
stirred. After the vested interests of current opinion rose
up in a great turmoil, Philosophy took a new element into
her reckoning. The Natural Sciences claimed their rights as
knowledge, discipline, and power.

But the making of the ' Origin ' is not only a history of
science — it is the history of a great friendship. In its fabric
the two strands are indissolubly interwoven. As Darwin ex-
claimed to his friend, ' Talk of fame, honour, pleasure, wealth
— all are dirt compared with affection, and this is a doctrine
[in] which I know from your letter that you will agree from the
bottom of your heart/ so the achievement is ennobled by the
warm human affection that so long sustained the worker and
aided the work. For twenty years the materials for the task
were being amassed ; for fifteen of these years Hooker was
Darwin's confidant and helper. Without Hooker's aid Darwin's
great work would hardly have been carried out on the botanical
side.' 1 In his quiet isolation at Down, cut off from the ordin-
ary converse of the world by the perpetual uncertainties of ill-
health, Darwin found refreshment and delight in pouring out
to his friend his schemes of research and his wonderful experi-

1 Sir F. Darwin and Professor Seward, in M.L. i. p. 39.
486

FIEST MEETING WITH DAEWIN 487

ments on the living action of plants, sure of sympathy, yet
begging Hooker, if he could spare time to read these letters,
at least to waste none of his too busy hours in answering
them, saying :

It is a pleasure to me to write to you, as I have no one
to talk to about such matter as we write on. But I seriously
beg you not to write to me, unless so inclined ; for busy as
you are and seeing many people, the case is very different
between us (June 19, 1860). It is the greatest temptation
to me to write ad infinitum to you (July 19, 1856).

As to direct botanical aid, he wrote with enthusiastic appre-
ciation and careful criticism of Hooker's publications, which
bore so closely on his own work. But this was the smallest
part of their scientific interchange. Though he repeatedly
insists 'Do not answer questions merely out of good nature ' ['of
which towards me you have a most abundant stock ' (April 8,
1857), ' as wonderful as mesmerism' (1846)], it was the unstinted
privilege of the elder friend to ask, as it was the privilege of the
younger to answer from the fulness of his botanical knowledge,
a host of questions bearing on the relations and distribution of
individual plants and groups of plants, wherein lie answers to
some of the riddles of life.

The beginnings of this friendship have been told by Hooker
himself in the * Life of Darwin,' ii. 19.

My first meeting with Mr. Darwin [he tells us] was in
1839, in Trafalgar Square. I was walking with an officer
who had been his shipmate for a short time in the Beagle
seven years before, but who had not, I believe, since met
him. I was introduced ; the interview was of course brief,
and the memory that I carried away and still retain was
that of a rather tall and rather broad-shouldered man, with
a slight stoop, an agreeable and animated expression when
talking, beetle brows, and a hollow but mellow voice ; and
that his greeting of his old acquaintance was sailor-like—
that is, delightfully frank and cordial. , ^

It has already been told how the proofs of the 'Voyage of the
Beagle ' reached him through the Lyells in the spring of that

488 THE MAKING OF THE ' OBIGIN '

year, while he was hurrying on the last of his medical studies
in order to take his degree before sailing with Boss, and how,
there being no other time available, he slept with them under
his pillow, and read them before getting up in the morning.

They impressed me profoundly, I might say despairingly,
with the variety of acquirements, mental and physical,
required in a naturalist who should follow in Darwin's
footsteps, whilst they stimulated me to enthusiasm in the
desire to travel and observe.

In the letters from the Antarctic there are several references
to Darwin, who saw various of these letters through the Lyells.
The correspondence between them, as has been told on
p. 169, began in December 1843, when Darwin wrote to con-
gratulate him on his return (C.D. ii. 21) and urged the import-
ance of correlating the Fuegian Flora with that of the Cordillera
and of Europe, at the same time offering his own collections
of plants from the Galapagos Islands, from Patagonia and
Fuegia for examination.

This led to me sending him an outline of the conclusions
I had formed regarding the distribution of plants in the
southern regions, and the necessity of assuming the destruc-
tion of considerable areas of land to account for the relations
of the flora of the so-called Antarctic Islands. I do not sup-
pose that any of these ideas were new to him, but they led
to an animated and lengthy correspondence full of instruction.

Only the first two or three letters open with the formal
* My dear Sir ' of the period ; by February 1844 Darwin
inaugurates ' Dear Hooker ' to his ' co-circum- wanderer and
fellow labourer,' while from the day of his impending departure
to India the * very truly ' or * very sincerely ' of either signature,
gradually merging in ' Ever yours/ is lost in ' Your affectionate
friend ' or ' Yours affectionately ' maintained by both to the
end.

Acquaintance ripened swiftly into friendship. * Farewell ! '
Darwin concludes a letter in 1845. ' What a good thing is
community of tastes ! I feel as if I had known you for fifty
years. Adios ! ' And * forty years on ' the sympathetic

DAEWIN'S ESTIMATE OF HOOKER 489

bond between them was as strong as ever. In 1881 Darwin
writes :

Your letter has cheered me, and the world does not look
a quarter so black as it did when I wrote before. Your
friendly words are worth their weight in gold.

One of the starting points of Darwin's * presumptuous work'
had been the striking impression made on him by the distri-
bution of the Galapagos organisms ; hence his eager desire
to know whether the botany of this isolated group was as
suggestive as the zoology.

The correspondence began in December ; by January the
momentous confession was made :

At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost con-
vinced (quite contrary to the opinion I started with) that
species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

He had instantly recognised Hooker's capacity. ' I am
pleased to think,' he writes on Hooker's rejection at Edinburgh
in 1845, ' that after having read a few of your letters, I never
once doubted the position you will ultimately hold among
European Botanists.' And in the next letter, * It is absurdly
unjust to speak of you as a mere systematist.' More than this,
he recognised that Hooker also believed, as he put it in the
Preface to his Flora Antarctica, that * Geographical Distribution
will be the key which will unlock the mystery of the species.'

But true views of geographical distribution were impossible
without full and accurate Floras. Here no doubt was a re-
doubled motive for the ardour with which Hooker flung • him-
self into his unending labours, the extent of which called forth
the first of many anxious warnings from Darwin as early as
1845, to beware of overwork, doctor though he be,1 and a novel
prescription, ' You ought to have a wife to stop your working
too much, as Mrs. Lyell peremptorily stops Lyell.' The per-
fecting of his great Floras involved the re-examination of
his vast materials and the more or less incomplete work of
his predecessors, so as to sweep away the existing synonymy
and overlapping, and to readjust the systematic details by

490 THE MAKING OF THE ' OEIGIN '

making clearer the true affinities and world-range of disput-
able genera and species. Complete and accurate classification
according to nature was the first step towards finding the key
to it all.

Thus Darwin, in the act of asking his aid, stimulated his
native bent. He was encouraged in his inclination to deal
with the wider bearings of his observations, which, in Darwin's
eyes, made his Flora and his letters so different from the works
of so many other systematists, remarkable for their lack of
instructive general results. And though special researches
such as these appeared to distract him from his main work on
the Southern Floras, yet they shaped his own views and added
to his reputation.

I am almost sorry for your eternal additional labours on
the Galapagos Flora [writes Darwin in September 1846 ;
but adds emphatically], as yet your work assuredly has not
been thrown away, as many have referred to your curious
geographical results on this archipelago.

Similarly, of a preliminary sketch of his Tasmanian results,
in 1844 :

I trust that your sketch will not have cost you ultimately
loss of time, as, judging by myself, preliminary sketches and
resketches do much good. . . . Seriously, I almost grieved,
when I saw the length of your letter, that you should have
given up so much time to me. Sir William will think me a
bad friend to you, but anyhow, I trust, the sketch part of
your geographical results will not turn out lost time.

These generalisations gave special value to his work and led
Darwin to repudiate his description of himself as not possessing
a philosophic mind, ' one of the greatest falsehoods ever told
by implication ; read your own Galapagos paper and be
ashamed of yourself ' (the whole passage is given in C.D. ii.
37). In short (March 81, 1845) :

Nothing would do you so much good as a little vanity,
and then you would not talk of collecting facts for others,
when, say just what you please, I am sure no one could put
them to better use than yourself.

MUTUAL HELP 491

It was a unique relationship of minds. Each had had
the same kind of experience in world-travel, and had observed
nature, animate and inanimate, with a special interest in the
same question — namely, how the different forms of life had
reached their present habitats. In this, indeed, the younger
man had taken the elder for his model. Before their friend-
ship and alliance began, Darwin, the born scientific enquirer
with philosophic breadth of mind albeit small technical training,
had advanced far along his memorable line of research. He
took everything for his province that bore on heredity and
variation, fertility and decline in living forms, the competition
they had to meet, their range and movement, the relation
of them to their fossil predecessors in the same area, the
geological changes which had determined the ancient courses
of migration. Hooker, master of a whole branch of science,
with technical training in it from his childhood up, and equally
awake to the part played by geologic change in the problems
of distribution he longed to solve, eagerly placed his vast
knowledge, his sound criticism, his special observation during
his later travels, at the disposal of the inspiring friend and
fellow-worker who had gone so much further on the same
quest as himself and had pushed it into wider fields than his
own.

Each was deeply conscious of his debt to the other. Of
the discussions they used to have, Hooker records (' Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin,' ii. 27) : 'I at any rate always left
with the feeling that I had imparted nothing and carried away
more than I could stagger under.' Darwin from the earliest
time feels the immense value of his help, in books lent,
summaries of results, in published works, letters, conversations.
1 For my own part/ he writes after a visit of Hooker's to Down,
* I learn more in these discussions than in ten times over
the number of hours reading.' And again, after reading the
Antarctic Flora, he speaks of having ' extracted more facts
and views from you than from any other person,' while * my
pen runs away with me when writing to you ' (March 19, 1845).

The thanks of a later period are foreshadowed by the
thanks of the first twelvemonth, as :

492 THE MAKING OF THE * ORIGIN '

Really I do not know how to thank you half for all you
have done for and sent to me. I might with truth do so for
every single paragraph in your letter and every one volume.
. . . Your remarks are exactly the thing, which ever since
being in Tierra del Fuego, I have felt a keen curiosity about,
and have often complained to Henslow how rarely I could
find any such general remarks in Botanical works.

And in 1845 the prospective break in their personal inter-
course, if Hooker were elected to the chair at Edinburgh,

is a heavy disappointment to me ; and in a mere selfish point
of view, as aiding me in my work, your loss is indeed irrepar-
able. ... I assure you deliberately that I consider all the
assistance which you have given me is more than I have
received from anyone else, and is beyond valuing in my

More than this : they can express themselves with anima-
tion to each other, without risk of being misunderstood.

Hooker contributes much from his own knowledge. Dis-
tribution is his favourite subject, and he supplies statistics
in the form desired to show range and migration, struggle
and survival, from the Floras of the Southern Hemisphere or
India or the Polar regions, all of which have fallen within his
direct research. Moreover, he is particularly able to tell
much about variation, for, as the preceding chapters show,
he had long been struck by the incertitude of botanists
on this head, and comparing detailed results all over the
vast fields he had covered, had found many species as de-
fined by local observers to be but varieties of a common
species with every intermediate gradation. He can put
Darwin in the way of answering the question whether large
genera with wide ranging species, as should be the case with
strong and increasing kinds, produce more varieties than
smaller groups. At the same time he adds a warning as to
the different impression of distinctness made on botanists by
a given degree of difference occurring within the large or small
group, so that what here would be ranked as a variety, would
there be ranked as a species, to the confusion of any statistics

DIFFEKENCES AND APPKOXIMATTONS 493

that merely compare the relative numbers in existing lists.
This is one of the cases where Hooker, after raising all the
possible objections which must be overcome, is himself con-
verted to Darwin's view by the facts which he has elicited for
him.

He vehemently repudiates the notion (suggested by a
geological article) of coal having been formed in shallow seas,
and about this Darwin long continues to poke fun at himself
and the botanists, to whom he finds it is the proverbial red
rag. They differ as to continental extensions. While both
condemn Forbes' unrestrained speculations in this direction,
Hooker is too liberal for Darwin, who, though on occasion
claiming and accepting great geological changes in land and
sea, stands out against volcanic islands in the ocean being
thus linked to continents, or the invocation of vast upheavals
and depressions without other and independent evidence,
as a simple way of accounting for a single phenomenon in
distribution. Later, however, we see him constrained to
accept Hooker's claim for a continental extension to New
Zealand, as one of the cases that ' required it in an eminent
degree,' but through a vanished Antarctic land, not directly
to Australia.

Meantime he debates with his friend every other possible
form of transport. Seeds may be carried by winds, ocean
currents, berg transport, in mud clinging to a bird's foot, in
the crops of birds, even the most unexpected birds, as when
to his triumph a petrel is found helping in the transport of
certain nuts. He confounds the popular belief that seeds
of every kind must inevitably be destroyed by immersion
in sea-water, through a series of experiments on temperate
and tropical seeds, the latter supplied often from Kew, where
also some of the experiments are repeated. He makes a
salt-water tank, and tests the power of seeds to sink or swim,
discovers how many will germinate happily after this treat-
ment. He tells how his children at Down anxiously watch
the trials to see whether he will ' beat Dr. Hooker.' Then as
the experiments proceed and a seed to be experimented on
happens to be delayed, he chaffs his friend merrily : ' I

494 THE MAKING OF THE ' ORIGIN '

believe you are afraid to send me a ripe Edwardsia pod for
fear I should float it from New Zealand to Chile ! ' 1 And so
he quickly routs Hooker's cautious scepticism. The latter,
confident that nothing will happen, has planted some seeds
that the Gulf Stream has carried across the Atlantic to the
coast of Norway. They germinate perfectly, and in answer
to his confession of defeat (the letter is not extant), Darwin
writes (June 1, 1856) :

I read your note as far as * unutterable mortification '
and was in despair, for I came instantly to the conclusion
that probably Government had determined to give up Kew
Gardens ! and you may imagine how I laughed when I came
to the real cause of mortification. It is the funniest thing in
the world that you do not rejoice ; for you have (as I never
have) put in print that you do not believe in multiple crea-
tion, and therefore you surely should rejoice at every conceiv-
able means of dispersal. Well, I and my wife have enjoyed
a jolly laugh, and all the more from fully believing for a
second that some great calamity had befallen you.

