PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER1

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

1. Disambiguation: This is not the William Hooker who was producing, in 1833, a NEW POCKET PLAN OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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July 6, Wednesday: William Jackson Hooker was born in Norwich, a son of Joseph Hooker of Exeter. After being educated at the high school of Norwich his status as an independent educated gentleman of means would enable him to travel and to take up as a recreation the study of ornithology and entomology. On the recommendation of Sir James Edward Smith (whom he consulted respecting a rare moss), he would soon come to specialize in botany.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1785

William J. Hooker “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Summer: William Jackson Hooker initial botanical expedition, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks, was to Iceland (the specimens he collected, and all notes and drawings, were destroyed by fire during a homeward voyage in which he came close in addition to losing his life).

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

1809

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William J. Hooker

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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In London, the East India Dock Road and West India Dock Road opened (trade with India was becoming a real big deal).

During this year and the following one William Jackson Hooker was making extensive preparations, and sacrifices which would prove financially serious, to be ready to accompany General Sir Robert Brownrigg, 1st Baronet GCB to the Ceylon crown colony of England — but then due to political upheaval this project became impossible.

A volume we will find being bequeathed by Henry Thoreau to Waldo Emerson in 1862 was in this year being printed by A.H. Hubbard at the Hindoostanee Press in Calcutta, TWO TREATISES ON THE HINDU LAW OF INHERITANCE [Comprising the Translation of the Dáyabhága of Jīmūtavāhana and that of the section of the Mitáksharáj by Vijñāneśvara on Inheritance]. TRANSLATED BY H.T. COLEBROOKE, ESQUIRE.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1810

HINDU INHERITANCE

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William J. Hooker

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker reconstructed as much of his material from his summer in Iceland, from memory, and privately circulated it as TOUR IN ICELAND, 1809.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1811

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William J. Hooker

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker issued a reprint of his TOUR IN ICELAND, 1809.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1813

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William J. Hooker

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker went on a 9-month botanizing excursion to France, Switzerland, and northern Italy.

John Lyon died of typhoid fever in America. He collected 3,600 plants of Magnolia macrophylla at one time. “His attitude was commercial; in all his journals he never expresses pleasure in a plant, but he almost invariably notes the mileage covered and the cost of the journey. Many of his so-called first introductions are due to others.” Fraser and Lyon overlapped with Pieris floribunda, Jeffersonia diphylla, Oenothera tetragona fraseri, and several other plants. Lyon’s new ones included Chelone lyoni, Dicentra eximia, and Iris fulva.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

1814

BOTANIZING

BOTANIZING

William J. Hooker “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker got married with Maria Dawson Turner, eldest daughter of Dawson Turner, banker, of Great Yarmouth, and sister-in-law of Francis Palgrave. Settling at Halesworth, Suffolk, he would devote himself to the formation of his excellent herbarium. He became a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Samuel Constantine Rafinesque returned to the USA despite loss in a shipwreck of numerous of his botanical manuscripts and collections.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1815

THE SCIENCE OF 1815

BOTANIZING

William J. Hooker “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker’s BRITISH JUNGERMANNIAE, his initial scientific monograph.

The 2d edition of Friedrich Traugott Pursch (Frederick Pursh)’s FLORA AMERICAE SEPTENTRIONALIS.

1816

BOTANIZING

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker’s description of the PLANTAE CRYPTOGAMICAE of Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland. From this year into 1828, his new edition of William Curtis’s FLORA LONDINENSIS for which he provided the plant descriptions.

John Bradbury returned to England to prepare to publish at his own expense his TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR OF AMERICA, 1809, 1810, & 1811; INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF UPPER LOUISIANA..., after which he would bring his family with him to America and become Director of the Botanic Garden at St. Louis. Thomas Nuttall received credit for the introduction of a number of species which, almost certainly, were also introduced by the neglected Bradbury: Oenothera missouriensis, Ribes aureumand, Shepherdia argentea. Nuttall’s plants included Camassia fraseri, Lepachys (Rudbeckia) columnaris, Mentzelia decapetala, Oenothera caepitosa, Oenothera nuttalli, and Penstemon glaber.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1817

BOTANIZING

William J. Hooker “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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William Jackson Hooker’s MUSCOLOGIA, a very complete account of the mosses of Britain and Ireland prepared in conjunction with Professor Thomas Taylor. The initial of the two volumes of his MUSCI EXOTICI, devoted to new foreign mosses and other cryptogamic plants.

Dr. William P.C. Barton, nephew of Benjamin Smith Barton, published a compendium of Philadelphia plants.

1818

BOTANIZING

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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The botanist Frederick Pursh died at the age of 46.

The final of the two volumes of William Jackson Hooker’s MUSCI EXOTICI, devoted to new foreign mosses and other cryptogamic plants. With the help of Banks, he became Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow.

1820

BOTANIZING

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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With the death of Joseph Banks, there was a real possibility that the rare plants at Kew would be dispersed among other private gardens. Professor Hooker led a campaign to transform Kew into a national treasure.

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor William Jackson Hooker brought out FLORA SCOTICA, in which the natural method of arrangement of British plants was given with the artificial. He worked in Scotland with the Glasgow botanist and lithographer Thomas Hopkirk to establish the Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow and to lay out and develop the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.

Mary Macpherson [Mairi “Mairi Mhor nan Oran” nic-a-Phearsain] was born in Skye.

George John Whyte-Melville was born in Strathkinness.

The Annals of the Parish, Galt.

The Ayrshire Legatees, Galt.

1821

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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From this year into 1827, the three volumes of Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s EXOTIC FLORA, INDICATING SUCH OF THE SPECIMENS AS ARE DESERVING CULTIVATION.

From this year into 1834, Thomas Nuttall would be in charge of Harvard College’s botanic garden.

The slender fuchsia was introduced from Chile.2

1822

2. Charles Plumier had published the first description of fuschia in 1703 after finding the plant on Santo Domingo in the Caribbean. The scarlet fuchsia had been introduced from Chile in 1788 and the tree fuchsia would be introduced from Mexico in 1823.

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor William Jackson Hooker’s ACCOUNT OF SABINE’S ARCTIC PLANTS.

Publication of an enlarged edition of Dr. Jacob Bigelow’s 1814 FLORULA BOSTONIENSIS, A COLLECTION OF PLANTS OF BOSTON AND ITS VICINITY. (A further enlarged edition of this localized botanical sourcebook would appear in 1840. Henry Thoreau would make extensive use of it.)

