Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/250

238 director of Kew Gardens was William Aiton, who had charge of it for thirty years, and died in 1793. He was succeeded by his son Townsend Aiton, who held the position for forty-eight years, when he resigned in 1841. Up to this time the establishment had been much restricted, but it was now given up by the royal family to the charge of the government, in the interests of science, and for the advantage of the people.

Sir William Jackson Hooker, Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, became director in 1841, and he then commenced that wonderful series of transformations which in the course of his twenty-four years' directory made Kew Gardens the first establishment of its kind in the world; while its character has not only been worthily sustained, but very appreciably expanded, advanced, and elevated, by his son and successor, the subject of the present sketch.

Dr. was born June 30, 1817. He was an only son, and his mother was a woman of ability, who shared in the scientific and artistic reputation of her husband. Educated under the scrutiny of his parents, the subject of this memoir was prepared from the outset for his career as a botanist and a scientific observer. Destined at first for the medical profession, young Hooker took his medical degree at an early age, but, under the influence of his hereditary preference for botany, the profession was given up, and he took to science. His medical education was, however, of great value to him in his subsequent experience both as botanist and traveler.

His first adventure in any public capacity as a botanical inquirer was one that eminently befitted him in his then twofold character of a practitioner of the healing art and as a purely scientific investigator. This was in 1839, when, having but just entered upon his twenty-second year, he took part as assistant-surgeon and naturalist on board the Erebus in the expedition sent out, under the command of Sir James Ross, to the Antarctic Ocean. Ostensibly Dr. Hooker's position throughout that memorable voyage was that of a medical officer on one of her majesty's ships-of-war: in reality his especial object all the while was to study the botany of the various regions touched at in those remote portions of the antipodes in the course of the expedition.

It is well to remember that Hooker received, during this four years' voyage, only the moderate pay accruing to him as a medical officer, his outfit being provided by his father, as well as his books and his instruments. Throughout the whole of that period, moreover, Sir William defrayed the expenses constantly incurred by his son when on shore, both in traveling and in collecting, notwithstanding the whole of the fruits of his labor, thus accumulated at considerable cost, were sought out for no private end, but for the advantage of a national establishment. Even after his return homeward, Dr. Hooker magnanimously determined to forego all claim to promotion in the royal navy,