To quote a few more of the points with which the letters
teem : Does the evidence show that in plants as in animals
variability increases in parts which are abnormally developed ?
Do experiments in the Kew greenhouses show that cross
fertilisation improves the fertility of the plant ? Do statistics
indicate that trees, where the abundance of adjacent blossom
would tend to self-fertilisation, counteract this tendency by
being more often dioecious than other plants ? What of
hybridism in botany ; or of the part played by insects in
fertilisation ? On what definition does a botanist rank a class
of plants as high or low in the scale, and how is competitive
highness measured, i.e. that superiority in development which
enables, say, the recent forms of Europe and Asia to oust
Australian forms when they meet, especially as some par-
ticular adaptations in a ' high ' class represent a retrogression
according to the usual standard, which measures ' highness '

1 The plant is only found in these two countries. It was shown that legu-
minous seeds as a rule were destroyed by immersion, thus suggesting a reason
for the peculiarities in the distribution of the Leguminosae.

QUESTIONS FOE SOLUTION 495

by increasing complexity of structure ? How far do physical
conditions alone effect similar changes in different plants ?
How far do the curious facts of distribution among Arctic
plants indicate an extended glacial climate ? Does the
evidence from the migration and variation of temperate and
subarctic plants indicate that this cold spell was world-wide,
and was a factor in producing * representative species ' now
isolated from each other ?

Without further quotation of detail here is enough to
illustrate the range of Hooker's abounding help in matters of
fact or of theory. Unfailing also is his information about
books to be consulted or papers in scientific journals dealing
with special points. Many were not procurable even from the
Linnean Library, where Hooker arranged that Darwin could
take out what volumes he wanted. Many he lent to his friend
from his own botanical library to be studied and lightly marked
on the margins for the purposes of his analysis, sometimes
to be borrowed afresh that the marked passages might be
consulted anew when some better scheme of analysis had
presented itself or some flaw had been detected in the pre-
vious scheme. * I never cease begging favours of you/ writes
Darwin in August 1855, when asking for the loan of the copy
he had before of Asa Gray's Manual.

The parcels generally go from Kew to the Nag's Head in
the Borough, the headquarters of the Down carrier, whether
botanical parcels or a * magnificent and awful box of books,'
though in the case of a rare orchid in flower, Parslow, the
immemorial butler, would travel to Kew and carry it back in
his own safe hands.

Once, when Hooker had a fair copy of one of Darwin's
MSS. to read, a misfortune happened which recalls, though
it happily did not equal, the catastrophe to the sole MS. of
Carlyle's * French Eevolution ' in J. S. Mill's house. The
bundle ' by some screaming accident ' had got transferred to
the drawer where Mrs. Hooker kept paper for the children to
draw upon — and they ' of course had a drawing fit ever since/
Nearly a quarter of the MS. had vanished when Hooker pre-
pared to read it at the end of a busy week.

496 THE MAKING OF THE * ORIGIN '

I feel brutified, if not brutalised [he confides in Huxley
that evening], for poor D. is so bad that he could hardly
get steam up to finish what he did. How I wish he could
stamp and fume at me — instead of taking it so good-
humouredly as he will.

Nor did Hooker merely leave to his friend the tabulation
of these important statistics of variation and distribution from
the sources thus supplied. He often undertook it himself as a
side -work in the flora on which he was at work, whether of New
Zealand or India or Australia or the Arctic regions, for no
other worker and no published book could provide the answer.

By a happy compensation these free gifts of time and labour
for friendship's sake brought their own reward. With Hooker,
as with others, such as Asa Gray, whose opinion Darwin had
asked on similar points, the consequent research independently
enriched his own books, widened the scope of his results, and
pointed the way to a revivifying theory. Writing to Hooker
in January 1857, Darwin says :

You know how I work subjects, namely if I stumble on
any general remark, and if I find it confirmed in any other
very distinct class, then I try to find out whether it is true,
if it has any bearing on my work.

From this sprang many of his special researches. It was
an additional merit in his procedure that he not only saw the
crucial points that needed investigation, but inspired his most
open-minded friends to independent research on the same
lines-, leading them to generalise on their results, instead of
resting content with mere statements of fact. Thus, when
Hooker writes (in December 1857) :

I have begun my Intro d. Essay to Tasmanian Flora.
I think I shall confine it to a clear exposition of all the
main features of the Flora of Australia and leave all con-
clusion drawing to others :

I am very sorry [he replies] to hear you do not intend
to give generalisations in your Tasmanian Introduction
but I do not believe you will be able to resist ; what is in
the spirit must come out.

SPECULATIVE CAUTION 497

Happily this resolve was broken by the impulse of
Darwin's compulsory publication.

However, Hooker's long established conviction that species
are more variable and less easily denned than most naturalists
believed, did not bring him at once into the Transmutationist
camp. He accepted the considerable variability of species
and their spread by migration each from some one original
starting place, a point less difficult perhaps to define than the
perplexing modes of migration : he accepted even their relation-
ship to allied species, their fossil predecessors in the same area,
but to accept so much was not to accept their transmutation
from other species. He went to India ' possessed, but not
converted ' by Darwin's theories, and was somewhat dis-
appointed not to find them cleared up by the discovery of
transitional forms in Sikkim, the meeting ground of tropical
and arctic flora. The actual process of transition had not been
observed ; the partial light thrown on the question in frag-
mentary discussions was not enough, and until 1858-9, after
the consolidation of Darwin's arguments in the famous Abstract,
Hooker, as has been already noticed, worked avowedly on the
accepted lines of the fixity of species, for which he had so far
found no convincing substitute.

His critical attitude so long maintained may be regarded
less as opposition to the tendencies of Darwin's speculations,
than as the caution of a judicial mind, that required wholly
convincing proof for itself before accepting the theory
and all its consequences, and was equally desirous that the
proof be wholly convincing for the credit of the friend who
advanced it. Darwin never tires of telling how he values his
criticisms. They led not to destruction, but to reconstruction.
* You never make an objection without doing much good,'
he exclaims (November 18, 1856). After a long talk together,
' fighting a battle with you clears my mind wonderfully '
(October 19, 1856), or, touching Hooker's help over the question
of large genera varying largely, already mentioned, 'Again
I thank you for your valuable assistance. . . . Adios, you
terrible worrier of poor theorists ! '

But as long as the full argument of the * Origin ' had not

498 THE MAKING OF THE ' OKIGIN '

been presented in consecutive form, -there was the constant
probability that criticism on a single point could not know that
it was already outflanked by a previous argument, developed
elsewhere by the author, but not impressed on the critic in this
particular connection. Thus replying to Hooker, who finds
the changes effected by external conditions inconstant and
unequal to modifying species, Darwin urges (November 11,
1856) that the external conditions by themselves do very little
in producing new species, except as causing mere variability
upon which selection can work. He feels strongly that to make
this clear, he ought to have sent Hooker a preliminary note
on variation and its causes.

In this connection it may be noted that even after the
publication of the ' Origin ' Hooker continued to lay more stress
on external conditions than did Darwin, who explains (May 29,
1860) that he sees in almost every organism (though far more
clearly in animals than in plants) adaptation, and this, except
in rare instances, must, he thinks, be due to selection.1

Again (March 16, 1858) Darwin finds the reason for various
difficulties raised by Hooker in the fact that probably he has
not yet sufficiently explained his notions, and begs his friend to
await the MS. dealing with these points. So when he does send

1 Thus, in March 1862, Hooker wrote to Bates : * I am sure that with you
as with me, the more you think the less occasion you will see for anything but
time and natural selection to effect change ; and that this view is the simplest
and clearest in the present state of science is one advantage, at any rate.
Indeed, I think that it is, in the present state of the inquiry, the legitimate
position to take up ; it is time enough to bother our heads with the secondary
cause when there is some evidence of it or some demand for it — at present I
do not see one or the other, and so feel inclined to renounce any other for the
present.' Hereupon Darwin finds it ' curiously satisfactory ' to see him and Bates
4 believing more fully in Natural Selection than I think I even do myself ' ; but
he startled Darwin in November with the frank confession that every single
difference which we see might have occurred without any selection, having got
right round the subject and viewed it from an entirely opposite and new side.
4 1 do and have always fully agreed,' is Darwin's answer, but under certain
provisos, which in fact do not seem to occur. See M.L. i. 212, 199, and 223.

[Henry Walter Bates (1825-92), the ' Naturalist on the Amazons.' His
boyish zeal for entomology took fuller shape under the inspiration of A. R.
Wallace, with whom he set out in 1848 for these unharvested regions. Here he
spent eleven years. His wide researches into the insect fauna and the problems
of mimicry led him towards the theory of natural selection; and he became at
once a staunch supporter of Darwin when he returned in 1859. From 1864 until
his death he was Assistant Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, and he
was elected F.R.S. in 1881.]

EFFECT OF THE ' ABSTEACT ' 499

fairly complete sections of his MS. to his chief critic, his words,
' Believe me I value to the full every word of criticism from
you, and the advantage which I have derived from you cannot
be told,' are a measure of the delight and relief at that critic's
appreciation of the finished argument. The process bears
out the phrase of June 2, 1857 :

Although we are very apt, I have observed, at the first
approach of a subject, to take different views, we generally
come to a near approach after a talk.

Indeed, in writing on the subject, Darwin confesses, * I try to
give the strongest cases opposed to me. I have been working
your books as richest (and vilest) against mine ' (July 12, 1856).
But in the end, when the first paper expounding his views had
been read at the Linnean, he concludes :

You cannot imagine how pleased I am that the notion
of Natural Selection has acted as a purgative on your bowels
of immutability. Whenever Naturalists can look on species
changing as certain, what a magnificent field will be open, —
on all the lines of variation — on the genealogy of all living
beings — on their lines of migration, &c., &c.

At the end as at the beginning he was keenly aware of all
the help Hooker had lent, help whichj as has been said, Hooker
himself rated at nothing. Darwin, however, exclaims :

You speak of my having * so few aids ' ; why should you ?
[you] yourself for years and years have aided me in innumer-
able ways, lending me books, giving me endless facts, giving
me your valuable opinion and advice on all sorts of subjects,
and more than all, your kindest sympathy.

Again, when the Abstract had been set going after Wallace's
paper had come like a bolt from the blue,1 he cries, ' in how

1 It will be remembered how Wallace, on realising the vast work already
done by Darwin to establish the theory on an incomparably broader basis than
the observations which had suggested the same theory to himself, generously
waived all claim to priority. When in May 1864, in his paper on the Evolution
of Man, in the Anthropological Review, he repeated his disclaimer, Hooker
writes to Darwin (May 14) : 'I am struck with his negation of all credit or
share in the Natural Selection theory — which makes one think him a very
high-minded man.'

500 THE MAKING OF THE ' ORIGIN '

many ways have you aided me.' Yet again, when this delicate
situation had been arranged, he adds; ' You must let me once
again tell you how deeply I feel your generous kindness and
Lyell's on this occasion ; but in truth it shames me that you
should have lost time on a mere point of priority.' Still,
perhaps the greatest service of all was * making me make this
abstract ; for though I thought I had got all clear, it has
clarified my brains much, by making me weigh relative import-
ance of the several elements,' and ' I shall, when it is done, be
able to finish my work with greater ease and leisure.'

Perhaps the most remarkable tribute paid by Darwin to
his friend is that which is given in the ' Life and Letters,' ii. 138.
The date is October 1858, while he was hard at work on the
Abstract. Hooker the critic had seemed strangely unmoved
by the arguments advanced, but a rather despondent note
praying him not to pronounce too strongly against Natural
Selection till he had read the Abstract, brought an enthusiastic
reply, declaring that Darwin's speculations had been a * jampot '
to him. To this Darwin rejoins :

I wrote the sentence without reflection. But the truth
is I have so accustomed myself, partly from being quizzed
by my non-naturalist relations, to expect opposition and
even contempt, that I forgot for the moment that you are
the one living soul from whom I have constantly received
sympathy. Believe that I never forget even for a minute
how much assistance I have received from you.

But Darwin, with his usual generosity of spirit, watching
the increasing parallelism of their views, feared lest he had
checked Hooker's original thoughts by discussing his own views
with him so fully and freely. Hooker would have been the
last to admit anything of the sort. He, as has been said, while
gradually loosening the foundations of his former opinions,
was slow to reach conviction as to the new, and only under
stress of the completed argument of the ' Origin.' His original
interest in their common problems connected with Geographical
distribution and the unsatisfactory views current about species,
was ever intensified by their constant discussions, while the

INDEPENDENT LINES OF THOUGHT 501

special investigations, the result of which often helped to push
him along the Darwinian path, were frequently prompted or
stimulated by Darwin's enquiries. His own ideas involved
mutability of species. Yet so long as he remained unpersuaded
of a true cause for mutability, he could hardly have carried
these ideas to their full completion.