May 29: It is evident that the virtues of plants are almost completely unknown to us– And we esteemthe few with which we are better acquainted unreasonably above the many which are comparatively unknownto us. Bigelow says –“It is a subject of some curiosity to consider, if the knowledge of the present MateriaMedica were by any means to be lost, how many of the same articles would again rise into notice and use.Doubtless a variety of new substances would develop unexpected powers, while perhaps the poppy would beshunned as a deleterious plant, and the cinchona might grow unmolested upon the mountains of Quito.” ... Hesays Ginseng, Spigelia, Snake-root, &c. form considerable articles of exportation.... At one time the Indiansabove Quebec & Montreal were so taken up with searching for Ginseng that they could not be hired for anyother purpose. It is said that both the Chinese & the Indians named this plant from its resemblance to the figureof a man

1824

FLORULA BOSTONIENSIS

BIGELOW

GINSENG

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Professor William Jackson Hooker’s CATALOGUE OF PLANTS IN THE GLASGOW BOTANIC GARDEN.

John Halkett, Esq.’s HISTORICAL NOTES RESPECTING THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA: WITH REMARKS ON THE ATTEMPTS MADE TO CONVERT AND CIVILIZE THEM (London: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. Edinburgh; and Hurst, Robinson, and Co. 90, Cheapside, and 8, Pall Mall).

In this year, or in the following one, Charles Darwin would be reading his grandfather Erasmus Darwin’s ZOONOMIA:

Charles Darwin read ZOONOMIA when he was sixteen or seventeen,and also listened to a panegyric in praise of evolution from hisfriend Dr Robert Grant at Edinburgh University. “At this time Igreatly admired the ZOONOMIA,” he says. But neither Grant norZOONOMIA had “any effect on my mind.” This is true: otherwise hewould have become an evolutionist before going on the voyage ofthe Beagle, rather than after.

The biographer Desmond King-Hele, who wrote the above, seems to me not to comprehend why it is that we assign authorship of the theory of evolution to the grandson, Charles, rather than to the grandfather, Erasmus. Therefore, perhaps, I should here explicate why it was that the early reading of ZOONOMIA, with its recognition of evolution, did nothing to help Charles: it is one thing to regard evolution as a fact, and another thing entirely to create a theory which accounts for it by hypothesizing a plausible mechanism and demonstrating the inevitability of this mechanism. Lots of people regarded evolution as a fact, before Charles created his theory. Almost as many people had been perfectly well aware of evolution as a fact in 1770, as had been perfectly well aware in 1491 that the earth was a globe — before Columbus obtained funding to sail west from Spain!

The first steam-locomotive railway was opened, between Stockton and Darlington in England, and George Stephenson’s Locomotion, the world’s first practically moveable steam engine for use on rails, managed to get a train of 29 little 4-wheeled carts up to a sustained speed of 8 mph.

David Douglas set out to explore the Columbia River area in British Columbia, with the cooperation of the

1825

RESPECTING THE INDIANS

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Hudson Bay Company.

By mid-February he was off the coast of Oregon, setting ashore at Fort Vancouver. When he had gone 90 miles up that river, he began to have eye trouble due to the blown sand as well as due to the brilliance of the snow under the bright sun. He found Pinus lambertiana, which is almost as large as the giant redwoods, and fired his gun to knock some cones off the top of one. This turned out to be a serious mistake, as eight hostile Indians were alerted by the sound of gunfire. Douglas managed to elude them and would still be alive to return to England in 1827. (In 1829 he would return to the Pacific Northwest, collecting all the way from California to Alaska. He would die in Hawaii, while collecting, by falling into a pit trap in which a wild bull had already become ensnared. Douglas would introduce over 200 species to cultivation in Great Britain, including not only the Douglas fir but also the sugar pine, the noble fir, and the giant fir.

BOTANIZING

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Dr. Lewis Caleb Beck became Professor of Botany and Chemistry at the Vermont Academy of Medicine.

Professor William Jackson Hooker’s BOTANY OF [CAPTAIN WILLIAM EDWARD] PARRY’S THIRD VOYAGE (J. Murray).

Paxton left the Royal Horticultural Society garden to become head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth.

Jussieu resigned his post as director of the National Museum of Natural History.

Twigs (apparently predominately of basket willow) had long been utilized in England to record tax payments. Notches made in each twig indicated the amount of tax paid. Once split the notched twig yielded two records of payment. When the tax records went to paper transaction in this year, the archive of twigs was burned. The resulting fire escaped control and took with it the Houses of Parliament.

Leopoldo Nobili invented a galvanometer.

The unexploited forests of Burma gave impetus to the British conquest of that country. The first area opened (Tenasserim) “was stripped of teak within twenty years.” By the end of the century about 10,000,000 acres of Burma forest were cleared.

An act of the US Congress set off the mania of planting the Chinese silkworm mulberry Morus multicaulis, a short-lived industry.

(On the following screen is a depiction of the annual ceremonial picking of mulberry leaves by the empress, as processed through the imagination of a German lithographer.)

1826

PLANTS

SILK

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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From this year until 1865, Professor William Jackson Hooker’s Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (38 volumes in all).

The expedition of John Franklin returned from its adventure to the mouth of the Mackenzie River (now Northwest Canada) to Point Beechley (now Alaska).

Thomas Drummond, a nurseryman of Forfarshire who had been part of this expedition, would find a new job as the curator of the Belfast Botanic Garden.

1827

THE FROZEN NORTH

BOTANIZING

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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John Leonard Knapp had been during this decade contributing a series of anonymous articles to Time’s Telescope under the heading “The Naturalist’s Diary.” At this point this series was the basis for publication at London of an anonymous volume entitled THE JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST. This work would see publication in four editions (it would be reprinted in Philadelphia in 1831), and would be made use of by Thoreau. It is an account of the natural history, country life and agriculture along the escarpment from Alveston to Thornbury in Gloucestershire, inspired by the Reverend Gilbert White’s THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. J.W. White has described Knapp as “a charming botanist and traveller through the inexhaustible regions of nature.” He would spend his last years at Alveston as a churchwarden, occupying himself with the pursuit of natural history and the cultivation of his garden. In honor of Knapp’s THE GRAMINA BRITANNICA, the genus of grasses previously named Milbora by Adanson would be renamed Knappia by Smith.

From this year into 1831, Professor William Jackson Hooker and Dr R.K. Greville would be putting out the two volumes of ICONES FILICUM (ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE FERNS).

Professor Hooker began his FLORA BOREALI-AMERICANA, which would not be completed until 1840 (this work would treat primarily Canadian plants and would make itself the 1st flora of North American plants to follow a natural rather than the Linnaean sexual classification system).

