THE

AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ARTS.

[SECOND SERIES.]

ART. I.-Sir William Jackson Hooker.

SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER died at Kew, after a short illness, on the 12th of August last, in the eighty-first year of his age.

Seldom, if ever before, has the death of a botanist been so widely felt as a personal sorrow,-so extended were his relations, and so strongly did he attach to himself all who knew him. By the cultivators of botany in our own country, at least, this statement will not be thought exaggerated. Although few of our botanists ever had the privilege of personally knowing him, there are none who are not much indebted to him, either directly or indirectly. It is fitting, therefore, that some record of his life and tribute to his memory should appear upon the pages of the American Journal of Science.

The incidents of his life are soon told. He was born on the 6th of July, 1785, at Norwich, England, where his father,who survived to even a greater age than his distinguished and only son, was at that period confidential clerk in a large business establishment. He was descended from the same family with "the judicious Hooker," author of the "Ecclesiastical PoÏity." The name William Jackson was that of our botanist's cousin and godfather, who died young, and was soon followed by both his parents; in consequence of which their estate of Sea-salter, near Canterbury, came to young Hooker while yet a lad at the Norwich High School. He could therefore indulge the taste which he early developed for natural history, at this time mainly for ornithology. But the chance discovery of that

AM. JOUR. SCI.-SECOND SERIES, VOL. XLI, No. 121.-JAN., 1866.

rare and curious Moss, Buxbaumia aphylla, which he took to his eminent townsman, Sir James Edward Smith, directed his attention to Botany, and fixed the bent of his long and active life. He now made extensive botanical tours through the wildest parts of Scotland, the Hebrides and the Orkneys, which his lithe and athletic frame and great activity fitted him keenly to enjoy. Coming up to London he made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks and of the botanists he had drawn around him, Dryander, Solander, and Robert Brown.

In 1809 he went to Iceland, to explore that then little-known island. The exploration was most successful; but the ship in which he embarked with all his collections, notes, and drawings, was fired and destroyed and everything was lost, he himself narrowly escaping with his life. Hooker's earliest work, the Jour nal of a Tour in Iceland, in two octavo volumes, published at Yarmouth in 1811, and republished at London two years afterwards, gives an interesting account of his explorations and adventures, along with the history of a singular attempt at the time to revolutionize the island,-with which the disaster to the vessel he returned in was in some way connected, we forget how. Not disheartened by these losses, he now turned from a polar to an equatorial region, and made extensive preparations for going to Ceylon, with Sir Robert Brownrigg, then appointed Governor. But the disturbances which broke out in that island, more serious than those which attended the close of his Iceland tour, again frustrated his endeavors.

The strong disposition for travel and distant exploration, frustrated in his own case, came to fruit abundantly in the next generation, in the world-wide explorations of his son. He himself made no more distant journey than to Switzerland, Italy, and France, in 1814, becoming personally acquainted with the principal botanists of the day, and laying the foundations of his wide correspondence and great botanical collections. In 1815 he married the eldest daughter of the late Dawson Turner, of Yarmouth, and established his residence at Halesworth, in Suffolk. The next year, in 1816, besides publishing some of the Musci and Hepatica of Humboldt and Bonpland's collection, he brought to completion his first great botanical work, the British Jungermanniæ, with colored figures of each species, and microscopical analyses, in 84 plates, all from his own ready pencil,-a work which took rank as a model both for description and illustration. In 1828 he brought out, in conjunction with Dr. Taylor, the well-known Muscologia Britannica, the second edition of which, issued in 1827, is only recently superseded. The Musci Exotici, with 176 admirable plates, appeared, the first volume in 1818, the second in 1820. These were his principal works upon Mosses and the like,-an excellent subject for the training of a

botanist, and one in which Hooker, with quick eye, skilled hand, and intuitive judgment, was not only to excel but to lay the foundation of high excellence in general descriptive botany.

When arranging for a prolonged visit to Ceylon, it appears that he sold his landed property, and that his investment of the proceeds was unfortunate; so that the demands of an increasing family and of his enlarging collections, for which he always lavishly provided, made it needful for him to seek some remunerative scientific employment. Botanical instruction in Great Britain was then, more than now, nearly restricted to medical classes; the botanical chairs in the universities therefore mainly belonged to the medical faculty, and were filled by members of the profession. But, through the influence of Sir Joseph Banks, as is understood, the Regius Professorship of Botany in the University of Glasgow was offered to Hooker, and was accepted by him. He removed to Glasgow in the year 1820, and assumed the duties of this position. Here, for twenty years-the most productive years of his life-he was not only the most active and conspicuous working botanist of his country and time, but one of the best and most zealous of teachers. The fixed salary was then only fifty pounds; and the class-fees at first scarcely exceeded that sum. But his lecture-room was soon thronged with ardent and attached pupils, and the emoluments rose to a considerable sum, enabling him to build up his unrivalled herbarium, to patronize explorers and collectors in almost every accessible region, and to carry on his numerous expensive publications, very few of which could be at all remunerative.

The first production of these busy years was the Flora Scotica, brought out in 1821. The next year but one brought the first of the three volumes of the Exotic Flora, containing figures and descriptions of new, rare, or otherwise interesting exotic plants, admirably delineated, chiefly from those cultivated in the Glasgow and Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. Here first is manifested the interest in the flora of our own country, which has since identified the name of Hooker with North American botany,a considerable number of our choicest plants, especially of the Orchis family, having been here illustrated by his pencil.