Darwin's feeling, well expressed in the letter of December 25,
1859, which is given in the * Life and Letters,' ii. 252, appears
further from an as yet unpublished passage in his letter of
November 14, 1858, the remainder of which is given in C.D. ii.
139 and M.L. i. 455.

I have for some time thought that I have done you an
ill-service, in return for the immense good which I have
reaped from you, in discussing all my notions with you ;
and now there is no doubt of it, as you would have arrived
at the mixture [?] independently. My only comfort is,
that without you were prepared to give up species, you must
have been greatly bothered in your conclusions, for the
ranges of identical and representative species are so mixed
up in this case, as hardly to be separated. And I can most
truly say that I never thought that I might be interfering
with your independent work.

And again, on January 28, 1859 :

I never did pick anybody's pocket, but whilst writing
my present chapter [Geographical Distribution] I keep on
feeling (even while differing most from you) just as if I were
stealing from you, so much do I owe to your writings and
conversation : so much more than mere acknowledgments
show.

Hooker, however, took the opposite view in the missing
letter to which Darwin replies on April 2 :

Do not fear about interfering with me in your publica-
tions. I have little doubt your views will be, and have
arisen, independent of mine.

[And on Ap. 7,] The M. Austr. and Origin contain much
of the same, but yet somehow everything is taken up from

VOL. I 2 K

502 THE MAKING OF THE ' ORIGIN '

such different points of view, that I do not think we shall
injure the originality of our respective books.

[In short,] You may say what you like, but you will
never convince me that I do not owe you ten times as much
as you can owe me (Dec. 30, 1858, M.L. i. 114).

But Hooker would never admit this, and five years later,
when Lyell, in his forthcoming * Antiquity of Man,' proceeded
to give him large credit for his services to the Darwinian
theory, his native impulse was to send Darwin a flat disclaimer
(March 15, 1863) :

He has written to me also about the date of publication
of the Australian Essay, as preceding your ' Origin ' — in
this matter he has got into a fix by giving said Essay a
prominence which in the history of the discussion it (and
its author) do not deserve. I have such an extreme aversion
to intrude myself personally into such matters, and such an
abomination of reclamations, that I cannot set him right,
even did the plan of his book now admit of his giving the
Essay less prominence. As it is, I am ashamed of seeing
it paraded with an italicised heading, just as you and the
* Origin ' are, and an importance given to its priority of
publication which it never dreamt of claiming. Had I
really believed that your ' Origin ' would have been out so
soon after it I really think I should have delayed the Fl.
Tasmanica rather than antedate you ; but though I knew
you were actually printing the ' Origin/ I knew how long
it had been delayed, I knew how uncertain your health was,
and I was working myself to death to get the Tasmanian
Flora and its (for me) gigantic expenses off my hands. As
it is Lyell seems to think me entitled to a goodly share of
the credit of establishing, though not originating.

1. Because of your over-generous acknowledgment of
assistance from me in the ' Origin.'

2. Because it was my making him eat the leek of varia-
tion, that so stupefied his senses that he was enabled to
swallow Origin and apply Selection (as gastric juices).

3. Because I forced the card of non-reversion of varieties.

4. Because I first applied many of your results to the
class and district of one Flora and country, in a way intelli-
gible to him.

A DISCLAIMER 503

5. Because he understood my arrangement of the subject
better than yours — at least so he said, some 18 months ago.

All this is no reason for putting me in the same category
wih you as propounder of the doctrine, which his work
seems to me too much to do. However, I have not alluded
to this subject to him, nor should I, if he had been as careful
never to mention my name, as Huxley would seem to be, not
that he really is so in the least I am sure.

To this Darwin replied (March 17) :

What a candid honest fellow you are, too candid and
too honest. I do not believe one man in ten thousand
would have thought and said what you say about your own
work in your letter. I told Lyell that nothing pleased me
more in his work than the conspicuous position in which
he very properly placed you.

CHAPTEE XXVI

PUBLICATION OF THE ' ORIGIN ' AND THE ' INTRODUCTION
TO THE TASMANIAN FLORA '

DARWIN was well content that his ideas, given to the world
in November 1859, had already won the support of Lyell and
Hooker, the first geologist and the first botanist of the age.
The publication, nearly a month earlier, of the Introductory
Essay to the Flora of Tasmania, though of course unable to
refer to the store of material and argument in the printed
page of the * Origin,' was scientifically the strongest possible
buttress of Darwin. It took the crucial case of the Australian
Flora which presented so many exceptions to the rule of
Distribution elsewhere. In a country of relatively uniform
physical features, the botanist expects to find a large number
of individuals of comparatively few kinds. Here the case
was reversed. The number of genera and species was very
great. More than that, the crowded forms of the S.W. were
singularly different from those of the S.E. Though so near,
they had not intermingled, while in Tasmania, joined to the
S.E. region at no very remote geological date, appeared a
larger proportion of extra-Australian plants, notably those
of Antarctic and European types.

Beginning with a reference to his large materials, and the
fact that in the five years of his work he had personally
examined 7000 out of the 8000 species discussed, he avowed
his revision of the views expressed in the New Zealand Flora,
set forth not as his own views, but as the current working
hypothesis, namely the immutability of species as created.

504

VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION 505

Now the aspect of the problem had been changed by Darwin
and Wallace ; writers must be freer to adopt such a theory
as may best harmonise with the facts adduced by their own
experience. For they had greatly influenced the theoretical
questions as to the origin and ultimate permanence of species,
though he still held, as then, that consideration of existing
species alone was insufficient to decide as to ancestry or origin-
ally created types. The answer was to be drawn from the
patient study of variation with its causes and checks of the
distribution over the globe of living and fossil forms, leading to
survival and extinction.

In the New Zealand Flora his experience had already led
him to insist on the variability of plants, far greater than was
generally recognised, and he had indicated that it is to the
extinction of intermediate species and genera that we are
indebted for our means of resolving plants into definable
genera and species, a position generally accepted by believers
in the permanency of species. He was now moved to show how
far we may extend this view to the limitation of species them-
selves by the elimination of their varieties through natural
causes.

Still, though it is only an arbitrary line, a question of
degree, that separates genera and species and varieties, he
continues to use the term species as the coin of science, which
for practical purposes of description passes current among
believers in mutability and permanence alike.

The moment had come to write those general essays on
variation and distribution in plants which Darwin had often
urged him to write, reviewing in the light of all the new evi-
dence those questions which, on the botanical side, he had made
his special study for so many years. The conclusions which
emerge as to the extent of variability and the balance between
the forces of nature which make for change and for permanence
immediately arrested the attention of his fellow workers, who
were often met by statements that variation on a large scale
did not exist, or that if it did exist, all specific distinctions as
we know them wouldlhave been obliterated.
Thus he shows 'that :

506 ' OKIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

This element of mutability pervades the whole vegetable
kingdom ; no class nor order nor genus of more than a few
species claims absolute exemption, whilst the grand total of
unstable forms generally assumed to be species probably
exceeds that of the stable.

He adds a doctrine of ' centrifugal variation ' :

The tendency of varieties, both in nature and under
cultivation, when further varying, is rather to depart
more and more widely from the original type, than to revert
to it.

In the New Zealand Flora he had quoted the current
opinion of the tendency to reversion in cultivated stocks as
supporting the theory of permanency in species. This, on
further evidence, he now doubts. The reversion is one of
habit, not of specific character. He agrees with Vilmorin,
the famous horticulturist, that when once the constitution of
a plant is so broken that variation is induced, it is easy to
multiply the varieties in succeeding generations.

On the other hand, if nature has provided for the possi-
bility of indefinite variation, she regulates it as to extent and
duration, by methods such as cross fertilisation, indicated by
Darwin. Thus ' it is doubtful whether the natural operations
of a plant tend most to induce or to oppose variation ' ; hence
both views on species find support in nature, and the question
cannot be decided by investigating variation alone. It is
these checks on indefinite variation aided by the extinction of
unprofitable varieties, that give a temporary appearance of
fixity to existing species. In support he brings forward the
modus operandi of Natural Selection.

The facts of distribution when analysed point in the same
direction towards connected change. Species are replaced
in distant areas by allied forms ; the same varieties do not
appear to repeat themselves at different periods when the
sum of conditions cannot have been identical. The three
great classes of plants are distributed with tolerable equality
over the surface of the globe ; so are some of the larger orders.
If, then, the existing species have originated in variation, the

BOTANICAL SUPPOKT FOE DAKWIN 507

means of distribution have overcome impediments and the
power to vary is shared equally by the different classes.

A resume of the effects of physical conditions on plants
leads to discussion of the problems suggested by the traces of
world-wide migration of polar and cold temperate forms left
on the mountains, even in the tropics, and by the outlying
Oceanic islands ; present geological conditions are insufficient
to account for these.

At the same time, the earliest known fossil plants are so
high in development already that subsequent evolution of
species cannot be said to support the doctrine of * progressive
development ' — the doctrine, namely, that the course of
development is an advance from ' lower ' to ' higher/

Only be it said by way of caution [he characteristically
adds], we have no accurate idea of what systematic pro-
gression is in Botany, or the relation, progressive or retro-
gressive, between the simpler and more complex co-ordinates
in a group.

From the sum of these theories, as arranged in accordance
with ascertained facts, he sets forth in § 35 his working * assump-
tions ' of genealogical continuity since the earliest known
period ; the rise of differences through individual variation ;
their definition through the extinction of intermediates ; their
stability due to cross-fertilisation ; the temporary stability of
physical conditions, and the successful germination of those
seeds only which are adapted to these conditions.

All these points are fundamentals in Darwin's theory.
That Botany, where no Lamarckian * effort ' could be predi-
cated, pronounced so plainly for the natural working of his
generalisations, was of the first importance.

As to the choice between the opposed principles as working
hypotheses, neither can offer absolute certainty as to the origins
of things ; but while the one forbids the progress of enquiry,
the other opens the field to fruitful inference.

As he puts it, in §§ 38-40, the arguments for the immutability
of species have neither gained nor lost by further investigation
and observation. The facts are unassailable that we have no

508 ' OKIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

direct knowledge of the origin of any wild species ; that many
are separated by numerous structural peculiarities from all
other plants ; that some of them invariably propagate their
like ; and that a few have retained their characters unchanged
under very different conditions and through geological epochs.

If we conclude from such arguments that species are immut-
able, all further enquiry is a waste of time, until the origin of
life itself is brought to light.

The most important of these facts is that of genetic resem-
blance. To the tyro in Natural History all similar plants may
have had one parent, but all dissimilar plants must have had
dissimilar parents. Daily experience demonstrates the first
position, but it takes years of observation to prove that the
second is not always true.

And the systematic study of the classification of species,
which are fixed ideas, draws off the mind of the botanist from
the history of the ideas themselves, i.e. the species, with which
he works.1

If it be urged that the origin of species by variation of
pre-existing species be a hasty inference from a few facts
in the life of a few variable plants, it appears to me that
the opposite theory, which demands an independent creative
act for each species, is an equally hasty inference from a few
negative facts in the life of certain species.

Worse still, the doctrine of immutability leads to the denial
of a rational relationship between the phenomena involved
and of any vital rationale of classification. All is swallowed
up in the gigantic conception of a power intermittently exercised
in the development, out of inorganic elements, of organisms the
most bulky and complex as well as the most minute and simple.
Such a conception is unrealisable : the boldest speculator
cannot conceive of its occurrence in any field of his own careful
observation ; the most cautious advocate hesitates to assert

1 Darwin (M.L. i. 175) found the srme difficulty in convincing naturalists ;
they had ' a bigoted idea of the term, species.' His ideas were more easily
understood as a rule by intelligent people who were not professed naturalists.
Among scientific men, they were accepted most commonly by geologists, next
by botanists, and least by zoologists (to de Quatrefages : M.L. i. 187).

A EATIONAL HYPOTHESIS 509

this of the simplest organism, because it would commit him to
the doctrine of spontaneous generation of organisms of every
degree of complexity.

If the barren facts under such a theory may receive a
rational explanation under another theory, the naturalist
should use this as the means of penetrating the mystery of
the origin of species, holding himself ready to lay it down
when it shall prove as useless for the further advance of
science as the long serviceable theory of special creations,
founded on genetic resemblance, now appears to be.

Only the application of these principles could explain ration-
ally the apparent anomalies of the Australian Flora, its ancient
types reinforced by European migrants whose course could be
traced along the intermediate highlands, and its two southern
corners, only recently joined by the rise of the barren land
between, possessing each the remains of separate floras de-
veloped on different portions of a large but now vanished
Antarctic continent.

The Tasmanian Introduction was for the scientific world
only. Hooker was right in his estimate of its popularity, though
wrong about the - Origin,' which had an unimaginable success,
the first edition being sold out at once on the day of publica-
tion, November 24. Thus he writes to Darwin in April (?) 1859 :

From what Boott said I thought Lyell had exceeded so
much my estimate of the public's interest in such works,
that I could not help saying so to Boott. How glad I shall
be if it proves the contrary for Science's sake. As to my
Essay, if Reeve does not print it separately [this was done]
only 150 copies will be printed and 75 sold, as of the Flora
Tasmanica ; if he does, I shall buy 100 for distribution, and
the sale of the remainder will, judging from the New Zealand
Essay, be 2 copies ! In point of sale or awakening interest
our books cannot interfere — the number who read both will
be inconceivably smaller.

The publication of the f Origin ' elicited the following : it will
be noted how Hooker continued to lay more stress on factors
other than Natural Selection.

510 ' OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

Athenseum : November 21, 1859.