1829

BOTANIZING

CAROLUS LINNAEUS

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Professor William Jackson Hooker’s CHARACTERS OF GENERA FROM THE BRITISH FLORA, of which several editions would appear, undertaken with Dr G.A.W. Arnott, &c.

From this year until 1842 Professor Hooker’s The Journal of Botany (4 volumes).

John Torrey (1796-1873) became professor of Botany at Princeton University (he would be teaching there only during the summers, and would be residing in New-York during the winters). Asa Gray began to exchange plant specimens with Professor Torrey, who would soon come to be recognized as the leading botanist in America.

Sir J. Ross discovered a frosty peninsula in northern North America which he would designate as “Boothia Felix,” in honor of Sir Felix Booth who had funded his exploring expedition.

Robert Brown published the first account of a cellular nucleus, which he called the “aureole” in what is also the first publication describing the growth of pollen tubes from the stigma to the ovule: “On the organs and

1830

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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modes of fecundation in Orchideae and Asclepiadae,” in The Transactions of the Linnaean Society of London.

PLANTS

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Professor William Jackson Hooker’s BRITISH FLORA CRYPTOGAMIA.

Discovering a moss new to Ireland, Hookeria laetevirens, at Killarney, led William Henry Harvey to a lifelong friendship with Professor Hooker. It also led to an opportunity for him to devote his life to something other than, as he would delicately put the matter, “buying cheap and selling dear.”

1831

SIR WM. JACKSON HOOKER

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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William Henry Harvey’s “Div. II. Confervoideae. Div. III. Gloiocladeae,” in Professor William Jackson Hooker’s edition of THE ENGLISH FLORA OF SIR JAMES EDWARD SMITH (London).

The British government was being persuaded to send along botanists on all their exploring expeditions.While Professor Hooker’s works were in progress his herbarium at Kew was receiving very substantial contributions from all regions of the earth. His status with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was changed from that of just another “corresponding member,” to that of foreign member.3

1833

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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During this year and the following one, the two volumes of Sir William Jackson Hooker’s COMPANION TO THE BOTANICAL MAGAZINE.

Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle became director of the botanical gardens and chair of botany at the University of Geneva.

3. Disambiguation: This is not the William Hooker who was producing, in 1833, a NEW POCKET PLAN OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK:

1835

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor William Jackson Hooker was made a Knight of Hanover (henceforward he would be being addressed as “Sir William”).

The Botanical Society of London was initiated, with its membership being about one in ten female. According to D.E. Allen’s “The Woman Members of the Botanical Society of London, 1836-1856,” the science of botany was an exception to the gender-specific science of the day. Women were allowed to participate as botanizing was considered to be an activity suited to the tastes and sensitivities of the “weaker sex”:

Botany could break the rules because it had the great good luckto be in keeping with both of the contemporary alternative ideasof femininity. On the one hand it was able to masquerade as anelegant accomplishment and so found favor with the inheritorsof the essentially aristocratic “blue-stocking” creed, with itsstudied cultivation of an unintense intellectualism. On theother, it passed as acceptable in those far more numerousmiddle-class circles which subscribed to the new cant ofsentimentalized womanhood: the “perfect lady” of a repressiveEvangelicism.

Female members were allowed to vote, but only by the appointing of a gentleman as proxy, to register their vote before the attention of the group. During the 20-year life of this Botanical Society of London, only one woman member would ever contribute a paper to the meetings, and it would prove necessary for her to enlist a male member of the society as her surrogate to read out the paper upon that occasion. No woman would ever be elected to the council of the society, or serve as an officer. Female membership in this society which regarded itself as a radical departure would decline from this initial one in ten proportion to about one in twenty. Female work was simply not recognized. The presumption was that they would be merely collecting specimens for men to analyze, or illustrating publications ostensibly presented by males. For instance, the plates of John Gould’s BIRDS OF EUROPE, a work valued primarily for such plates rather than for any text, had been prepared in actuality in large part by his wife.

1836

THE SCIENCE OF 1836

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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From this year into 1854, the 10 volumes of Sir William Jackson Hooker’s ICONES PLANTARUM (ILLUSTRATIONS OF PLANTS).

In reference to tropical orchids, and particularly concerning Cattleya labiata, Gardner wrote that the progress of cultivations (for coffee plantations, and wood for charcoal) was “proceeding so rapidly for twenty miles around Rio, that many of the species which still exist will, in the course of a few years, be completely annihilated, and the botanists of future years who visit the country will look in vain for the plants collected by their predecessors.”

Robert Schomburgk discovered Victoria regia in British Guiana (name later changed to Victoria amazonica). Early shipments of seed would be unsuccessful, until in 1849 Paxton would grow the plant and bring it into flower in a heated tank of the tropical house at Chatsworth. The entire January 1847 issue of Botanical Magazine would be dedicated to this waterlily.

1837

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Charles Darwin was seeing through the presses his JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES ... DURING THE VOYAGE OF HMS BEAGLE4about, among other things, his 1835 visit to the Galápagos.

From this year until 1841, he would be publishing five separate volumes about his trip aboard HMS Beagle.

He began by dedicating his effort to Charles Lyell, the successive volumes of whose THE PRINCIPLES OF

1839

4. Henry Thoreau would not read this until 1846.

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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GEOLOGY: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE BY REFERENCE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION (London) had kept him so very preoccupied during his long days at sea:

When Darwin left England for his round-the-world voyage in 1831,he carried with him a departure gift: Volume I of Lyell’sPRINCIPLES, published in its first edition the previous year.Before reaching the Cape Verde Islands, he had already beenswept into Lyell’s orbit. Thrilled, he preordered copies ofVolumes II and III for pickup in ports of call as they werepublished. So influential was Lyell’s thinking during the voyagethat Darwin dedicated his JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES to him with thiscomment: “The chief part of whatever scientific merit thisjournal and the other works of the author may possess, have beenderived from studying the well-known and admirable PRINCIPLES OFGEOLOGY.” This dedication may have jumped out at Thoreau when heread it in 1851, because he, himself, had been smitten by Lyell’sgreat book in 1840, eleven years earlier.

During this year he published the 3rd volume in the series NARRATIVE OF THE SURVEYING VOYAGES OF HIS MAJESTY’S SHIPS ADVENTURE AND BEAGLE, BETWEEN THE YEARS 1826 AND 1836. This established his further reputation as a scientist and author.

