Life and Letters:
Chapter Three

The South and its Scientific Scope

[Editor’s note: this chapter was pp.54–85 in the printed edition.
The original footnotes are shown in {curly brackets}: clicking on one will take you to the list of notes.]

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. Ross 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 unlooked 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 Ross wrested an open sea, a vast mountain region, a smoking 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 defined the Antarctic Region, and James Ross who discovered it.

For over half a century the expedition held the record for ‘furthest South’—and it was from the land Ross 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 occurrence 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 subsistence 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 always been blowing with heavy seas on.’

Dr. Richardson 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 Results of the Voyage of the Scotia.’ {Note 1}

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 wholesale destruction of the great collections made by Ross and myself of marine and submarine animals of all classes. Ross was an indefatigable collector, who never lost an opportunity, whether on sea or ashore; but except my collection of Diatoms published by Ehrenberg, {Note 2} and discussed in my ‘Flora Antarctica,’ there is nothing to show of the stores of the pelagic materials obtained with so much zeal and care by Ross 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 Expedition’: 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 in the several articles a great deal that interests me very much, especially in the subject of the geographical distribution of 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 Amnothea 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.

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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 his 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 animals 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 anything 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 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 tome 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 microscope. . . . 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, in lat. 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 quadrangular flakes, each formed of numerous parallel prisms of a perfectly regular form, giving each flake a fluted appearance; numerous circular discs, also transparent, were scattered among them; they were very minutely reticulated, 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; Ross 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 determination of its real nature to Ehrenberg, who examined specimens 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.’

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 Ross after their return (September 1 and 4, 1844) speak of two pamphlets on Antarctic Infusoria received from Ehrenberg—’in hard German,’ one containing descriptions, the other ‘drawings of Asteromphalos 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 Ross, 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-boxes 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 will alone immortalise the Expedition. No person seems to have thought of collecting such things before for scientific purposes.

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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 investigate 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 shortsightedness ‘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. As far as I could I imitated Bauer’s {Note 3} style of drawing dissections, 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 illustration for Ross’s ‘Account of the Voyage of Discovery and Research.’ {Note 4}

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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 {Note 5} of the Terror. Dayman {Note 6} (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. Ross 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 {Note 7} 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.

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 McC[ormick] is concerned, one of the main objects of the Expedition has already failed.

Valuable as his zoological researches were, both in satisfying 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 (February 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 Robert 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 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, {Note 8} visited St. Helena a week or two after he was there, and in one strenuous 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 disappointment. 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 opportunities lie before him. No botanist has been to Southern New Zealand since Menzies {Note 9} and Vancouver {Note 10} In Tasmania 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 {Note 11} 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 principle, just as Robert 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 extenuating 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 Robert Brown, writes enthusiastically ‘Believe me, dear Boy, they have given me infinite pleasure, for they prove that you must have been diligent, and consequently successful.’ And again (July 7, 1842) of the drawings and notes: ‘I expected much of you; but these have far exceeded my expectations and do you credit. . . . And Brown is charmed with what you have done.’

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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 suggestive 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 comparison 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.’ {Note 12}

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 Rock was taken, and the picture of the men killing penguins.

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 description 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 Terror’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. Ross 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 rôle of Jack ashore, lacking in scientific seriousness of conversation, and-what was worse in his eyes-respect for the Sabbath. Nevertheless, 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 Ross 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 Rattlesnake, 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.

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Hooker was uncertain at first with regard to McCormick, 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 specimens, 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 Ross’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 invaluable books you gave me, I am picking up a knowledge of them.’ No doubt he would not have been so gracious to a more assistant surgeon who was not the son of his distinguished 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. Ross, as soon as he heard that I was very anxious to work, gave me a cabinet for my plants in his cabin; one 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, 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 comfortable, 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 Richardson {Note 13} should he not get them, but my duties of course precluded the possibility of my making any notes or a large private collection. Captain Ross 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.’

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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 circumstances 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. Ross wished me to delay sending them till we arrive at the Cape. . . . I do not care that my collections should be mentioned in the public journals (like McCormick’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 Royal 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 Royal 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 Robert 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 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 conceive, for, from their length, they must grow far below low water mark. {Note 14}

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, 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 attending 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.

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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 cultivation 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 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 vegetation 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 two miles of the harbour, thus proving that Mr. Anderson {Note 15} 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 observations, 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, {Note 16} 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 the Arctic regions.

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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 destruction of its former forests has produced abundance of good coal. {Note 17} 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 horseradish 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 {Note 18} (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 it on the surface. Depend upon it they will grow if cool and damp enough. {Note 19}

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 understanding 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 {Note 20} describes it should be, I cannot conceive, for in its turning it must go ¾ 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 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 for ‘the 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.

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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 themselves in each locality, as an object of primary importance 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 accordance, 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 diminish, in proportion to Acrocarpi, {Note 21} 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 {Note 22} four days later he enlarges on the proportion of the Rush 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.

These results, however, I must beg you to keep to yourself, 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 distribution 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 Hygrometer 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, he reached the Cape on the outward voyage lie 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 Flora, 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 {Note 23} 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 {Note 24} sent you: and ask Brown whether any things have ever been collected in Prince Edward’s, the Crozets, Royal 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 classification 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 Antarctic 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.’ 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 Acro and Pleurocarpi; there are five groups I consider quite natural, and the three first of them abnormal; these are what McLeay’s {Note 25} 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, however, forget a remark he made, saying ‘he was glad I paid so much attention to the minute Orders and to Cryptogamic 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 {Note 26} 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 {Note 27} takes it up in the ‘Annals,’ vol. 1, and quotes Montagne {Note 28} 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. Gymnostonum 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, for they are the first Lichens I ever drew, and I am no hand at 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 Falklands, 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 Rio 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.

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