DEAR DARWIN, — I am a sinner not to have written to
you ere this, if only to thank you for your glorious book.
What a mass of close reasoning on curious facts and fresh
phenomena ; it is capitally written and will be very success-
ful. I say this on the strength of two or three plunges into
as many chapters, for I have not yet attempted to read it.
Lyell, with whom we are staying, is perfectly enchanted and
is absolutely gloating over it. I must accept your compli-
ment to me and acknowledgment of supposed assistance
from me as the warm tribute of affection from an honest
(though deluded) man, and furthermore accept it as very
pleasing to my vanity — but; my dear fellow, neither my
name, nor my judgment, nor my assistance deserved any
such compliments, and if I am dishonest enough to be
pleased with what I don't deserve, it must just pass. How
different the book reads from the MS. I see I shall
have much to talk over with you. Those lazy printers
have not finished my luckless Essay,1 which beside your
book will look like a ragged handkerchief beside a Koyal
Standard.

Kew : ( ? before December 14, 1859).

DEAR DARWIN, — You have, I know, been drenched with
letters since the publication of your book and I have hence
forborne to add my mite. I hope that now you are well
through Edition II., and I have heard that you were flourish-
ing in London. I have not yet got half through the book,
not from want of will, but of time — for it is the very hardest
book to read to full profit that I ever tried ; it is so cram-
full of matter and reasoning. I am all the more glad that
you have published in this form, for the 3 vols., unpre-
faced by this, would have choked any Naturalist of the
XIX century and certainly have softened my brain in the
operation of assimilating their contents. I am perfectly
tired of marvelling at the wonderful amount of facts you
have brought to bear, and your skill in marshalling them
and throwing them on the enemy. It is also extremely
clear as far as I have gone, but very hard to fully appreciate.
Somehow it reads very different from the MS., and I often
fancy that I must have been very stupid not to have more
fully followed it in MS. Lyell told me of his criticisms. I

1 The reprint.

PUBLICATION OF THE ' OKIGIN ' 511

did not fully appreciate them all, and there are many little
matters I hope one day to talk over with you. I saw a
highly flattering notice in the ' English Churchman ' — short
and not at all entering into discussion, but praising you and
your book and talking patronisingly of the Doctrine !

Bentham and Henslow will still shake their heads, I
fancy.

Ever yours affectionately,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

P.S. — I expect to think that I would rather be author of
your book than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science.

Kew : January, about 20th, 1860.

DEAR DARWIN, — I have had another talk with Bentham,
who is greatly agitated by your book — evidently the stern
keen intellect is aroused and he finds it is too late to halt
between two opinions ; how it will go we shall see. I am
intensely interested in what he shall come to and never
broach the subject to him.

I finished Geolog. Evidence Chapters yesterday : they
are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such
forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would
say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imper-
fection of Geol. Kecord, though no language can be stronger
or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I
am influenced by Botany and the conviction that we have
in a fossilized condition ~ of the plants that have existed,
and that not TooVoo" °f those we have are recognisable
specifically. I never saw so clearly just the fact that it is
not intermediates between existing species we want but
between these and the unknown tertium quid.

You certainly make a hobby of Nat. Selection and
probably ride it too hard — that is a necessity of your case.
If improvement of the creation by variation doctrine is
conceivable, it will be by unburdening your theory of Natural
Selection, which at first sight seems overstrained ; i.e. to
account for too much. I think too that some of your
difficulties which you override by Nat. Selection may give
way before other explanations, — but oh Lord ! how little
we do know and have known, to be so advanced in know-
ledge by one theory. If we thought ourselves to be knowing

512 ' OBIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOEA '

dogs before you revealed Nat. Selection, what d — d ignorant
ones we must surely be now we do know that law.1

The reviews of the ' Origin' were for the most part consistent
in passing over the strongest lines of the argument, and either
fixing solely on the confessed difficulties or making simple
appeals to prejudice. Eeasoned opposition was worthy of re-
spect, and could be met with argument ; but such effusions as
Dr. Haughton's 2 address to the Geological Society of Dublin on
Darwin and Wallace's papers evoked the exclamation to Harvey
(May 27, 1860), * What a conceited puppy H. must be and how
deplorably ignorant of the first principles of Natural Science,
to see nothing in the papers, let them be ever so wrong.' And
later, ' it will do Haughton a lot of mischief.'

Again (March 24, 1860) :

What a splutter and mess Whateley is making about
Darwin's book in the Spectator ; he is bent on widening the
breach between science and religion. To me such exhibi-
tions of fatuous prejudice are truly melancholy. What
will be thought of them 50 years hence !

Against the attacks made at Cambridge, especially the
impetuous assault of Sedgwick, full of odium theologicum, a
firm stand was made by Henslow, as described in his letter
which follows :

7 Downing Terrace, Cambridge : May 10, 1860.

MY DEAR JOSEPH, — I don't know whether you care to
hear Phillips, who delivers the Kede Lecture in the Senate
House next Tuesday at 2 P.M. It is understood that he
means to attack the Darwinian hypothesis of Natural
Selection.

Sedgwick's address last Monday was temperate enough
for his usual mode of attack, but strong enough to cast a

1 Cp. further letters of 1862 : C. D. to J. D. H. (November 20, 1862),
M.L. i. 212 ; and December 12, 1862, M.L. i. 222.

%2 The Rev. Samuel Haughton (1821-97) was a Fellow of Trinity College,
Dublin, and from 1851-81 Professor of Geology in Dublin University ; specially
distinguished for his work in mathematical physics, and later in Animal
Mechanics (publ. 1873), the outcome of his bold step in entering the medical
school as a student when he was thirty-eight, in order to equip himself with
anatomical knowledge for dealing with fossils. His vehement opposition to
evolutionary doctrine no doubt sprang from his religious views.

ATTACKS ON THE ' OKIGIN ' 513

slur upon all who substitute hypotheses for strict inductions,
and as he expressed himself in regard to some of C. D.'s
suggestions as revolting to his own sense of right and wrong,
and as Dr. Clark,1 who followed him, spoke so unnecessarily
severely against Darwin's views, I got up, as Sedgwick had
alluded to me, and stuck up for Darwin as well as I could,
refusing to allow that he was guided by any but truthful
motives, and declaring that he himself believed he was
exalting and not debasing our views of a Creator, in attri-
buting to him a power of imposing laws on the Organic
World by which to do his work, as effectually as his laws
imposed on the inorganic had done it in the Mineral
Kingdom.

I believe I succeeded in diminishing, if not entirely
removing, the chances of Darwin's being prejudged by
many who take their cue in such cases according to the views
of those they suppose may know something of the matter.
Yesterday at my lectures I alluded to the subject, and showed
how frequently Naturalists were at fault in regarding as
species, forms which had (in some cases) been shown to be
varieties, . and how legitimately Darwin had deduced his
inferences from positive experiment. Indeed I had on
Monday replied to a sneer (I don't mean from Sedgwick)
at his pigeon results, by declaring that the case necessitated
an appeal to such domestic experiments, and that this was
the legitimate and best way of proceeding for the detection
of those laws which we are endeavouring to discover.

I do not disguise my own opinion that Darwin has pressed
his hypothesis too far, but at the same time I assert my belief
that his Book is (as Owen described it to me) the ' Book of
the Day.' I suspect the passages I marked in the Edinburgh
Eeview for the illumination of Sedgwick have produced an
impression upon him to a certain extent. When I had had
my say, Sedgwick got up to explain, in a very few words, his
good opinion of Darwin, but that he wished it to be understood

1 William Clark, Professor of Anatomy. In the Life of Charles Darwin,
ii. 308, C. D.; writing to Lyell, quotes Henslow as informing him that Sedgwick
and then Clark attacked his book at the Cambridge Philosophical Society. To
this Sir F. Darwin adds a note : ' My father seems to have misunderstood his
informant. I am assured by [the late] Mr. J. W. Clark that his father (Prof.
Clark) did not support Sedgwick in the attack.' The inference seems to be
that he did not support Sedg wick's denunciations of the Origin on moral as
apart from scientific grounds.

514 ' OKIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOEA '

that his chief attacks were directed against Powell's 1 late
Essay, from which he quoted passages as ' from an Oxford
Divine ' that would astound Cambridge men, as no doubt
they do. He showed how greedily (if I may so speak) Powell
has adopted all Darwin has suggested, and applied these
suggestions (as if the whole were already proved) to his own
views.

I think I have given you a fair, though very hasty, view
of what happened, and as I have just had a letter from Dar-
win, and really have not a minute to spare for a reply this
morning, perhaps you will send this to him, as he may like
to know, to some extent, what happened.

To Henslow he replies :

I expect there will be before long a great revulsion in
favour of Darwin to match the senseless howl that is now
raised, and that as many converts on no principle will fall
in, as there are now antagonists on no principle. Owen has
done himself great damage in the eyes of independent literary
men (who do not care a rush for the Scientific aspect of the
question) whether for the gratuitous attempt to insult me,
or the utter baseness of his conduct to his pretended friend
Darwin.

And in June 1860 :

I never see the Literary Gazette now, and am getting very
tired of Darwinian Eeviews ; there is wonderfully little to
the purpose in any but Gray's 2 and Owen's,3 Huxley's 4 and
Carpenter's.5 All the rest seem ignorant prejudice. I like
a good hostile review even if the tone and spirit are as bad as
Owen's ; but from all I hear, Phillips 6 at Oxford and Clark at
Cambridge are mere twaddle, and the latter invective. All

1 Dr. Baden Powell.

2 Amer. Journ. of Science and Arts, April; reprinted in the Athenceum,
August 4, 1860.

3 To Owen was ascribed the review in the Edinburgh Review, April 1860,
which also attacked Huxley and Hooker. Cp. M.L. i. 145, 149.

4 Westminster Review, April.

5 National Review, January, and Med. Chirurg. Review, April 1860.

6 John Phillips (1800-74) imbibed his love of geology from his uncle William
Smith, with whom he worked. Later he was Professor of Geology successively
at King's CoUege, London (1834), and Dublin 1844, migrating to Oxford 1853,
where he was also Curator of the Museum (1857). President of the Geological
Society 1859-60 ; WoUaston medal 1845; F.R.S. 1834.

CBITICS EELEVANT AND IEKELEVANT 515

show how powerful the book must be felt to be. You
and Asa Gray are models of prudent dissentients. Clark,
Phillips, Haughton, Sedgwick, Whately seem to me all to
be beside the mark, they cannot appreciate the subject, are
•not naturalists, and have no real understanding of the funda-
mentals of. Nat. Hist.

Edinburgh opinion, led by Balfour, the Professor of Botany,
was also in opposition. The following extracts are from letters
to Anderson, Hooker's Calcutta friend, who was then in
Edinburgh. *

Only think of five Eeviews taking up Darwin in one month,
viz., Quarterly, British Do., Edinburgh, Frazer's, N. British.
Nothing but the super-excellence of the book and of its theory
could command such attention ; tell this to the Edinenses !

I hope you have read Owen's review in the Edinburgh.
I should think it must add gall to the Balfourians' bitterness
of spirit, for not content with snubbing me and spitefully
entreating Darwin and Huxley, 1;he cool fish hedges for a
transmutation view of his own !

The following letters to his old friend Harvey illustrate
his attitude towards a fellow botanist — perhaps a systematist
rather than a generaliser — who could appreciate the scientific
arguments involved, but who was strongly moved by questions
of religious metaphysics and the suspicion that Darwin had
ascribed too great efficacy to secondary causes and, as it were,
deified Natural Selection. He had refrained from reading the
1 Origin ' until his lectures should be over and himself at leisure.
He had, however, written in the Gardeners' Chronick, February
18, 1860, on a monstrous sport of Begonia frigida so different
from the normal type that it might have typified a distinct
natural order. This he adduced as an objection to the theory
of natural selection, which supposed changes not to take
place per saltum. Hooker replied in the next number of the
Gardeners' Chronicle, showing that a fallacy underlay this
example.

Harvey had also written and privately printed a serio-
comic squib on Darwin for the Dublin University Zoological

516 ' OEIGIN * AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

and Botanical Association, which his friends thought rather
unworthy of the occasion, and which in the following October
he sent to Darwin ' with the writer's repentance.'

Kew : Tuesday, 1860.

MY DEAR HARVEY, — I send you an answer from Darwin,
to whom I wrote for information as to Primroses, etc. I
never went into the case myself ; regarding it as one that
wanted working out by Herbarium as well as garden. You
will see that he offers you his MS. ! He is a noble fellow ;
he little knows the coals of fire he is heaping on your head !
Again let me caution you how you play with these questions.
You have not the faintest conception of their difficulty,
magnitude, and importance, I do assure you ; study the
question, experiment a little, or earnestly seek for light by
taking up some great orders or groups etc. and endeavour-
ing to understand the relations between all the tribes, genera;
and varieties, leaving species as species out of view for a
time. Do not snatch at superficial observations and commit
yourself to superficial observations on them. Keep your
opinion of species and confirm it, if you can, but if you are
going to write about it, study it first ; and behave like a
Naturalist of 30 years' standing before the world, not like
a superficial geologist or ignorant priest. I say ignorant
advisedly, for I hold Whately and Sedgwick to be as really
ignorant of the fundaments of Natural History as I am of
Church History or you of fluxions. The eyes of the intelligent
unscientific enquirers are now upon us, and I am most
anxious that, for the credit of the age we live in, some
naturalists at any rate should appear as earnest enquirers
and honest workers, and should show that we have some-
thing more and better to show for our creed in the matter
of species, than what satisfied us a quarter of a century ago,
when the higher departments of Biology were nowhere.
There is plenty to be said on both sides of the question, but
nothing worth saying that is not the product of thought and
study. Above all things remember that this reception of
Darwin's book is the exact parallel of the reception that
every great progressive move in science has met with in
all ages ; it is widely different from the reception of the
* Vestiges.' No good naturalist praised it, whilst seven of
the ablest men of this day (and a host of smaller fry) pro-

LETTER TO HARVEY 517

nounced Darwin's book to be the most remarkable of its
generation, and, though not conclusive as to its own ultimate
views, to have thrown the doctrine of original creation of
species to the winds — this is my view of the question.

