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Captain, afterwards Rear-Admiral Henry Dundas Trotter (1802–59), who had already distinguished himself in the suppression of piracy, headed an expedition in 1841 to the west coast of Africa and especially to the Niger to conclude treaties of commerce with the negro kings. Tropical fevers broke up the expedition; two of the three ships were forced to return after three weeks; Trotter himself continued another four weeks before returning, so shattered in health that he was unable to undertake active service for the space of fourteen years. [Back to chapter]
Smith of Jordan Hill’ (1782–1867) was a lover of literature and the fine arts as well as a considerable geologist, studying especially the changes of level on the coasts of West Scotland and of the Mediterranean, in relation to a glacial period. In another direction his Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul became a standard authority, thanks to his experience as a practical yachtsman. His son Archibald, the mathematician, and his daughter Sabina (Mrs, Paisley) were contemporaries and friends of Hooker’s. [Back to chapter]
Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister from 1835–41. [Back to chapter]
John, sixth Duke of Bedford, 1766–1839, was an enthusiastic naturalist, devoting himself to botany, agriculture, and the fine arts after his retirement from politics in 1807. [Back to chapter]
Sir William Burnett (1779–1861). After studying medicine at Edinburgh, and seeing much active service as naval surgeon, he had a brilliant career as Inspector of Naval Hospitals. In 1822, Lord Melville appointed him to the Victualling Board, as colleague to Dr. Weir, the chief medical officer of the navy. Then becoming Physician General of the Navy, he introduced valuable reforms, among other things improving the position of assistant surgeons. [Back to chapter]
Sir John Barrow (1764–1848, Bart. 1835), born of peasant stock in Cumberland, was distinguished from boyhood by his mathematical gift and his adventurous spirit. Thanks to the appreciation of Sir George Staunton, he accompanied Lord Macartney both to China and the Cape, and from 1804–45 was second Secretary to the Admiralty. He was specially interested in Arctic discovery, having had stern experience of the ice as a youngster in a Greenland whaler. A link with the Hookers was his friendship with Dr. Richardson, and the fact that he had studied botany at Kew Gardens before going to the Cape in order to appreciate the natural history of South Africa. [Back to chapter]
{Robert Brown (1773–1858) was called by Humboldt ‘facile Botanicorum princeps, Britanniae gloria et ornamentum.’ [Ed: ‘Easily the prince of botanists, glory and ornament to Britain’. My thanks to Dr Sachiko Kusukawa for the translation.] Beginning as surgeonmate to the Fifeshire regiment of Fencibles, he made a large collection of plants in Ireland where his regiment was quartered, and through his discovery of a rare moss, first made acquaintance with Sir Joseph Banks, by whom he was afterwards offered the post of Naturalist to the Investigator under Captain Flinders, 1801–5. The resulting Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae was a valuable piece of systematic work, and his researches into the reproduction of plants, and especially in the morphology and interrelation of the higher plants, were marked by important discoveries, which carried him as far as the conditions of the time allowed. With these, and the discovery of the nucleus of the vegetable cell, he took a long step towards the development of physiological as well as systematic botany. In 1810, on the death of Dr. Dryander, he succeeded to his post as librarian to Banks, who, dying in 1820, left Brown his library and herbarium, with reversion to the British Museum, and £200 per annum, with his house in Soho Square. In 1827 he arranged for the library and herbarium to pass immediately to the British Museum, while he was appointed Curator. In this position he had an official influence comparable to the influence of his strong character and intellectual powers among his friends. [Back to chapter]
Robert McCormick (1800–90) was a Yarmouth man, though of Ulster descent. He studied medicine at Guy’s and St. Thomas’, and became a naval surgeon in 1823. He had special qualifications for the post of surgeon and naturalist on the Erebus, for he had seen Arctic service under Parry in 1827, and when on half pay for four years after thrice invaliding home from his special detestation, the W. Indian station, he had worked at geology and natural history in the study and in the field. Though afterwards he distinguished himself by conducting a boat expedition in search of Franklin (1852), he came to loggerheads with the Admiralty on the question of the promotion he considered due after his exceptional service in the Antarctic, and the end of his career was clouded over with a sense of grievance. Readers of recent Antarctic exploration will recall his name in the appellation of ‘McCormick’s Skua,’ the Antarctic gull first described by him. [Back to chapter]
Charles Robert Darwin (1809–82) was the son of Dr. Robert Waring Darwin of Shrewsbury, and grandson of Erasmus Darwin, physician, botanist, and man of letters. His mother was Susannah Wedgwood, daughter of the potter. Hooker took his Voyage of the Beagle as a model of what his own Journals of travel should be. The story of their intimate friendship, both before and after the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, is fully told hereafter. [Back to chapter]
John George Children (1777–1852), mineralogist, entomologist, and astronomer, held posts at the British Museum from 1816–40, and was one of the secretaries of the Royal Society in 1826–7 and 1830–7. He was a friend of Sir Humphry Davy, who made many experiments in his private laboratory. His personal kindness to the young Hooker was typical of his character. [Back to chapter]
John Edward Gray (1800–75), began his scientific work as a botanist, and was responsible for the greater part of his father’s book, The Natural Arrangement of British Plants, the first British Flora arranged on the natural system. A quarrel over scientific personalities diverted him from botany to zoology, and in 1824 he entered the British Museum as assistant to Dr. Children, whom he succeeded as Keeper of the Zoological Department from 1840 till his death. His great work lay in the improvement and organisation of collections, and the scientific descriptions which he wrote. [Back to chapter]
Sir Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), rear-admiral and K.C.B., retired from active service, severely wounded, in 1812, after a brilliant career of twenty-two years. The excellence of his surveying work led to his appointment as Hydrographer to the Navy in 1829, where he was eminently successful during his twenty-six years’ tenure of the post. [Back to chapter]
