ing four years more to the classification of the treasures he had brought back with him at the close of the expedition. The result of these eight years of toil was visible, in the end, in his splendid publication of the "Flora Antarctica." The comparisons therein drawn of the new plants brought home by Dr. Hooker in great abundance, with the species already familiar to botanists in other parts of the world, helped apparently to realize to naturalists the laws, hitherto but dimly conjectured, regulating the distributing of plants over the surface of the globe.
Prior to entering upon the second of his many memorable expeditions of research as a botanical collector, Dr. Hooker held the position of botanist to the geological survey of Great Britain. On his return homeward, Dr. Hooker gave to the world, in 1851, as the literary fruits of his long journeyings, the two important volumes of his "Himalayan Journals." The three subsequent years were employed by him in arranging his Indian collection. Immediately upon his coming back, he had, moreover, resumed his labors as an assistant to his father at Kew Gardens. Besides this, for nine years together, beginning with 1851 and ending with 1860, Dr. Hooker was employed by the Lords of the Admiralty in editing a series of publications in which were recounted, in chronological sequence, the various botanical discoveries of a number of notable voyagers, from Captain James Cook down to Dr. Joseph Hooker himself. At intervals during the years thus occupied, he entered upon several other important journeys to different parts of the European Continent, visiting, besides these, at other periods, the north of Africa and the far West of the great Continent of America.
Dr. Hooker, in 1855, received the appointment of assistant-director of the Botanical Gardens, with a salary of £400, without any residence. Sir William Hooker was at that time seventy years of age, and was, therefore, fully entitled to have the assistance of his son thus secured to him by the government. Three years after, he had his salary increased to £500 a year, with use of a residence. His father died in 1865, aged eighty-one.
As an example of industry, during the directorship of the Hookers more than 130 costly volumes, treating upon all branches of botany, have been issued to the world from the Kew establishment. Living plants to the number of between 8,000 and 9,000 annually have, within the same period, from that grand central point of distribution, been sent to various parts of the globe—new and often most precious additions to the treasures of Kew being constantly sought out and brought homeward through the agencies employed by the ever-vigilant directors. The correspondence involved in this constant interchange of communications between them and the botanists of both hemispheres has been such that 40,000 letters, it has been calculated, have, in the course of the comparatively brief interval we are referring to, been