I really should like to have your opinion of what I have
said on the subject ; as you have only such opinions of my
Essay as Haughton's to judge by, and I do not feel com-
plimented by my friends' indifference to what I do, say, and
think, though I am profoundly indifferent to the sneers
and contempt I have received from the opposite side of the
Channel and opposite side of your passage [the Irish Sea].
Asa Gray alone has treated me with candour and fairness ;
all other Botanists are either indifferent, hostile, or con-
temptuous. I venture to think that if you will read my
Essay, and specially what I have said at p. xxiv (par. 34 and
onwards to end of discussion) you will have a better opinion
of my judgment and grounds for advocating Darwin than
you now have. I do not suppose for a moment that any-
thing I have said will alter your opinion of the main question,
but I do think it may give you a higher opinion of the minds
and consciences of your opponents, and at any rate prove
to you that we may be earnest, truth-seeking, searching
enquirers ; candid in the exposition of our difficulties and
cautious advocates too. I do not ask your praise or approval,
and shall be quite content if you will say whether you think
what Asa Gray says is fair or not.

One other point and I have done. I cannot bear your
flinging away at Darwin and ignoring me ; not because my
dignity is hurt ; .not because you regard me as a mere
disciple and copyist, but because we are both Botanists.
I am sure fair generous friendship can stand any test ; we
shall not quarrel ' for an idea,' however hotly we may argue
it. I threw down the gauntlet in G. C. when you attacked
him, Darwin, from a Botanical redoubt.

Ever yours affectionately,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

Kew : May 26, 1860.

DEAR HARVEY, — I thank you much for your last letter,
which gives me great hopes of our coming to a mutual agree-
ment as to the legitimacy and propriety of the line of study
Darwin has opened up.

VOL. I 2 fc

518 ' OKIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

I believe we are all of us entirely at one about miracle, we
all think variation miracle in the sense you accept (or pro-
pose), and we none of us think N.S. miracle in that or any other
sense. I think I told Darwin over and over again that I
thought his title a mistake and would mislead ; his book by
no means carries out his title. I think still j however, that you
mistake his expressions and give an unfair interpretation of
his expression ' efficient cause.' Most people would say that
moisture was the efficient cause of luxuriant foliage, without
atheism being suspected, and in the present condition of
English thought and language I see no objection whatever
to the statement ; at the same time, in another higher and
the only true sense, moisture is not the efficient cause, nor is
even the property imparted to the plant of being affected
that way by moisture, but the will, or law, or call it what
you will, of the supreme Governor of the universe of mind
and matter.

I see now that your objections are widely different from
what I supposed. I think they are peculiar to yourself
amongst naturalists ; and if you will kindly tell me how far
you think I am right in my interpretation of your objection,
I will re-read Darwin with the sole view of seeing how it may
be remedied.

I doubt if any book that has discussed such questions is
free from this real or supposed objection, and of what may
be made out to be far worse. Throughout A. De Candolle's
Geog. Bot., Physical causes are treated as efficient causes in
the same sense ; and I have always been taught to regard
them as such, but limited in their action to varieties ! a view
which, if logically carried out, always seemed to me irreligious
and nonsensical in the abstract.

I did not, I assure you, interpret the Gooseberry season to
mean contempt. I wish I could join you, but have examina-
tions all July and August.

Geol. Eecord meo sensu =±0. I have turned it, heavily
enough, against Darwin, as you will see. Pray do not accept
Siluria as the beginning of creation yet.

Truly no, we are not obliged to accept either view to the
exclusion of any other, nor do I do so ; I only avow a prefer-
ence for, not a belief in, Darwin's, and expressly state I am
ready to lay it down for a better. There is a middle way,

THE EFFICIENT CAUSE 519

loosely much written about, often broached and attempted,
of transmutation by saltus ; Owen is hedging for it in his
review of Darwin and snub of me in Edinburgh Beview,
and there is a deal to be said for it ; I have often carefully
examined it for plants, this 15 years ; but have failed to find
any reasonably cumulative support in facts, and none in
Geog. distrib. or classification. Other views will turn up,
but in the present state of science, I look to an advance on
Darwin's general views as [the] most hopeful future.

Ever yours affectionately,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

Kew : Tuesday, 1860.

DEAR HARVEY, — I sent Darwin the note of your objec-
tion to Nat. Selection as the efficient cause, that he might
clearly see that I was not singular in my view that his words
state far more than he means if taken in the sense you and
others take them. He was anxious to write to you, and I told
him I was sure you would be glad to hear, but not till after
your Lectures. Do not be dragged into a discussion of the
subject till you are at leisure. Thwaites has written an un-
conditional surrender to Darwin's view under present aspect
of question.

Ever yours affectionately,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

DEAR HARVEY, — I see you are going in for a transmuta-
tion doctrine after all ! and evidently the one that Owen is
hedging for in his review of Darwin (and snub of self) in
Edinburgh Review.

I have enquired about Cowslips, etc., and will let you
know. The battle will now be between transmutation by
saltus and by slow measures. How you can deny N. S. in
either case is to me incomprehensible ! Every real natura-
list owns N. S. to be a vera causa, though few admit the
plenary power that Darwin gives it. In our Herb, there is
every intermediate between Primrose and Oxlip.

You seem to confound variation with Nat. Selection.
N. S. is not itself divarication ; it no more accounts for
divarication than * gravity ' accounts for the motion of
planets. Give time, abate prejudice, and let your ideas
clarify, which they will assuredly do in tirp^ Kemember

520 ' OEIGIN f AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

that I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I
adopted them, and I have done so solely and entirely from an
independent study of plants themselves.

Bentham, Thwaites, and Thomson are all shaken to the
bottom. Asa Gray writes as differently as possible now,
from what he did on first reading Darwin and Wallace.
Henslow is fast changing and defending f at least of Darwin's
book ! at Cambridge against Sedgwick and Phillips, and is
urgently recommending his students to buy the book and
read it carefully. I have no wish to convert you, but I
am extremely anxious that you should not commit yourself
in your present state of very partial knowledge and strong
feeling on a subject that requires years of thought and the
calmest study, and above all a singleness of mind in seeking
for truth at all hazards.

It is one thing to say that Darwin has gone far too far
(though I do not think so), and another to defend the present
weak illogical prejudices and ignorant attacks of geologists
and theologians, or that worst of all class of scientifical-
geological-theologians like Haughton, Miller, Sedgwick, etc.,
who are like asses between bundles of hay, distorting their
consciences to meet the double call on their public profession.
The difficulties (scientific) of Darwin's views are appalling,
but of the old doctrine insuperable.

Ever yours,

Jos. D. HOOKER.

As to the article in the July Quarterly Review, the secret
of its authorship soon leaked out. It was written by the
Bishop of Oxford, a frequent contributor to the Quarterly.1
Internal evidence pointed to the prompter of his scientific
ignorance. * He and Owen,' writes Hooker to Anderson in
July, ' have published a most ridiculous article in the Quarterly
against Darwin, absurd for its egregious ignorance and blunders
in Nat. Science.' To scientific readers the most significant
point about it was that one of the printed pages had been cut
out and another substituted. * What gigantic blunder had
been detected at the last moment ? '

This ill-omened conjunction led up to the first decisive

1 This was acknowledged in 1874, when the Bishop republished the article
among his Contributions to the Quarterly.

THE OXFORD MEETING 521

encounter at Oxford, where the British Association met in
1860. Here the Bishop, a facile and persuasive speaker,
primed he knew not how uncandidly on a subject outside his
range, was put up to bring the meeting to a brilliant conclusion
by * smashing Darwin ' before a popular assembly, mainly
recruited from those who would have held themselves, in later
phrase, to be on the side of the angels. The result was decisive,
because it proved that men of high standing were ready to
speak out, to prevent reasoned conclusions from being over-
whelmed by impassioned prejudice and tasteless ridicule, to
carry the war into the enemy's country, if need be, and
demand that argument should be met by argument based on
equal knowledge.

The scene has already been described at some length both
in the ' Life of Darwin,' ii. 320, and in the ' Life of T. H.
Huxley,' i. 179. The * eye-witness ' quoted in the former,
will easily be identified from one of the letters which follow,
as Hooker himself, who has minimised, after his manner, his
own share in the contest. But I may be permitted to re-tell
it briefly, in order to lead up to Hooker's own letter which tells
the story of the day to Darwin.1

Feeling was already in a state of tension. A sharp passage
of arms had taken place on the Thursday (June 28) as a sequel
to a paper by Dr. Daubeny 2 of Oxford * On the Final Causes of
the Sexuality of Plants, with particular reference to Mr. Darwin's
Work on the Origin of Species.' Huxley was called upon to
speak by the President of the section, but tried to avoid a
discussion : ' a general audience, in which sentiment would
unduly interfere with intellect, was not the public before which
such a discussion should be carried on.'

1 My thanks have been already given elsewhere to Sir Francis Darwin for
his friendly help in the telling of this episode ; and they are warmly repeated
here. But this is one small point only ; the whole Life of his father and the
' More Letters ' (with Prof. Seward's collaboration) which he has given to the
world, to me are a continual pleasure to read and an endless storehouse of
information.

* Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny, M.D. (1795-1867), was successively Professor
of Chemistry, 1822-55, of Botany from 1834, and Rural Economics, 1840, at
Oxford ; especially dealing with the chemical side of his botanical and earlier geo-
logical work (on volcanoes); his paper ' On the Sexuality of Plants,' read at the
Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860, gave strong support to Darwin.

522 ' OKIGIN f AND ' TASMANIAN FLOEA '

But this consideration did not weigh with Owen, who
proceeded with the discussion, saying that he ' wished to
approach the subject in the spirit of the philosopher,' and
declared his ' conviction that there were facts by which the
public could come to some conclusion with regard to the
probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory.' As one of
these facts, he asserted that the brain of the gorilla * presented
more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it
did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most
problematical of the Quadrumana.'

Now this proposition, enunciated by him at the Linnean
Society in 1857, had led Huxley to investigate the whole
question afresh. Previous research, new dissections, even the
specimens at the Hunterian Museum under Owen's charge,
told the opposite tale.

Accordingly he rejoined with a ' direct and unqualified
contradiction ' to these assertions, and pledged himself to
* justify that unusual procedure elsewhere ' — a pledge crush-
ingly fulfilled by his article ' On the Zoological Kelations of
Man with the Lower Animals,' which appeared in the first
number of the Natural History Beview, January 1861. (See
Huxley, ' Scientific Memoirs,' ii. 36.)

Battle was in the air. The encounter was renewed on
the Saturday, June 30, when Dr. Draper of New York read a
paper on ' The Intellectual Development of Europe considered
with reference to the Views of Mr. Darwin.' It was not to hear
his hour-long discourse, however, but the coming eloquence
of the Bishop, that the crowd gathered. The Lecture-room
of the Museum could not hold them ; they moved to the long
west room, since partitioned across for the purposes of the
library. Even this was crowded to suffocation long before
the speakers appeared. Seven hundred or more managed to
find place ; the very windows by which the room was lighted
down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose
white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the
end of the Bishop's speech, were an unforgettable factor in
the acclamation of the crowd.

Neither of the destined champions of the day had intended

THE BISHOP'S SPEECH 523

to be present, knowing what an unscientific atmosphere they
might expect. Hooker, as his letter tells, came at the last
moment, faute de mieux ; Huxley, who had meant to leave
Oxford that morning, was only rallied into coming by Kobert
Chambers' appeal that he would not desert them.

In the chair was Henslow, wise and judicious, a man
as universally beloved as respected. On his right were the
Bishop and Dr. Draper ; near the extreme left Hooker, beside
Sir J. Lubbock ; and nearer the centre, Huxley, beside Sir
Benjamin Brodie.1

For an hour or more ' Dr. Draper droned out his paper ' ;
then discussion began. The first three speakers embarked on
theological and other denunciations ; but were shouted down
as irrelevant, and Henslow then demanded that the discussion
should rest on scientific grounds only.

When the Bishop's turn came, he rehearsed various
arguments from hostile reviews ; but all his science was
science at second-hand, its source and bias self-betrayed to
those who knew, but applauded by the mass of the audience
who had not the knowledge nor perhaps even the temper
to discriminate. It was an audience that at the moment,
Huxley felt, would hardly listen as a whole to cold scientific
arguments or weigh them. He was astonished to find that the
Bishop was so ignorant that he did not know how to manage
his own case, and his spirits rose proportionately ; but he
saw no chance at first of delivering a telling counterstroke ;
they were carried away by the eloquence, the personality of
the speaker. * It was all in such dulcet tones,' says the eye-
witness, i.e. Hooker, * so persuasive a manner, and in such
well-turned periods, that I, who had been inclined to blame the
President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific
purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart.'

He spoke thus * for full half an hour with inimitable spirit,
emptiness, and unfairness. ... In a light, scoffing tone, florid
and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of

1 Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783-1862), sergeant-surgeon to William IV.
and Queen Victoria, and President of the Royal Society, 1858-61. For physio-
logical researches he was elected F.R.S. in 1810, and received the Copley Medal
in 1811, at the age of twenty-eight only.

