Page:Makers of British botany.djvu/179

 Rh richest in the world in both flowering and flowerless plants. Finally after his death it was acquired by purchase for the State in 1866, together with about 1000 volumes from his library, and a unique collection of botanical drawings, maps, MSS., portraits of botanists, and letters from botanical correspondents, which amounted to about 27,000. These were the prime foundations of the great herbarium and library now at Kew. Great additions have since been made by purchase and by gift, and the building has been repeatedly extended to receive the growing mass of material. But for all time the character and individuality of the collections will remain stamped by the personality of those two great benefactors, Bentham and the first Hooker.

Sufficient has now been said to indicate that Hooker's work was that of a pioneer, in providing the material foundation necessary for the further study of the science, not only in this country, but also in the furthest lands of the Empire. He supplied a coordinating centre for botanical organisation in Britain, and for that service he has earned the lasting gratitude of botanists. It remains to review his own published works, and base upon them some estimate of his more direct influence upon the progress of the science. We shall see that in this also his work was largely of that nature which affords a basis for future development. It was carried out almost entirely under pre-Darwinian conditions. He was pre-eminently a descriptive botanist, who worked under the influence of the current belief in the constancy of species. But his enormous output of accurate description and of delineation of the most varied forms, has provided a sure basis upon which the more modern seeker after phyletic lines may proceed.

There have been few if any writers on botanical subjects so prolific as Sir William Hooker, and probably none have ever equalled him in the number and accuracy of the plates which illustrated his writings. Sir Joseph Hooker estimates the number of the latter at nearly 8000, of which about 1800 were from drawings executed by himself. The remainder were chiefly from the hand of Walter Fitch, who acted as botanical limner to Sir William for thirty years, showing in the work fidelity, artistic