This was the year in which Charles Darwin himself alleged that he had first clearly formulated his theory of development with modification. Extremely reluctant to engage in controversy after what had happened to his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, he would wait until he had amassed an enormous amount of documentation and until his theory was at risk of being sketched out by others before he would publish.

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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We know that as of this year, Charles Darwin was unaware of his family motto E conchis omnia or of what it meant.

In the following year this new author would have his obligatory authorial portrait prepared:

Robert FitzRoy published two volumes of NARRATIVE OF THE SURVEYING VOYAGES OF HIS MAJESTY’S SHIPS ADVENTURE AND BEAGLE BETWEEN THE YEARS 1826 AND 1836, DESCRIBING THEIR EXAMINATION OF THE SOUTHERN SHORES OF SOUTH AMERICA, AND THE BEAGLE’S CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE.

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911), son of Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker, had met Darwin in 1834 and in a few years they had become friends. In this year he received his MD degree from the University of Glasgow and sailed to the Antarctic in the HMS Erebus.

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Republication as two volumes of Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s FLORA BOREALI-AMERICANA; OR, THE BOTANY OF THE NORTHERN PARTS OF BRITISH AMERICA: COMPILED PRINCIPALLY FROM THE PLANTS COLLECTED BY DR RICHARDSON & MR DRUMMOND ON THE LATE NORTHERN EXPEDITIONS, UNDER COMMAND OF CAPTAIN SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, R.N. TO WHICH ARE ADDED (BY PERMISSION OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,) THOSE OF MR DOUGLAS, FROM NORTH-WEST AMERICA, AND OF OTHER NATURALISTS... ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS PLATES... (London: Henry G. Bohn, No. 4, York Street, Covent Garden — this had beginning in 1833 been being issued in 4 volumes). Through the efforts of Sir William, Kew would become established as a British national botanic garden.

(On October 25, 1856 Henry Thoreau would inspect the 1850 reprinting of these two volumes, at the Astor Library in New-York.)

1840

FLORA BOREALI AMERICANA

FLORA BOREALI AMERICANA

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s BOTANY OF BEECHEY’S VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC AND BEHRING’S STRAITS (with Dr Arnott).

The Kew Botanical Gardens were transferred to the government, and on the resignation of William Townsend Aiton Sir William became the initial director. Under his leadership the gardens would increase from 10 to 75 acres, add an arboretum of 270 acres, create many new greenhouses, and institute a museum of economic botany.

Gardener’s Chronicle began publication, with J. Lindley as horticultural editor.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, by the Reverend Gilbert White … NY: Harper and brothers. Series title: Harper & Brothers family library, No. 147.

1841

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s GENERA FILICUM (THE GENERA OF FERNS), from the original colored drawings of F. Bauer, with additions and descriptive letterpress. From this year until 1848, the 7 volumes of his The London Journal of Botany.

John Leonard Knapp’s THE GRAMINA BRITANNICA, which had been issued in 1804 but in only 100 surviving copies, was at this point reprinted by Mr. Strong of Bristol in 1842 with little alteration of the original text and no addition of species. This volume’s book contained 119 colored plates of grasses as drawn by Knapp including many of the specimens from Knapp’s botanical tour of Scotland.

1842

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s NOTES ON THE BOTANY OF THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE OF THE EREBUS AND TERROR.

Publication of the final volume of Professor John Torrey’s A FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA (NY: Wiley & Putnam, 1838-1843), with Professor Asa Gray as a full collaborator.

John Lyons’s A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE CULTIVATION OF ORCHIDACEOUS PLANTS (a 2nd edition would arrive in 1845), the 1st book on orchid culture.

Jerome Increase Case, a 24-year-old farmer from upstate New York, introduced a threshing machine. The J.I. Case Company would become the largest thresher producer in the world.

James Robert Ballantyne’s THE PRACTICAL ORIENTAL INTERPRETER, OR HINTS ON THE ART OF TRANSLATING READILY FROM ENGLISH INTO HINDUSTANI AND PERSIAN and CATECHISM OF PERSIAN GRAMMAR (London and Edinburgh).

Robert Fortune made the first of four journeys to China (until 1860), initially for the Royal Horticultural Society, then for the East India Company (he would send 23,892 young tea plants and 17,000 germinated seedlings to northern India), and then for the US government. The tea plants Fortune would send to Washington DC would not succeed, in part due to our preoccupation with civil war. He used the newly devised “Wardian Case,” and the result would be that never before had so many Chinese plants survived all the way to England. He would forward the balloon flower, bleeding heart, golden larch, Chinese fringe tree, cryptomeria, hardy orange, abelia, weigela, winter honeysuckle, and other plants.

1843

FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA

PLANTS

BOTANIZING

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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In addition to his studies at the Theological College, with the approval and encouragement of the abbot of the monastery at Brünn, Franz Cyrill Napp (1792-1867), Gregor Mendel attended lectures on fruit-growing and viticulture. Napp, who had written a manual on plant breeding, was also chairman of the Pomological Association, and served on the committee of the local Agricultural Society. The lectures were delivered at the Brünn Philosophical Institute by Professor Franz Diebl (1770-1859), who was well-known for his articles and books about plant breeding.

From this year until 1864, the 5 volumes of Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s SPECIES FILICUM (THE SPECIES OF FERNS).

Some of the conservationist insights which would be presented in the following year by George Perkins Marsh before the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont were elaborated in George B. Emerson’s A REPORT ON THE TREES AND SHRUBS GROWING NATURALLY IN THE FORESTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. PUBLISHED AGREEABLY TO AN ORDER OF THE LEGISLATURE, BY THE COMMISSIONERS ON THE ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE was published in Boston

1846

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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(Dutton and Wentworth, State Printers, No. 37, Congress Street) with illustrations by Isaac Sprague.

A copy of this would be in Henry Thoreau’s personal library and a snippet from page 511 about the “flexibility, lightness, and resiliency” of the wood of the Tilia Americana, also called the basswood, or lime, or linden tree, would find its way into A WEEK.

EMERSON’S TREES/SHRUBS

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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A WEEK: (September 2, Monday, 1839) The bass, Tilia Americana, alsocalled the lime or linden, which was a new tree to us, overhungthe water with its broad and rounded leaf, interspersed withclusters of small hard berries now nearly ripe, and made anagreeable shade for us sailors. The inner bark of this genus isthe bast, the material of the fisherman’s matting, and the ropesand peasant’s shoes of which the Russians make so much use, andalso of nets and a coarse cloth in some places. According topoets, this was once Philyra, one of the Oceanides. The ancientsare said to have used its bark for the roofs of cottages, forbaskets, and for a kind of paper called Philyra. They also madebucklers of its wood, “on account of its flexibility, lightness,and resiliency.” It was once much used for carving, and is stillin demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes and panels ofcarriages, and for various uses for which toughness andflexibility are required. Baskets and cradles are made of thetwigs. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowersis said to be preferred to any other. Its leaves are in somecountries given to cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made ofits fruit, a medicine has been prepared from an infusion of itsflowers, and finally, the charcoal made of its wood is greatlyvalued for gunpowder.