524 ' OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOBA '

evolution ; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always
been/

Then, passing from the perpetuity of species in birds, and
denying a fortiori the derivation of the species Man from Ape,
he tried to stir feeling ; shall woman also be set on a level
with the ape ? ' Turning to his antagonist with a smiling
insolence, he begged to know whether it was through his grand-
father or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from
a monkey.'

This was equally bad taste and bad tactics. It gave his
opponent an opportunity not only of restating the true position
of science in the theory of common descent and of showing
how incompetent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion,
but of clinching the latter argument in a way easily understood
by his hearers. The gibing descent to personalities was met
by a thrust that staggered the orator's personal ascendency.
For concluding his scientific reply, Huxley went on to this
effect :

I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no reason
to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If
there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in
recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless
and versatile intellect — who, not content with an equi-
vocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into
scientific questions with which he has no real acquaint-
ance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and
distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at
issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious
prejudice.1

1 This is from a letter of the late John Richard Green, the historian,
then an undergraduate, to his friend, afterwards Professor Boyd Dawkins.
It is fairly certain, however, that the word * equivocal ' was not used,
and the sentence, as it stands, gives the impression of being ' much too
" Green." '

Simpler and in many ways more characteristic in turn and balance, is the
impression recorded in a letter to me by Mr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt, F.R.S.,
late Reader in Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

" But if this question is treated, not as a matter for the calm investigation
of science, and if I am asked whether I would choose to be descended from
the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait who grins and chatters as
we pass, or from a man, endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who
should use these gifts " (here, as the point became clear, there was a great

LETTER FROM OXFORD 525

A great commotion followed. Excitement rose high on
either side. A lady fainted and had to be carried out. The
hostile part of the audience was staggered and confused, not
subjected. With doubt still hot and opinion shaken, this was
the moment to strike anew with scientific argument, and
Hooker, though he hated public speaking, nerved himself to
come forward, and took his share in giving the Bishop ' such
a trouncing as he never got before.'

Botanic Gardens, :0xford : July 2, 1860.

DEAR DARWIN, — I have just come from my last moon-
light saunter at Oxford and been soliloquizing over the
Radcliffe .and our old rooms at the corner, and cannot go
to bed without inditing a few lines to you, my dear old
Darwin. I came here on Thursday afternoon and im-
mediately fell into a lengthened reverie : — without you
and my wife I am as dull as ditchwater, and crept about
the once familiar streets feeling like a fish out of water. I
swore I would not go near a Section and did not for two
days, but amused myself with the College buildings and
attempted sleeps in the sleepy gardens and rejoiced in my
indolence. Huxley and Owen had had a furious battle
over Darwin's absent body, at Section D, before my arrival,
of which more anon. H. was triumphant ; you and your
book forthwith became the topics of the day, and I d — d
the days and double d — d the topics too, and like a craven
felt bored out of my life by being woke out of my reveries
to become referee on Natural Selection, &c., &o., &c. On
Saturday I walked with my old friend of the Erebus, Capt.
Dayman, to the Sections and swore as usual I would not
go in ; but getting equally bored of doing nothing I did.
A paper of a Yankee donkey called Draper on ' Civilisation
according to the Darwinian Hypothesis,' or some such title,
was being read, and it did not mend my temper, for of all
the flatulent stuff and all the self-sufficient stuffers, these

outburst of applause, which mostly drowned the end of the sentence) " to
discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to
make." f .•.-.^ & iyr^4v#-*-'>iH

' No doubt your Father's words were better than these, and they gained
effect from his clear deliberate utterance, but in outline and in scale this
represents truly what was said.'

526 * OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA '

were the greatest ; it was all a pie of Herbert Spencer 1 and
Buckle without the seasoning of either ; however, hearing
that Soapy Sam was to answer I waited to hear the end.
The meeting was so large that they had adjourned to the
Library, which was crammed with between 700 and 1000
people, for all the world was there to hear Sam Oxon.

Well, Sam Oxon got up and spouted for half an hour
with inimitable spirit, ugliness and emptiness and unfairness.
I saw he was coached up by Owen and knew nothing, and he
said not a syllable but what was in the Keviews ; he ridi-
culed you badly and Huxley savagely. Huxley answered
admirably and turned the tables, but he could not throw his
voice over so large an assembly, nor command the audience ;
and he did not allude to Sam's weak points nor put the
matter in a form or way that carried the audience. The
battle waxed hot. Lady Brewster fainted, the excitement
increased as others spoke ; my blood boiled, I felt myself
a dastard ; now I saw my advantage ; I swore to myself
that I would smite that Amalekite, Sam, hip and thigh if
my heart jumped out of my mouth, and I handed my name
up to the President (Henslow) as ready to throw down the
gauntlet.

I must tell you that Henslow as President would have
none speak but those who had arguments to use, and four
persons had been burked by the audience and President
for mere declamation : it moreover became necessary for
each speaker to mount the platform, and so there I was cocked
up with Sam at my right elbow, and there and then I smashed
him amid rounds of applause. I hit him in the wind at the
first shot in ten words taken from his own ugly mouth ;
and then proceeded to demonstrate in as few more : (1) that
he could never have read your book, and (2) that he was
absolutely ignorant of the rudiments of Bot. Science. I
said a few more on the subject of my own experience and
conversion, and wound up with a very few observations on
the relative positions of the old and new hypotheses, and

1 Herbert Spencer (1821-1903) the philosopher, had set forth his scheme
of evolutionary philosophy based on scientific data, independently of Darwin,
whose Origin of Species was, so to say^ a crucial test of the doctrine of evolution.
Spencer was a life-long friend of Hooker and his scientific friends, and though he
avoided the regular scientific societies; was one of the nine members of the
informal circle of the x Club.

THE END OF THE ENCOUNTEB 527

with some words of caution to the audience. Sam was shut
up — had not one word to say in reply, and the meeting
was dissolved forthioith, leaving you master of the field after
4 hours' battle. Huxley, who had borne all the previous
brunt of the battle, and who never before (thank God)
praised me to my face, told me it was splendid, and that he
did not know before what stuff I was made of. I have been
congratulated and thanked by the blackest coats and whitest
stocks in Oxford.

CHAPTEK XXVII

THE JOURNEY TO PALESTINE AND THE WORK OF I860

IN the autumn of 1860, with Daniel Hanbury 1 for his travelling
companion, he spent a couple of months in the near East,
joining Captain Washington, Hydrographer of the Koyal Navy,
in a scientific visit to Syria and Palestine. One of his chief
objects was to ascend Mt. Lebanon and examine the decadent
condition of the famous Cedars. This led to his publication,
two years later, of a paper discussing the whole genus, from
the cedars of Algeria, of Lebanon and Taurus, to the deodars
of India, a relationship which had long interested him (Nat.
Hist. Beview, 1862, pp. 11-18). A paper on ' Three Oaks of
Palestine ' also was read before the Linnean Society (Trans.
Lin. Soc., 1862, xxiii. 381-387). Another result of this journey
was the ' masterly sketch ' of the botany of Syria and Palestine,
published in Smith's Bible Dictionary in 1863.

He left Trieste on September 15 for Smyrna and Beyrout,
arriving on the 25th ; returning from Beyrout on November 5
and reaching Marseilles, by way of Malta, on the 14th. With
wars and rumours of wars on every side, the journey promised
to be more than a little hazardous ; Italy was still engaged
in the struggle for liberation from Austria ; in Syria Moslem
and Christian were at daggers drawn ; the French as Protectors

1 Daniel Hanbury (1825-75), F.R.S., was a partner in the firm of Allen
and Hanbury. His keen interest in botany and pharmacology laid the foun-
dation of a close friendship with Hooker. He was a member of the Pharma-
ceutical, Linnean, Chemical, Microscopical and Royal Societies. Apart from
science papers, his chief works were ' Inquiries relating to Pharmacology and
Economic Botany ' (in the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry) and
' Pharmacographia,' 1874, written in conjunction with Prof. Fliickiger of
Strasburg.

528

THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 529

of the Faith — & phase dated by the popular tune ' Partant
pour la Syrie ' — were chief in organising the Powers' campaign
against the Druses. Hooker and his party reached Damascus
only a day after the sacking of the Christian quarter of the
city. Happily the English were not the object of popular
resentment, and no untoward incidents happened to them,
save that all the decent horses had been commandeered.

A few quotations from the diary illustrate things noted.
Thus the Ionian Islands appear to dread the exchange of
British administration for Greek misrule : the meanness of
the Europeans' houses in Smyrna and the lack of hot country
comforts are such as no one in India of far inferior rank
would put up with. Indeed, the relative standard of native
habits is higher in India.

Even under the deplorable conditions of Turkish rule,
Ehocles is superb : and its * old fortifications are far too grand,
tumultuous, extensive, and picturesque to give any account
of.' Two days after reaching Beyrout they were in the
mountains. On Lebanon, at a height of 3000-4000 feet, the
* general character of scenery Tibetan and wretched.' On the
29th they reached the ' great shallow amphitheatre of bare,
red, rounded sloping hills, at bottom of which the Cedars stand.
These form one small clump, like a black speck in the great
amphitheatre, and there is no other tree or shrub near them.'

The youngest of the trees standing appeared to be about
fifty years old. Some seedlings were found, but all dead.
Good cones there were in plenty, so that ' with very little care
this grove may be indefinitely increased and made to cover
all the moraines.'

Two days were spent here ; the cedars were sketched
and planned by the surveyors while Hooker botanised to the
summit of the mountain^

Baalbek (October 2) was most impressive. A glorious sun-
set on the mountains was followed by bright moonlight. He
notes : ' Magnificence of ruins in spite of earthquakes and
Turks. Hanging keystone of Arch in Temple of Jupiter.
Crawl into temple on hands and knees. Columns 7 feet
through. Wolf among ruins.'

530 THE JOUKNEY TO PALESTINE

After the sterile desolation of Lebanon, the beauty of
Damascus (October 4), set in its velvet green, was doubly
striking. Owing to the illness of Captain Washington, they
had to stay four days in their hotel in ' the street called straight '
— ' which is crooked and not 15 feet broad in parts ' — and to
give up the ascent of Mt. Hermon. Indeed there was much
sickness in the city, especially among the Turkish troops,
no doubt aggravated by the appalling conditions after the
massacre, which took place the day before our travellers
arrived, with a destruction estimated at five millions sterling
and a slaughter of some 5000 persons. ' Euins piled 4 feet
deep in every lane, heaps of mutilated corpses, bones — stench !
burnt books, pictures ' — such is the impression of a visit to the
Christian quarter under official escort.

On the return to Beyrout through the Anti-Lebanon country
comes a note for the benefit of Darwin, who had asked him
to keep a look out for special markings to compare with those
of the zebra and other of the horse tribe : ' Saw two asses with
forked end to shoulder stripe,' matching an earlier note at
Syra : ' Saw 4 asses with banded legs both fore and hind down
nearly to hoof.'

After three days' rest at Beyrout they left on October 14
for Jaffa. At Sidon Hooker paid a flying visit to M. Gaillardot,
chief medical officer of the Turkish Government, and collated
his botanical knowledge, which, not having been rubbed up
for many years, was not very serviceable. At Haifa also a
short excursion was made to the famous convent of Mar Elias.

Leaving Jaffa on the 16th, they visited Jerusalem, the
Dead Sea, Bethlehem, Samaria, and Nazareth, the Lake of
Galilee, Mt. Carmel, and so again to Beyrout.

The rounded steppe-like hills of the great limestone plateau
between Eamleh and Jerusalem appeared ' very bare, except
of cultivated terraces scarcely distinguishable at this season '
of entire drought. Considering the * good light red soil,
admirable for Vine and Mulberry ' into which the rock de-
composed, ' in Lebanon every inch of this ground (except
rock) would have been cultivated and most productive.' The
only superiority appeared in the building of the houses.

JEKUSALEM 531

I do not think the climate of this part of Judaea can
have at all changed since Jews — safety of Jerusalem lay
in its position in rugged country without much cultivation
— if rain has washed soil from hills, as is supposed, why is
it not in valleys ? Character of country accords well with
the account in the Bible. These hills of Judah being the
East slope of a broad range whose West alone is exposed to
rainy winds, and further being immediately facing the desert,
the great depression of the Dead Sea must always have been
very dry. The artificial pools are further evidence. Total
absence of public works and Jewish remains is most re-
markable. The Jews never were or will be an agricultural
people, nor could they have been manufacturers, artisans.
They were pastoral and great fighters — probably greatly ex-
aggerated their own numbers and never enjoyed a settled
Govt. without fighting with one another. The Western
world owes them nothing in Art, Manufactures, Agriculture,
Commerce, or Antiquities, and yet they arrogated to them-
selves the character of the finest people in the world. They
were one out of many fighters for Judaea, and held it in
part by fraud and cunning and in part by power of combina-
tion and bravery in the field.

Generally speaking, the Jews appeared to be at the bottom
of the scale among the population of Palestine. The diary
records :

Wretched and disgusting appearance of Polish Jews, who
are very numerous — sallow, with long tress on each side of
face and Old Clo hats — all squalid in extreme, very fair
complexioned. Spanish Jews better. Arab Jew best. Of
the latter there are some families near Safid who boast they
have never left the country through all dynasties — these
are wealthy and have splendid cultivation.

The various agencies for bettering the condition of the
Jews or converting them to Christianity tried much but
effected little. * Kabbis of Jerusalem prevent Jews working,
but very doubtful if they wish to. Sir M. Montefiore was
stoned out of the city on last visit.'