Sir John William Lubbock, Bart. (1803–65), banker by profession, was a distinguished mathematician and astronomer. He was treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society, 1830–35 and 1838–47, and the first vice-chancellor of the London University (1837–42). His eldest son, Sir John Lubbock, afterwards Lord Avebury, was similarly distinguished in business, science, and politics. [Back to chapter]
Edward Forster (1765–1849), botanist; vice-president of the Linnean Society, 1828, who used to snatch the early hours of the day for his study, mainly of British plants, before going to work in a city bank. His herbarium was presented to the British Museum.} [Back to chapter]
John Forbes Royle (1799–1858). His love of natural history made him throw up his prospect of a commission in the Indian army and enter the Company’s medical service, so that he could study Indian botany. In 1823 he became superintendent of the Sabarunpore Gardens. He studied and identified many Indian drugs, and with the aid of collectors, gathered vast collections, especially of Himalayan plants, which he brought back to England in 1831. In 1837 he became F.R.S. and Professor of Materia medica at King’s College, London, while at the East India House he organised a department relating to vegetable productions, with a technical museum. In his Illustrations of the Botany, &c., of the Himalayan Mountains, 1839, he recommended the introduction of the cinchona plant into India. But it was not till 1853 that Royle, at the invitation of the Governor-General, drew up a report on the subject, which in turn was only carried out in 1860, two years after his death, by Sir Clements Markham. [Back to chapter]
Possibly meant for Thomas Horsfield (1773–1859), an American doctor and botanist who took service in the Dutch East Indies, but finally joined the English service when the Dutch Malayan colonies were temporarily taken by us in 1811. In 1820 he was appointed Keeper of the E.I.C. Museum in Leadenhall Street, publishing various botanical and zoological papers. [Back to chapter]
Jonathan Pereira (1804–53), the great authority and lecturer of his day on Materia medica. In 1839 he had begun to publish his great book, The Elements of Materia medica, and had been appointed examiner in the subject at the London University. [Back to chapter]
Probably Archibald Robertson (1789–1864). Originally a naval surgeon, after 1818 a successful practitioner in Northampton. He wrote on medical subjects, and was elected F.R.S. in 1836. [Back to chapter]
Sir William Parker (1781–1866) was the famous admiral who was at the Admiralty under Lord Auckland, 1835–41. [Back to chapter]
This watch he used to the end of his life on his travels and at home, wearing it in preference to the watch which Robert Brown left to him. It has been presented to the Royal Geographical Society by Hyacinth, Lady Hooker.} [Back to chapter]
James Cook (1728–79). His first great voyage in the Endeavour was in 1768–71, when he was accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks; the second, in the Resolution and the Adventure, in 1772–75, when he was accompanied by a staff of naturalists, etc., headed by the two Forsters; the third, in the Resolution and the Discovery. [Back to chapter]
James Weddell (1787–1834) held the record for furthest south before Ross. He was a common sailor of twenty-one when in a lucky hour his bullying skipper handed him over to a man-of-war as a refractory subject. With education he became a very competent officer, but being discharged at the peace in 1816, took command of a Leith ship for a sealing voyage to the newly discovered S. Shetlands. He did much exploration, surveyed the S. Shetlands, and in February 1823, on his second voyage, reached 74° 15´S. latitude in an ice-free sea. [Back to chapter]
Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791–1868), medical man and botanist, was the inventor, about 1827, of the Wardian case, in which growing plants can be transported without watering through the extremes of heat or cold. By its means the Chinese banana was taken from Chatsworth to the Pacific Islands; 20,000 tea plants were taken by Robert Fortune from Shanghai to the Himalayas, and the cinchona introduced into India. [Back to chapter]
Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was the leading naturalist and traveller of his day. His books inspired Darwin with the desire to travel. He spent five years in Spanish America from 1799 to 1804; the arrangement and publication of his collections and notes took twenty years, which he spent in Paris, where he had the assistance of Cuvier, Gay-Lussac, and others. Then in 1829 he undertook an expedition through Russian Asia for the Emperor Nicholas, which lasted nine months. His most famous work was Cosmos, a survey of the physical sciences and their interrelation (1845–58). His great interest in geography and exploration of the still unknown tracts of the world, the configuration of the country, climate, the distribution of life, was an interest in which Hooker shared, and which drew them together in Paris in 1845; for though he was then settled at Berlin, he was frequently sent to Paris on political missions. [Back to chapter]
J. K. F. Gauss (1777–1855), Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Observatory at Göttingen, was a mathematician of singular brilliance, equally distinguished in astronomical research, geodesy, and the problems arising out of the earth’s magnetic properties, inventing, among other instruments, the declination needle. He was responsible for the foundation of the Magnetic Association, in connection with whose work Ross’s expedition was sent out. [Back to chapter]
Dumont D’Urville (1790–1842), the French navigator and accomplished man of science, whose first claim to fame was the identification and preservation of the Venus of Milo. His exploring voyage in search of La Pérouse, 1826–9, took him to Australasia and the Pacific; in 1837–40, again in the Astrolabe, with the Zélée as tender, he made two voyages to the Antarctic. Compelled by scurvy to refit at Hobart, he started in January 1840, as Wilkes six weeks before from Sydney, in the very direction in which it was known that Ross was about to sail. [Back to chapter]
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes commanded the Vincennes and its four consorts on the Antarctic exploring expedition sent out by the United States Government in 1838–40. [Back to chapter]
Materia medica: the study of plants and chemicals used to make medicines [Back]
Vascula: plural of ‘vasculum’, metal boxes used to hold freshly-gathered plants prior to pressing and drying. [Back to chapter]
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