CHOCOLATE

LINDEN TREE

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s A CENTURY OF ORCHIDACEOUS PLANTS, and his NIGER FLORA. From this year until 1857, the 9 volumes of his Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany.

William Lobb was sent to the Pacific coast of America by Veitch & Sons to collect plants for their horticultural trade.

William Darlington’s and Peter Collinson’s MEMORIALS OF JOHN BARTRAM AND HUMPHRY MARSHALL; (Philadelphia, Lindsay & Blakiston).

1849

BARTRAM AND MARSHALL

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s VICTORIA REGIA.

Gregor Mendel began a 2-year program of study at the University of Vienna. He would take a variety of courses and study with, or attend the lectures of, among others, Professor of Plant Physiology Franz Unger whose BOTANISCHE BRIEFE would in 1852 argue for the evolution of (i.e. non-fixity) of species, Andreas von Ettinghausen, whose course on experimental method and physical apparatus likely drew on his 1826 writings on combinatorial analysis and 1842 writings on the organization of experiments, and Christian Johann Doppler, a well-regarded lecturer on experimental physics.

Hofmeister described alternation of generations in higher plants.

Over the following four years Charles Darwin would be issuing 4 volumes of monographs on cirripedes (marine invertebrates including barnacles). His thorough research would be recognized with the Royal Medal.

Henry Thoreau read in Zoölogy and in Botany:

• William Bartram and John Bartram

• Peter Kalm, a disciple of Carolus Linnaeus• the Baron Cuvier, teacher of Louis Agassiz

• Loudon, apostle of the Linnaean “artificial” system of botanical classification• Stoever, the biographer of Carolus Linnaeus• Pultenay, a Linnaean• Carolus Linnaeus (in February 1852)• Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle, apostle of the Linnaean “artificial” system of

botanical classification (later)• Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould’s revised edition of their 1848 PRINCIPLES OF ZOÖLOGY:

TOUCHING THE STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT, DISTRIBUTION AND NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE RACES OF ANIMALS, LIVING AND EXTINCT; WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. PT. I. COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY

1851

JOHN BARTRAM’S BOOK

WM. BARTRAM’S BOOK

ANIMAL KINGDOM, IANIMAL KINGDOM, IIANIMAL KINGDOM, IIIANIMAL KINGDOM, IV

AGASSIZ & GOULD 1851

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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PEOPLE OFCAPE COD

CAPE COD: The Greeks would not have called the ocean orunfruitful, though it does not produce wheat, if they had viewedit by the light of modern science, for naturalists now assert that“the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat of life,”–though not of vegetable life. Darwin affirms that “our mostthickly inhabited forests appear almost as deserts when we cometo compare them with the corresponding regions of the ocean.”Agassiz and Gould tell us that “the sea teems with animals of allclasses, far beyond the extreme limit of flowering plants”; butthey add, that “experiments of dredging in very deep water havealso taught us that the abyss of the ocean is nearly a desert”;–“so that modern investigations,” to quote the words of Desor,“merely go to confirm the great idea which was vaguely anticipatedby the ancient poets and philosophers, that the Ocean is theorigin of all things.” Yet marine animals and plants hold a lowerrank in the scale of being than land animals and plants. “Thereis no instance known,” says Desor, “of an animal becoming aquaticin its perfect state, after having lived in its lower stage ondry land,” but as in the case of the tadpole, “the progressinvariably points towards the dry land.” In short, the dry landitself came through and out of the water on its way to theheavens, for, “in going back through the geological ages, we cometo an epoch when, according to all appearances, the dry land didnot exist, and when the surface of our globe was entirely coveredwith water.” We looked on the sea, then, once more, not as

, or unfruitful, but as it has been more truly called,the “laboratory of continents.”

PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD DESOR

AGASSIZ & GOULD

CHARLES DARWIN

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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March 24, Thursday: The white overseer William Brent reported Anthony Burns to the Richmond, Virginia authorities as a slave missing from his place of obligation.

March 24, 1853: 6 A.M. — By river to Hemlocks.I see where the muskrats opened clams, probably last evening, close to the water’s edge, or in the fork of fir ora willow, or on a tussock just covered with water, the shells remaining, for they bring the clam to the air to eatit. The downy (?) woodpeckers are quite numerous this morning, the skirts of their coats barred with white anda large, long white spot on their backs. They have a smart, shrill peep or whistle, somewhat like a robin, butmore metallic. Saw two gray squirrels coursing over the trees on the Rock Island. The forest is to them a vastweb over which they run with as little hesitation as a spider across his net. They appear to have planned or tobe familiar with their course before they start. The Island has several bunches of leaves in its trees, probablytheir nests. For several mornings the water has been perfectly smooth at six o’clock, but by seven the wind hasrisen with the ascending sun and the waves with the wind, and the day assumed a new and less promisingrespect.I think I may consider the shepherd’s-purse in bloom to-day, for its flowers are nearly as conspicuous as thoseof the stellaria, which had its spring opening some days since, both being the worse for the frost this morning.Since the cold snap of the 14th, 15th, etc., have walked for the most part with unbuttoned coat, and for the mostpart without mittens.I find the arrow-headed character on our plains, older than the written character in Persia.Now are the windy days of March drying up the superabundant moisture. The river does not yet preserve asmooth reflecting surface far into the day. The meadows are mostly bare, the water going down, but perchancethe April rains will fill them again.Last afternoon was moist and cloudy and still, and the robin sang faintly, as if to usher in a warm rainstorm, butit cleared off at evening.There are very slight but white mists on the river these mornings.It spits a little snow this afternoon.P. M. - To Second Division Brook.The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside. I likethe smell of it, all ready for the borers, and the rich light-yellow color of the freshly split wood and the purplecolor of the sap at the ends of the quarters, from which distill perfectly clear and crystalline tears, colorless andbrilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozingout. These beautiful accidents that attend on man’s works! Fit pendants to the ears of the Queen of Heaven! Howfull of interest is one of these wrecks of a wood! C. declares that Miss Ripley spent one whole season studyingthe lichens on a stick of wood they were about to put on the fire. I am surprised to find that these terebinthine(?) tears have a hard (seemingly soft as water) not film but transparent skin over them. How many curiositiesare brought to us with our wood! The trees and the lichens that clothe them, the forest warrior and his shieldadhering to him.I have heard of two skeletons dug up in Concord within twenty years, one, at least, undoubtedly an Indian. Thiswas as they were digging away the bank directly behind I. Moore’s house. Dr. Jarvis pronounced it an Indian.The other near the jail.I tied a string round what I take to be the Alnus incana, two or three rods this side Jenny’s Road, onT. Wheeler’s ditch. The bark is of a more opaque and lighter color, the fruit more orbicular, but the most suredifference was that a part of the pistillate catkins were upright. It was not quite in bloom, but neither were someof those whose fertile catkins drooped, nor could I yet see a difference in the color of the opened catkins.At Second Division, saw pollywogs again, full grown with long tails. The cowslip leaves are in many placesabove water, and I see what I suppose is that slender rush two inches high at the bottom of the water like a finegrass. What is that foliaceous plant amid the mosses in the wet which resembles the algæ? I find nothing like itin Hooker under head of Algæ. In many cases I find that the willow cones are a mere dense cluster of looseleaves, suggesting that the scales of cones of all kinds are only modified leaves, a crowding and stinting, of theleaves, as the stem becomes a thorn; and in this view those conical bunches of leaves of so many of the pine