The operations of the Christian Societies had brought their
representatives to loggerheads over the question of using the

532 THE JOUENEY TO PALESTINE

funds subscribed for the conversion of the Jews for improving
agriculture and bettering their temporal condition. Thus :

There is a feeling rising that for conversion of Mono-
theists, Hindus, &c., a broader theology, free of all doctrine
and less of the authorised Bible would be very efficacious, —
the personal Trinity is the great stumbling-block, and many
of the miracles that will not bear investigation — also the
anomalous conduct attributed to Jehovah in the Old
Testament, who is not there an unchangeable God of infinite
goodness and truth, but an anthropomorphous being, sub-
ject to like passions with ourselves, and carrying out Divine
purposes by means that are wholly opposed to Christianity.
The questions of truth of Prophecy, so easily answered in
England, here assume a very different aspect. Similarity of
Jew to Arab and Mussulman in assuming God's authority
for everything he wanted to have and God's approval for
everything he wanted to justify, however wicked, as recorded
in O.T. a great difficulty — another is progress of science —
another (discord ?) of all Christian sects — another, disputed
authority of many parts of O.T. as Jewish record — doubtful
if Moses really was a person. Answers to all these and a
thousand other practical difficulties, all learnt by heart
and rule in England, and explained away variously, rarely
satisfactorily. Jews and Mussulmen will not trouble them-
selves to discuss these things with protestant clergymen and
missionaries because these are all bound to certain sects and
doctrines — but will with secular Christians.

An enthusiastic lady had started the Garden of Solomon
anew for their agricultural salvation. It was irrigated from the
aqueduct that once went to Jerusalem from Solomon's pools,
and under the foundress' vigorous management paid splendidly
from vegetables. The stimulus to all this was the supposed
near return of the Jews to Palestine and implicit faith in the
literal interpretation of prophecy concerning it, of which Hooker
remarks :

I must read this subject up, for as the Jews have
never yet possessed but a portion of the promised land, I
do not see how a speedy realisation of the prophecy is
possible.

MISSIONAEY ACTIVITY 533

But with all her zeal the agricultural missionary had only
one convert to work under her, with his son. Their tenure
of the land was quite patriarchal ; Hooker ' witnessed ' the
drawing of lots between owner and tenant for the upper and
lower half of the property.

The conclusion drawn from all these activities is : ' more
money spent on Jerusalem in charity than any other place of
size — no proportionate good done, especially to Jews.'

The plain of Jericho and the Moab Hills left an impression
of great beauty ; the Dead Sea was * very grand ' with shores
much bolder and promontories more rocky than he expected
and no visible white incrustation at the end. In camp on the
supposed site of Jericho, ' At night the village Arabs, a scoun-
drelly set, came and performed an Arab war dance. Three
Sheiks attitudinised with swords, and a dozen or two men
crouched and grunted like camels and sang before them —
utter barbarity.' Keascending the heights on the way back,
he notes the ' curious effect of rising to level of plants of level
of Mediterranean.'

At Hebron,

turned off road to visit Abraham's Oak, about one mile
out of town ; a very fine tree, acorns larger than of the
usual surrounding stunted Oaks, — probably not 300 years
old, no dead twigs — 24 ft. girth.

As to the reverence with which this tree was regarded he
notes later :

Dragoman says that he bought fallen limb of Abraham's
Oak at Hebron for £1 from Mr. Firm [the consul], but that
superstition so strong that any one cutting it would lose
his first-born son that no one would cut it for a long time :
it was load for 7 camels and cost £10 in all to transport.

To Charles Darwin

December 2 [?], 1860.

I paid particular attention to your query about the
sudden appearance of plants on ascending Lebanon and
made a good many observations to the effect that the more

VOL. I 2 M

534 THE JOUKNEY TO PALESTINE

remarkable forms especially generic do appear very suddenly
in great quantities, and am inclined to believe that the
lower limit of these is far better denned than the upper
limit of those that disappeared. This applies to Astragalus,
Acanfholimon, Vicia, and several other plants which are
characteristic of the dry soil and climate that prevail above
7000 ft., but not to other plants which are equally peculiar
to the elevation but which depend on some little moisture, as
Potentilla, &c. The vegetation above 8000 ft. was extremely
scanty, and I found but one Alpine or Arctic plant (Oxyria
reniformis), and that was close to the tip- top and very rare.
This absence of Alpine plants on the mountains of Asia
Minor is a very characteristic feature, and is shared, I am
assured, by the mountains of Algeria. Under these circum-
stances the presence of so very marked an Arctic plant as
Oxyria is very interesting — it seems to say that an expulsion
of other Arctics must have taken place, and the drought
would effect this well enough.

The Cedars are going owing to the same causes. Every
seedling dies, there are no trees under 40-50 years old,
from which ages up to 500 (perhaps the oldest) there are
trees of all (or many) ages.

Though the last of the Southern Floras was now published,
1860 did not bring a hoped for lull in the press of work ; pressure,
if anything, increased ; official work at Kew, both correspon-
dence and practical administration, grew steadily ; the Linnean
and other learned Societies made considerable demands upon
him ; to his own work he was always ready to add investigation
and experiment for Darwin, especially on the fertilisation of
perplexing Orchids, their structure and homologies, and the
rationale of the curvature of the style in oblique flowers. As
a successor to the Antarctic Flora he was now deep in the
Arctic Flora, examining, comparing, speculating, and, as he
tells Asa Gray (June 26, 1860),

horribly stumped by so many inosculating groups in
America and Europe. What a deal there is to do in redoing
N. temperate Flora ... I can only account for peculiarity
and paucity of Greenland Floras by plants having been
driven out by Glacial cold and never got back.

A DAEWINIAN BOTANY BOOK 535

He was well embarked on the vast undertaking of the Genera
Plantarum with Bentham. And in March he tells Henslow :

Murray and others are very anxious, I understand, that
I should bring out a Darwinian book on Botany — a sort of
elementary book on Classification, Distribution, and origin
of species. I am dubious and considering. I think I could
make it a good instructional one with woodcuts illustrating
all sorts of transitional forms, independent of all theory.

This was the work referred to by Darwin (March 12, 1860)
apropos of a visit from the Lyells.

We talked over your Essays and agreed about the
Book which you ought to make. What fine materials in
all combined, including, as Lyell remarked, the Galapagos
papers ! But I see in the Gardeners' Chronicle that you have
started on a gigantic task with Bentham.

And again, July 12 :

I have been thinking about your Book, and the more
I think of it the more awfully difficult it seems, and there-
fore the more worthy of your attempting. One of the first
points which seems naturally to occur is difference between
plant and animal ! and then, as I suppose, you will allude
to unicellular plants, what makes an individual ! And
thirdly the difference between propagation by germination
and sexual generation ! Nice little simple subjects to
discuss !

The work in hand was sufficient, however, to keep him from
this Darwinian Botany book. His friends, too, noticed that
he looked overworked, and Darwin added one of his solicitous
warnings. Accordingly he turned over a new leaf, and tells
Darwin (December 2 ?) :

I have taken up the Genera Plantarum with Bentham
in earnest, and am going to mend my ways now and for
ever : giving up all Societies but the Linnean, and every
unnecessary excitement, keep early hours, cut off all
correspondents (except those I love) with short letters — eat
well, walk a good deal in the garden, and avoid all occasions
of sin. I have not had a headache for three months now !

536 THE JOUENEY TO PALESTINE

To Huxley he made a similar profession of good resolutions,
and received a reply in kind.

Kew : December 12, 1860.

We are not likely to meet except at the Linnean, for I
have inaugurated a new era in my life, and am going to take
the world and all that is therein as coolly as I can. When
perfect myself I shall commence operating on you. What
is the use of tearing your life to pieces before you are 50 ?
which you are (and I was) doing as fast as possible.

From T. H. Huxley

Jermyn Street : December 19, I860.

And finally as to your resolutions, my holy pilgrim, they
will be kept about as long as the resolutions of the anchorites
who are thrown into the busy world. Or, I won't say that,
for assuredly you will take the world ' as coolly as you
can ' — and so shall I. But that coolness amounts to the
red heat of properly constructed mortals.

It is no use having any false modesty about the matter.
You and I, if we last ten years longer — and you by a long
while first — will be the representatives of our respective
lines in the country. In that capacity we shall have certain
duties to perform, to ourselves, to the outside world, and
to Science. We shall have to swallow praise, which is no
great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous bastings and
irritations, which will involve a good deal of unquestion-
able pain. Don't flatter yourself that there is any moral
chloroform by which either you or I can render ourselves
insensible or acquire the habit of doing things coolly.

It is assuredly of no great use to tear one's life to pieces
before one is fifty. But the alternative, for men constituted
on the high pressure tubular boiler principle like ourselves,
is to lie still and let the devil have his own way. And I will
be torn to pieces before I am forty sooner than see that.

Fortified by a few months of this regime, he can point
the moral to his friend Anderson in Calcutta (April 22, 1861)
apropos of T. Thomson's break- down in India.

That cursed Society of Calcutta and Sunday labour
in entertaining is at the root of all the mischief, and I do

OVEKWOKK 537

earnestly hope that you will follow my example here and
demand the Sunday for yourself and those only of your own
friends you choose to ask personally.

And a month later :

I can only repeat, for God's sake do not overtask your-
self, proceed methodically and kick out the Society or the
Bot. Gardens ; cultivate moral courage as the first of all
qualities in a man of business.

June 2 : I shall transgress my rule of writing only once
a month to give you a stave. . . .

* Servate animam aequam,' my dear fellow, and do not
allow your frightful accumulation of work in hand to over-
whelm you as it well may. Just now I can well appreciate
your position and labour, for here have I been [at Hitcham]
for 10 days emptying poor Henslow's house — such an
accumulation. Tons have gone to Cambridge and Kew,
and there are 150 boxes to go to Stevens' auction room.

You are right to give a few hours a day to each job till
each is cleared off ; if you can carry this through all will
go well with you — and if you do not tant pis for you — but
do I beg of you servate animam aequam. Do not be bothered
— go steadily to work. Do not fret about the plants arriving
dead at Calcutta. You had a better experience of our luck
during your stay at Kew than is usual with us.

To his staunch helper, Professor Oliver, he also writes an
emphatic warning against his overwork, and for himself, on
bidding Bentham to Kew on September 3, 1861, he adds : ' We
can talk over Genera and gamble in the evening, for I have
reformed my habits of working at night, now that I have
not to write so much as heretofore.' Though he managed to
keep off the E. S. Council with its heavy work in 1862, he was
compelled, much against his will, to accept a botanical Juror-
ship at the Exhibition of 1862 ; but despite the loss of income
and regret at surrendering an outpost of Science, he was glad
to give up the examinership at London University in 1864.
Though he tried to resign his other examinerships at the same
time, he was compelled to continue the work until he succeeded
to the Directorship of Kew in 1865.

538 THE JOUKNBY TO PALESTINE

It was this engrossing pressure, common to Hooker and his
closest scientific friends, that led to the foundation of the
famous x Club. This has already been described at some
length in the ' Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley,' i. 368 seq.,
and in ' Sketches from the Life of Edward Frankland,' p. 148
seq. A further account may be added here, for the club was
not only a unique constellation of intellects, but a notable
factor in the personal life of its members. All were keen
workers in science and progressive thought ; all were friends of
long standing. The growing pressure of work made meeting
difficult save casually, perhaps dining at the Athenaeum before
important lectures at the Koyal Institution or the regular
gatherings of the Koyal and other societies. These unpre-
meditated encounters suggested something more definite. ' I
wonder if we are ever to meet again in this world,' Huxley
had written to Hooker in his * remote province ' of Kew.
Now in January 1864 Huxley proposed to him that they should
organise some sort of a regular meeting. All the friends,
with the exception of Herbert Spencer, being Fellows of the
Eoyal Society, the date chosen for dining together was the
first Thursday in each month (except July, August, and
September) before the Society's meeting. The usual hour
was six o'clock, so that they should be in good time for the
meeting at eight. On December 5, 1885, Huxley, who was
treasurer, notes in the minutes, * Got scolded for dining at
6.30. Had to prove we have dined at 6.30 for a long time
by evidence of waiter.' However, at the February meeting,
' agreed to fix dinner hour six hereafter.'

Eight members met at the first meeting, November 3, 1864 ;
at the second, a ninth member was added in William Spottis-
woode, but a proposal to add a tenth was never carried out.
On the principle of lucus a non lucendo, this gave point to the
symbol x for the name of the club, the origin of which is
described as follows by Huxley in his reminiscences of John
Tyndall in the Nineteenth Century for January 1894 :

* At starting, our minds were terribly exercised over the
name and constitution of our society. As opinions on this
grave matter were no less numerous than the members — indeed

FOUNDATION OF THE X CLUB 539

more so — we finally accepted the happy suggestion of our
mathematicians to call it the x Club ; and the proposal of some
genius among us, that we should have no rules save the un-
written law not to have any, was carried by acclamation.'

The meetings were at first regularly held at the St. George's
Hotel, Albemarle Street, with Almond's Hotel, Clifford Street,
and the Athenaeum to fall back upon in case St. George's were
not available. In the latter eighties, however, the Athenaeum
became the regular meeting place, and it was here that the
* coming of age ' of the club was celebrated in 1885.

For some years also there was a summer week-end meeting
in the country, which was attended by members and their
wives. For this the Treasurer whose turn of duty it was, did
not send out the usual postcard of invitation 2 = 2, or what-
ever the date might be. The correct formula for the occasion
was x's + yv's. The place of these meetings was sometimes
the foot of Leith Hill, or Oxford, or Oatlands Park, but most
usually Maidenhead, with possibilities of a drive to Burnham
Beeches and Dropmofe, and boats on the river. But this grew in-
creasingly difficult to arrange, and in course of time was dropped.