The Icones Filicum (in which he was associated with Dr. Greville,) in two large folio volumes, with 240 plates, begun in 1829 and finished in 1831, was his introduction to the great family of Ferns, to which he in later years devoted his chief attention.

In 1830 began, with the Botanical Miscellany, that series of periodical publications, which, continued for almost thirty years, stimulated the activity and facilitated the intercourse of botanists in no ordinary degree. The Miscellany, in royal octavo, with many plates, closed with its third volume, in 1833. The Journal of Botany, a continuation of the Miscellany in a cheaper

form, (in ordinary 8vo, issued monthly) took its place in 1834, but was itself superseded during the years 1835 and 1836 by the Companion to the Botanical Magazine (2 vols, imp. 8vo). In 1840 (after an interval in which the editor took charge of the botanical portion of Taylor's Annals of Natural History), the Journal was resumed and carried on to the fourth volume in 1842. Then, changed in title and enlarged, it appeared as the London Journal of Botany for seven years, until 1848, and finally, as the Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany, for nine years more, or to the close of 1857. The whole was carried on entirely at the editor's cost, he furnishing the MSS. for the letter-press, the drawings, &c., without charge, "so that it may be supposed his expenses were heavy, while his profits were, as he always anticipated, literally nil."

The plates of the Journal being too few to contain a tithe of the species in his herbarium which it was desirable to figure, an outlet for these was made by the Icones Plantarum, or Figures, with brief descriptive Characters and Remarks of New or Rare Plants, selected from the Author's Herbarium. Ten volumes of this work were published, with a thousand plates (in octavo), at the author's sole expense, and with no remuneration, between the years 1837 and 1854, the drawings of the earlier volumes by his own hand, of the later, by Mr. Fitch, whom he had trained to the work.

Botanists do not need to be told how rich these journals are in materials illustrative of North American Botany, containing as they do accounts of collections made by Scouler, Drummond, Douglas, Geyer, &c. Equally important for the botany of our western coast, especially of California, is the Botany of Capt. Beechey's Voyage (4to), in the elaboration of which Sir William Hooker was associated with Professor Walker-Arnott. But his greatest contribution to North American Botany-for which our lasting gratitude is due-was his Flora Boreali-Americana (2 vols, 4to, with 238 plates), of which the first part was issued in 1833, the last in 1840. Although denominated "the Botany of the northern parts of British America," it embraced the whole continent from Canada and Newfoundland, and on the Pacific from the borders of California, northward to the Arctic sea. Collections made in the British Arctic voyages had early come into his hands, as afterwards did all those made in the northern land. expeditions by the late Sir John Richardson, Drummond, &c., and the great western collections of Douglas, Scouler, Tolmie, and others, while his devoted correspondents in the United States contributed everything they could furnish from this region. So that this work marks an epoch in North American Botany, which now could be treated as a whole.

We should not neglect to notice that, from the year 1827 down

to his death, he conducted that vast repertory of figures of the ornamental plants cultivated in Great Britain, the Botanical Magazine (contributing over 2,500 plates and descriptions); a work always as important to the botanist as to the cultivator, and under his editorship essential to both.

For the use of students at home, in 1830 he produced the British Flora, which ran through five or six editions before it was consigned to his successor in the chair at Glasgow, Prof. Arnott, who has edited two or three more.

We have enumerated the principal works published before he returned to England, including those which were re-edited or (as the periodicals) continued later. After twenty years' service in the Scotch University, Dr., now Sir William Hooker, K. H. (for in 1836 he accepted from William IV,—the last British sovereign who could bestow it,-the honor of Knight of the Hanoverian Order), was appointed by government to take the direction of the Royal Gardens at Kew, until then in the private occupation of the crown, but now to be developed into a national scientific establishment.

Ever since the death of Banks and Dryander, and while Aiton, the director, grew old and lost any scientific ambition he may once have had, Kew Gardens had declined in botanical importance. The little they preserved, indeed, was chiefly owing to the scientific spirit and unaided exertions of Mr. John Smith, then a foreman, afterwards for many years the superintending gardener (and well known to botanists for his writings upon Ferns), who, retired from his labors, still survives to rejoice in the changed scene.

The idea of converting Kew Gardens into a great national botanical establishment is thought to have originated either with Sir William Hooker himself, or with his powerful friend, and excellent patron of botany and horticulture, John, Duke of Bedford, the father of the present British Premier. Lord John Russell was in the ministry under Lord Melbourne when this project was pressed upon the authorities, and recommended to Parliament by the report of a scientific commission, and, succeeding to the Premiership,' he had the honor of carrying it into execution at the propitious moment, and in the year 1841, of appointing Sir William Hooker to the direction of the new establishThe choice could hardly have been different, even without such influential political support; indeed his patron and friend, the Duke of Bedford, died two years before the appointment was made; but Hooker's special fitness for the place was manifest, and his claims were heartily seconded by the only

ment.

1 We follow the article in the Gardeners' Chronicle in this statement. But we have an impression that Lord John Russell was not at the head of a Ministry until the year 1846.