1853

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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family have relation to the cones of the tree as well in origin as in form. The leaf, perchance, becomes calyx,cone, husk, and nutshell.The past has been a remarkable winter; such a one as I do not remember. The ground has been bare almost allthe time, and the river has been open about as much. I got but one chance to take a turn on skates over half anacre. The first snow more than an inch deep fell January 13th, but probably was not a foot deep and was soongone. There was about as much more fell February 13th, and no more to be remembered, i.e. only two or threeinches since. I doubt if there has been one day when it was decidedly better sleighing than wheeling. I havehardly heard the sound of sleigh-bells. A yellow lily bud already yellow at, the Tortoise Ditch Nut Meadow.Those little holes in sandy fields and on the sides of hills, which I see so numerously as soon as the snow is offand the frost off the ground, are probably made by the skunk in search of bugs and worms, as Rice says.His tracks in the winter are very numerous, considering how rarely he is seen at that season. Probably thetortoises do not lay their eggs so early as I thought. The skunk gets them too.

FLORA BOREALI AMERICANA

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Gregor Mendel received a teaching appointment at the Oberrealschule in Brno, where he would successfully teach natural history and physics for the following 16 years. He published his 2d paper, which concerns the beetle Bruchus pisi, on crop damage.

Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s A CENTURY OF FERNS.

THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY, AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE PHANEROGAMIA; BY HARLAND COULTAS, PROFESSOR OF GENERAL AND MEDICAL BOTANY IN THE PENN MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF PHILADELPHIA (Philadelphia: King & Baird, Printers, No. 9 Sansom Street).

1854

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s MUSEUMS OF ECONOMIC BOTANY AT KEW.

Harland Coultas’s THE PLANT: AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE ORGANIC LIFE OF THE ANIMAL (Philadelphia: Perry and Erety, Publishers, S.W. Corner Fourth and Race Sts.).

Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle’s GÉOGRAPHIE BOTANIQUE RAISONNÉE; OU, EXPOSITION DES FAITS PRINCIPAUX ET DES LOIS CONCERNANT LA DISTRIBUTION GÉOGRAPHIQUE DES PLANTES DE L’ÉPOQUE ACTUELLE.... (Paris: V. Masson; [etc., etc].5

1855

5. Henry Thoreau would make extracts from this into his Indian Book #12 in about 1861.

DE CANDOLLE, VOL. I

DE CANDOLLE, VOL. II

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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August 9, Saturday: In England, Thomas Hardy attended the execution of Elizabeth “Martha” Brown at Dorchester.

After she had discovered her husband in bed with another woman he had struck her with a whip, whereupon she had bludgeoned him with the kitchen wood-axe. This was an interesting escalation of domestic hostilities

1856

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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that Hardy could use as material for TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES!

“Summer Stories,” a condescending Brit notice of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, appeared on page 760 of London’s The Leader.

(Isn’t this the sort of review of WALDEN that one might expect, from the sort of people who need to attend a hanging in order to acquire fresh ideas? Phew!)

August 9. Saturday. Notwithstanding the very copious rain, with lightning, on the night of August 5thand the deluge which fell yesterday, raising the river still higher, it rained again and again with very vividlightning, more copiously than ever, last night, and without long intervals all this day. Few, if any, can remembersuch a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunderstorm, lasting almost continuously (the stormdoes) two nights and two days. We are surprised to see that it can lighten just as vividly, thunder just as loud,rain just as copiously at last as at first.P.M. — Up Assabet.The river is raised about two feet! My boat is nearly even full, though under the willows. The water standsnearly a foot over the highest part of the large flat rock by Island. There is more current. The pads are drowned;hardly one to be seen afloat; the utmost length of their tethers does not permit them to come within a foot or teninches of the surface. They lay smoothly on the top before, with considerable spare coil beneath; now they strainin vain toward the surface. All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for

Here we have a very agreeable series of natural andsocial studies, fresh in manner and style, with manyentertaining anecdotes, and sketches of forest life inAmerica. It is excellent, as a picture of young-settlement manners.

TIMELINE OF WALDEN

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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this year. The water is cool to the bather after so much rain.The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twitteringover. Does the last always titter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds.Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island, several plants,apparently not more than ten days out; say July 25th, including the ones I saw before. The flowers of this arewhite, with divisions of the corolla erect or nearly so, corolla not one eighth of tin inch wide, calyx-segmentslanceolate, pointed, as long as the tube of the corolla. I now notice that all the branches are about equallyupright, and hence the upper ones are much more upright than the upper ones of the A. androsœmifolium. Theplant is inclined to be taller and narrower than that, perhaps because it grows by water. The leaves are moreoblong or lanceolate and pointed, the downiness and petioles about the same with that of the common; in thiscase, none heart-shaped. The one found the 5th was between this and the common, a rose-streaked one, in factcolored like the common; this, a white one with still longer calyx-segments and no heart-shaped leaves. This israther smooth. Say, then, for that of the 5th and this, they are varieties of the A. cannabinum.6

I scare up a couple of wood ducks separately, undoubtedly birds bred and dispersed about here. The rise of theriver attracts them.What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. It has eight to twelve white rays, smallerthan those of the macrophyllus, and a dull-red stem commonly. It differs from Gray’s corymbosus in theachenia being apparently not slender, not opening in July, and there being no need of distinguishing it from A.macrophyllus; from his cordifolius in the rays not being numerous, nor the panicled heads very numerous(sometimes pretty numerous), and the rays not pale-blue. Perhaps I must call it A. cordifolius, yet the lowerand principal petioles are naked (Gray makes them so commonly!), not at all winged, though the upper are.Found one individual at Miles Swamp whose lower petioles were winged. Its petioles (the lower) are onlysometimes winged here. The flowers of A. macrophyllus are white with a very slight bluish tinge, in a coarseflat-topped corymb. Flowers nine to ten eighths of an inch in diameter. A. cordifolius flowers six eighths of aninch [in] diameter.