Hooker, Busk, Spencer, and Tyndall x had all been close
friends of Huxley's soon after his return from the voyage of
the Rattlesnake ; Frankland and Hirst 2 were yet older friends

1 John Tyndall (1820-93), natural philosopher and Alpinist, after beginning
life on the ordnance survey and as a railway engineer, went to Queenwood
College as teacher of mathematics and surveying. Resolving to devote himself
to science, he, with his colleague Edward Frankland, the chemist, went to Mar-
burg, and then Berlin, studying chemistry and magnetism. He returned to
Queenwood in 1851, but in 1853, Dr. Bence-Jones, having heard of the impres-
sion made by him in Berlin, invited him to lecture at the Royal Institution, with
the result that he was immediately chosen as Professor of Natural Philosophy
there, becoming the colleague and from 1867 the successor of Faraday, the
superintendent. In addition to his researches on heat (for which he received
the Rumford Medal 1867), light and sound and the germ theory, he was cele-
brated as a lecturer and expositor of science for the public. He was scientific
adviser to the Trinity House 1866-83. He was a warm friend of his fellow
members of the x Club, particularly of Huxley.

2 Thomas Archer Hirst (1830-92), mathematician, was articled as surveyor,
&c. at Halifax, Yorkshire. Taking his Ph.D. in 1852, he became Lecturer in
Mathematics at Queenwood College, Hants, 1853-6, and University College
School, 1860; F.R.S. 1861; F.R.A.S. 1866; Professor of Physics, University
College, 1865, and of Pure Mathematics, 1866-70 ; Director of Naval Studies
at Greenwich, 1873-83 ; Fellow of London University, 1882. He published
various mathematical writings.

540 THE JOUENEY TO PALESTINE

and allies of Tyndall ; Sir John Lubbock and Spottiswoode l
were later friends of them all.

The one purpose of the club was to afford a definite meeting
point for a few friends who were in danger of drifting apart
in the flood of busy lives. But it was in itself a representative
group of scientific men destined to play a large part in the
history of science. Five of them received the Eoyal Medal ;
three the Copley, the highest scientific award ; one the Kumford ;
six were Presidents of the British Association, three Associates
of the Institute of France, and from amongst them the Koyal
Society chose a Secretary, a Foreign Secretary, a Treasurer,
and three successive Presidents.

I think, originally [writes Huxley, l.c.~\ there was some
vague notion of associating representatives of each branch
of science ; at any rate, the nine who eventually came
together could have managed, among us, to contribute most
of the articles to a scientific Encyclopaedia.

As I have written elsewhere, they included leading repre-
sentatives of half a dozen branches of science — mathematics,
physics, philosophy, chemistry, botany, and biology ; and all
were animated by similar ideas of the high function of science,
and of the great Society which should be the chief representa-
tive of science in this country. However unnecessary, it was
perhaps not unnatural that a certain jealousy of the club and
its possible influence grew up in some quarters. But what-
ever influence fell to it as it were incidentally — and earnest
men with such opportunities of mutual understanding and
such ideals of action could not fail to have some influence on
the progress of scientific organisation — it was assuredly not
sectarian nor exerted for party purposes during the twenty-
eight years of the club's existence.

I believe that the x [continues Huxley] had the credit
of being a sort of scientific caucus, or ring, with some people.

1 William Spottiswoode (1825-83) was an accomplished mathematician and
physicist as well as a man of business. He succeeded his father as Queen's
Printer in 1846, and after being Treasurer became President of the Royal Society
1878-83, following Hooker and preceding Huxley. His great personal charm
endeared him to his friends.

TALK AT THE X CLUB 541

In fact two distinguished scientific colleagues of mine once
carried on a conversation (which I gravely ignored) across
me, in the smoking room of the Athenaeum, to this effect :
* I say, A., do you know anything about the x Club ? ' * Oh
yes, B., I have heard of it. What do they do ? ' * Well,
they govern scientific affairs, and really, on the whole, they
don't do it badly.' If my good friends could only 'have been
present at a few of our meetings, they would have formed a
much less exalted idea of us, and would, I fear, have been
much shocked at the sadly frivolous tone of our ordinary
conversation.

Thus, in the minutes of December 5, 1885, already quoted,
when Huxley as treasurer revived the early custom of making
some notes of the conversation, we read : ' Talked politics,
scandal, and the three classes of witnesses — liars, d — d liars,
and experts. Huxley gave account of civil list pension. Sat
to the unexampled hour of 10 P.M., except Lubbock, who
had to go to Linnean.'

In the minutes of the sixties and early seventies the notes
of talk usually record the more serious subjects, especially the
progress of science through education in schools, learned
societies, and research. Thus at the first meeting there was
discussed the reorganisation of the Header, a journal in which
the Young Guard of science were seeking a literary mouth-
piece. Again ' the claims of several candidates now proposed
for admission to the Athenaeum and Eoyal Society formed
one of the subjects of conversation.' Later ' the present un-
satisfactory mode of election of the Council of the Koyal Society
was discussed. Frankland, Hirst, and Spottiswoode expressed
their intention of bringing the subject before the Council as
soon as possible.' The subject recurs more than once in the
minutes, and indeed it was subsequently * agreed that the
B.S. Council should form a subject of consideration at the
October meeting of the Club each year ' ; while, when Huxley
was President Elect of the British Association, the choice of
presidents of the sections was discussed and a provisional list
made out.

So too ' Lubbock's proposition was discussed of the founda-

542 THE JOUENEY TO PALESTINE

tion of a Christie Lectureship at the Koyal Institution ' and
* the advisability of Tyndall's acceptance of the Professorship
of Physics at Oxford/

* Spottiswoode informed us that the Liberal party at
Oxford were about to try to utilise the present movement
for university extension, originated by the theological party.
The former would be glad to receive support from the friends
of Science outside the university. A conversation ensued
relative to the changes which ought now to be introduced into
school education generally.'

* Huxley's forthcoming lecture at St. Martin's Hall, and
the Sunday League generally, were subjects of conversation.
Spencer spoke of some of the results of his late botanical
inquiries.1

' Frankland proposed that we should take into consideration
some method of hastening the publication of papers in the
" Phil. Trans." Hirst read a letter from the Secretary of the
Sunday League in reference to the late suppression of the
Sunday lectures by the Sabbatarians.'

* One of the principal subjects of conversation was the
President of the British Association for 1868. We all requested
Hooker to allow himself to be nominated, but he declined, on
the ground that it would interfere too much with the scientific
work he had in hand.'

* The constitution of Section D of the British Association
was discussed.'

1 Sir John Lubbock having been asked by a number of
graduates of the University of London to come forward as
their representative in Parliament, we decided to give him our
support by expressing our unanimous opinion that scientific
men would regard him as a most appropriate representative
in Parliament.'

* The relation between Faraday, when young, and Davy.
Tyndall observed that we must not judge Davy's treatment
of Faraday by the light of subsequent experience of Faraday's
powers, but must remember that Faraday came to the Koyal
Institution simply as a bookbinder's boy, who wanted to change
his business for some other occupation. Hooker mentioned

MOEE CONVEKSATION 543

that the menial position in which Faraday travelled with Davy,
in 1813, was owing to the fact that the French Government
would allow only a maid or valet to accompany Sir H. and
Lady Davy on their journey.5

* In the beginning was the atom, and the atom was without
form and void, and darkness was on the face of the substance.
And the spirit of Frankland moved on the face of the substance,
and he said, Let there be an atom : and there was an atom ;
and he saw that it was good. And the atom and its shadow
were the first edition ; and Frankland said, Let there be a
bond, &c., &c.' — Hirst's minute. (See Hooker's recollection of
this incident, ii. 359, and also 112.)

* The conversation turned on Tyndall's discoveries in
chemical composition, &c., &c., due to light. On Huxley's
new observations on microscopic organic forms and on the
possible bearing of these on one another. Also on some
arrangement for the publication of English scientific works
in America.'

* It was resolved to add Lubbock's name to the B.A.
Committee on Scientific education, in order that he might con-
sult that committee on points arising in the public school
committee. The subject of State assistance to original experi-
mental research was discussed ; an extension of the Government
grant through the Eoyal Society was thought by the majority
to be the best means. Huxley reported that the question
of Sunday evening lectures had been revived independently
by the Sunday League ; and will report further hereafter.'

* The conversation turned, during the larger part of the
evening, on Tyndall's discoveries in the reflecting of blue rays
from the molecules of attenuated vapours. We were more
than once called to order by Spencer for allowing the conversa-
tion to become broken up instead of remaining general.'

* The conversation was very metaphysical ; Spencer v. the
field. Airy was spoken of as a possible future President of the
Koyal Society. It was suggested that five years would be a
suitable period for the tenure of the presidentship, as well as
for membership of council.'

Later the period of ten years of office of P.E.S. was discussed.

544 THE JOURNEY TO PALESTINE

The prevailing opinion was in favour of 'no restriction.'
On another occasion, when matters of scientific organisation
had filled up the evening to the exclusion of general subjects or
the bearing of special work undertaken by individual members,
Spencer, the guardian of strict justice, ' protested against the
transaction of so much business.' It was more satisfactory
when debate turned ' on the merits of Bacon as the originator
of the method of induction in science,' or on the opinions
expressed at ' the meeting of clergy at Sion College, where
Huxley delivered a discourse,' *• or on the occasion when
* Professor Masson dined with us. Masson and Spencer
fought the battle of the ladies.'

Finally, after Hooker's retirement from Kew, ' discussed
Linnean presidency, which Hooker positively declined.'

These quotations are typical, but typical only of part of the
x Club meetings. As Professor Frankland writes (I.e. p. 161) :
' It must not be supposed that the talk at the meeting was
by any means confined to such topics. There was always a
judicious admixture of ordinary dinner-table talk, with a by
no means sparse sprinkling of witticisms, good stories, and,
perhaps occasionally, though very rarely, a little scandal.'

Guests were not excluded from the club dinners ; men
of science or letters of various nationalities came by special
invitation from time to time. Among the twenty-nine whose
names are recorded in the archives are Darwin, Colenso,
Eichard Strachey, Tollemache, Helps ; Professors W. K.
Clifford, Bain, Masson, Eobertson Smith ; Bentham the
botanist, John (Lord) Morley, Francis Galton, Jodrell, the
founder of several scientific lectureships ; Dr. Klein ; the
Americans Marsh, Gilman, A. Agassiz, and Youmans, who met
here several of the contributors to the International Scientific
Series organised by him, and Continental representatives such
as Helmholtz, Laugel, and Cornu.

1 This meeting took place on December 12, 1867, under the auspices of Dean
Farrar and the Rev. W. Rogers of Bishopsgate, ' Hang Theology ' Rogers. The
bearing of recent science upon orthodox dogma was discussed ; some denounced
any concessions as impossible ; others declared that they had long ago accepted
the teachings of geology, whereupon a candid friend inquired, ' Then why don't
you say so from your pulpits ? '

OBJECT OF THE CLUB 545

The club met 240 times, the average attendance being seven
up to 1883, and the whole nine assembling on twenty-seven
occasions. Hooker himself attended 169 times. The original
circle remained unbroken for nearly nineteen years. Spottis-
woode died in 1883; Buskin 1886. The meetings, wrote Huxley,
' were steadily continued for some twenty years, before our ranks
began to thin ; and one by one, geistige Naturen such as those
for which the poet so willingly paid the ferryman,1 silent but
not unregarded, took the vacated places.' Proposals were
often made to fill up the gaps, especially when ill-health drove
other members to live out of town ; but as the x really had ' no
raison d'etre beyond the personal attachment of its original
members/ it seemed to some that new members, however
personally welcome, could not be admitted without destroying
the unique relationship of friendship joined to a common
experience of struggle and success. This feeling was expressed
by Huxley in a letter to Frankland of 1886 :

Nobody could have foreseen or expected twenty years
ago when we first met, that we were destined to play the
parts we have since played, and it is in the nature of things
impossible that any of the new members proposed (much
as we may like and respect them all), can carry on the work
which has so strangely fallen to us.

An axe with a new head and a new handle may be the
same axe in one sense, but it is not the familiar friend with
which one has cut one's way through wood and brier.

And to Hooker two years later :

The club has never had any purpose except the purely
personal object of bringing together a few friends who did
not want to drift apart. It has happened that these cronies
had developed into bigwigs of various kinds, and therefore
the club has incidentally — I might say accidentally*— had
a good deal of influence in the scientific world. But if I had

1 Nimm dann Fiihrmann,
Nimm die Miethe
Die ich gerne dreifach biete ;
Zwei, die eben iiberfuhren
Waren geistige Naturen.

546 THE JOUKNEY TO PALESTINE

to propose to a man to join, and he were to say, Well, what
is your object ? I should have to reply like the needy knife-
grinder, ' Object, God bless you, sir, we've none to show.'

The matter at last was wittily disposed of. No proposition
of the kind was to be entertained * unless the name of the new
member contained all the consonants absent from the names
of the old ones. In the lack of Slavonic friends this decision
put an end to the possibilities of increase.'

After the death, in February 1892, of Hirst, a most devoted
supporter of the club, who * would, I believe, present it in his
sole person rather than pass the day over,' only one more meet-
ing took place, in the following month. With five of the six
survivors domiciled far from town, meeting after meeting fell
through, until the treasurer (Hooker) wrote, * My idea is that
it is best to let it die out unobserved, and say nothing about
its decease to any one.'

Thus it came to pass that the March meeting of the club
in 1892 remained its last. No ceremony ushered it out of
existence. Its end exemplified a saying of Hooker's : * At
our ages clubs are an anachronism.'

END OF VOL. I.

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