6. At Astor Library, New York, Nov. 8th, 1856, in Richardson’s Flora Boreali, etc., the leaves of Apocynum cannabinum in the plate are an inch or more beyond the flowers, and not hearted! Of the A. hypericifolium, the lower leaves are decidedly hearted, and the flowers are about terminal.

FLORA BOREALI AMERICANA

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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September 2, Tuesday: Hung Hsiu Ch’üan had one of his generals, Yang Hsiu-ch’ing, murdered by another, Wei, because this general had had the temerity to remonstrate with the little Chinese brother of Jesus Christ for kicking one of his concubines. (Later, Hung would have General Wei murdered in his turn.)7

Henry Thoreau wrote to Friend Daniel Ricketson.

Concord Sep 2nd ’56Friend Ricketson,My father & mother regret that your indisposition is likely to prevent your coming to Concord at present. It is as well that you do not, if you depend on seeing me, for I expect to go to New Hampshire the latter part of the week. I shall be glad to see you afterward, if you are prepared for & can endure my unsocial habits. I would suggest that you have one or two of the teeth — which you can best spare, extracted at once — for the sake of your general no less than particular health. This is the advice of one who has had quite his share of toothache in this world. — I am a trifle stouter than when I saw you last, yet far — far short of my best estate. I thank you for two newspapers which you have sent me — am glad to see that you have studied out the history of the ponds, got the Indian names straightened — which means made more crooked. — &c &c — I re-

7. Lest we speculate that this is mere Oriental barbarism, we should reflect on the fact that Hung’s behavior seems remarkably similar to that of John “The Prophet” of Leyden, leader of a sect of Anabaptists, who in about 1535 or 1536 cut off the head of a wife who had spoken disrespectfully to him — cut off her head in the presence of his other wives. In that incident in Germany, the religious leader and his remaining wives then danced around the dead body.

Five Foot Five and Born to Kill

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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member them with great satisfaction. They are all the more interest-ing to me for the lean & sandy soil that surrounds them. Heaven is not one your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it. Ah, the Middleboro Ponds! — Great Platte Lakes! Remember me to the perch in them. I trust that I may have some better craft than that oar-less pumpkin-seed the next time I navigate them.— From the size of your family I infer that Mrs Ricketson & your daughters have re-turned from Franconia. Please remember me to them, & also to Ar-thur & Walton, & tell the latter that if in the course of his fishing he should chance to come across the shell of a terrapin & will save it for me, I shall be exceedingly obliged to him.Channing dropped in on us the other day, but soon dropped out again.YrsHenry D. Thoreau.

Sept. 2: P.M. – To Painted Cup Meadow. Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves, — light reflected from the surface of each one, forthey are grown and worn and washed smooth at last, no infantile downiness on them. This, say ever sinceAugust 26th, and we have had no true dog-day weather since the copious rains began, or three or four weeks.A sheeny light reflected from the burnished leaves as so many polished shields, and a steady creak from thelocusts these days. Frank Harding has caught a dog-day locust which lit on the bottom of my boat, in which hewas sitting, and z-ed there. When you hear him you have got to the end of the alphabet and may imagine the &.It has a mark somewhat like a small writing w on the top of its thorax.A few pigeons [American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius] were seen a fortnight ago. I havenoticed none in all walks, but G. Minott, whose mind runs to them so much, but whose age and infirmitiesconfine him to his woodshed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago. I rarely pass at any season of theyear but he asks if I have seen any pigeons. One man’s mind running on pigeons, [he] will sit thus in the midstof a village, many of whose inhabitants never see nor dream of a pigeon except in the pot, and where evennaturalists do not observe [them], and he, looking out with expectation and faith from morning till night, willsurely see them. I think we may detect that some sort of preparation and faint expectation preceded every discovery we havemade. We blunder into no discovery but it will appear that we have prayed and disciplined ourselves for it. Someyears ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it didnot grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small,scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinctionkept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; andin a day or two my eyes fell on [it], aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it. Also, a short timeago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here. Hearing that onehad found another kind, it occurred to me that I had seen a taller one than usual lately, but not so distinctly didI remember this as to name it to him or even fully remember it myself. (I rather remembered it afterward.) Butwithin that hour my genius conducted me to where I had seen the tall plants, and it was the other man’s newkind. The next day I found a third kind, miles from there, and, a few days after, a fourth in another direction.It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I [am] in a thrilled andexpectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel morethan usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangelyprominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I amprepared for strange things. My father asked John Legross if he took an interest in politics and did his duty tohis country at this crisis. He said he did. He went into the wood-shed and read the newspaper Sundays. Such isthe dawn of the literary taste, the first seed of literature that is planted in the new country. His grandson may be

GEORGE MINOTT

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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the author of a Bhagvat-Geeta.I see bright-yellow blossoms on perfectly crimson Hypericum angulosum in the S. lanceolata path. By theIndian hemp at the stone bridge, am surprised to see the Salix lucida, a small tree with very marked andhandsome leaves, on the sand, water's edge, at the great eddy. The branches of an inch in diameter are smoothand ash-colored, maple-like; the recent shoots stout and yellowish-green, very brittle at base. The leaves are thelargest of any willow I have seen, ovate-oblong or ovate-lanceolate, with a long, narrow, tapering point(cuspidate), some on vigorous shoots, two and a half by seven inches wide in the blade, glandular-serrate, withpedicellate glands at the rounded base, thick, smooth, and glossy above, smooth and green beneath, with broadcrescent-shaped, glandular-toothed stipules at base of petioles, five eighths to one inch long. According toEmerson, “Sir W.J. Hooker says it is one of the most generally diffused of all the willows in British NorthAmerica.”Captain Hubbard said on Sunday that he had plowed up an Indian gouge, but how little impression that hadmade on him compared with the rotting of his cranberries or the loss of meadow-grass! It seemed to me that itmade an inadequate impression compared with many trivial events. Suppose he had plowed up five dollars!The botanist refers you, for wild [sic] and we presume wild plants, further inland or westward to so many milesfrom Boston, as if Nature or the Indians had any such preferences. Perchance the ocean seemed wilder to themthan the woods. As if there were primarily and essentially any more wildness in a western acre than an easternone!The S. lucida makes about the eleventh willow that I have distinguished. When I find a new and rare plant inConcord I seem to think it has but just sprung up here, — that it is, and not I am, the newcomer, — while it hasgrown here for ages before I was born. It transports me in imagination to the Saskatchewan. It grows alike onthe bank of the Concord and of the Mackenzie River, proving them a kindred soil. I see their broad and glossyleaves reflecting the autumn light this moment all along those rivers. Through this leaf I communicate with theIndians who roam the boundless Northwest. It tastes the same nutriment in sand of the Assabet and its water asin that of the Saskatchewan and Jasper Lake, suggesting that a short time ago the shores of this river were aswild as the shores of those. We are dwelling amid these wild plants still, we are eating the huckleberries which lately only the Indian ateand dried, we are raising and eating his wild and nutritive maize, and if we have imported wheat, it is but ourwild rice, which we annually gather with grateful awe, like Chippewas. Potatoes are our groundnuts.Spiranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing withfringed gentian. I cannot yet even find the leaves of the latter — at the house-leek brook. I had come to theAssabet, but could not wade the river, it was so deep and swift. The very meadow, poke-logan, was a quarter ofa mile long and as deep as the river before. So I had come round over the bridge.In Painted-Cup Meadow the ferns are yellowing, imbrowned, and crisped, as if touched by frost (?), yet it maybe owing to the rains. It is evident that, at this season, excessive rain will ripen and kill the leaves as much as adrought does earlier. I think our strawberries recently set out have died, partly in consequence. Perhaps theyneed some dryness as well as warmth it this season. Plainly dog-days and rain have had the most to do as yetwith the changing and falling of the leaves. So trees by water change earliest, sassafrases at Cardinal Shore, forexample, while those on hill are not turned red at all. These ferns I see, with here and there a single maple boughturned scarlet, — this quite rare.Some of the small early blueberry bushes are a clear red (Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum), and the lingeringclusters of blueberries contrast strangely with the red leaves of the V. vacillans. Smooth sumachs show quitered on dry, warm hillsides.While I am plucking the almost spicy blueberries amid the crimson leaves there on the springy slope, the cowsgather toward the outlet of their pastures and low for the herdsman, reminding me that the day is drawing to aclose.Centaurea will apparently be entirely done in a week. How deceptive these maps of western rivers! Methought they were scattered according to the fancy of the map-maker, — were dry channels at best, — but it turns out that the Missouri at Nebraska City is three times as wideas the Mississippi at Burlington, and Grasshopper Creek, perhaps, will turn out to be as big as the Thames orHudson.There was an old gentleman here to-day who lived in Concord when he was young and remembers how Dr.Ripley talked to him and other little boys from the pulpit, as they came into church with their hands full of lilies,saying that those lilies looked so fresh that they must have been gathered that morning! Therefore they musthave committed the sin of bathing this morning! Why, this is as sacred a river as the Ganges, sir.I feel this difference between great poetry and small: that in the one, the sense outruns and overflows the words;in the other, the words the sense.

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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October 25, Saturday: Henry Thoreau arrived at the Eagleswood community, about a mile west of Perth Amboy, New Jersey on the shore of Raritan Bay. He reported in his journal a visit to the Astor Library in New-York (while there he inspected the 1850 reprinting of the 2-volume 1840 edition of Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s FLORA BOREALI-AMERICANA). He would write his sister Sophia that he was “constantly engaged in surveying” from Monday through Saturday.

Oct. 25. Saw, at Barnum’s Museum, the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found floating dead in the

(Lakota women gathering wild rice — by Captain Seth Eastman)

BOTANY

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Hudson many years ago. The stuffed jaguar there looks rather the largest. Had seen a clergyman in Worcesterthe previous afternoon (at Higginson’s) who told me of one killed near the head of the Delaware, in New YorkState, by an acquaintance of his. His dog had treed it or found it on a tree on a mountainside, and the hunter firstsaw it as he came up from below, stretched out on a limb and looking intently at him, ready to spring. He firedand wounded it, but, as usual, it sprang as soon as struck, in the direction it was pointing. It struck seventy feetdown the mountain from the tree, or a hundred feet distant, tearing off the sleeve of the hunter’s very thick andstout coat, as it passed, and marking his arm from shoulder to hand. It took to a tree, and again, and this timeapproaching it from above, he shot it. The specimens I have seen were long-bodied. Looked into De Bay’sReport at the Astor Library. He describes one, the largest “of which we have any account,” killed in LakeFourth, Herkimer County. “it had a total length of 11 feet 3 inches.” He says that Vanderdonk speaks of lionsand their skins, only the latter seen by Christians, meaning panthers. According to D., haunts ledges of rockscalled “panther ledges.” There is no well-authenticated account of their having attacked a man, and it is not wellestablished that the northern and southern species are the same.8

De Kay describes the Sorex Dekayi, “nearly allied to brevicaudus, but is larger and more robust in its form.”From Massachusetts to Virginia. “Cheek teeth 16/10,” instead of 18/10 in S. brevicaudus. The color resemblesthe fur of the star-nosed mole. Length of head and body, 4.8 inches; tail, 8; to end of hairs, 9. He never met withS. brevicaudus in New York. Is not this my sorex of July 12th, 1856? Or is mine possibly the Sorex Fosteri,whose cheek teeth are 18/10; and total length, 4; tail, 1.5.

Arrived, at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 P.M., October 25th.

8. Apparently a panther was killed after this, this fall in Rhode Island.

JAMES ELLSWORTH DE KAY

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Professor Asa Gray issued FIRST LESSONS IN BOTANY AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY.

Pasteur demonstrated that fermentation was biological.

Professor William Henry Harvey’s NEREIS BOREALI-AMERICANA: OR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF THE MARINE ALGAE OF NORTH AMERICA. PART III.— CHLOROSPERMEÆ (Smithsonian Institution). Also, his “Short description of some new British algae, with two plates,” in Natural History Review (4:201-204).

1857

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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From this year into 1859, Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s FILICES EXOTICAE (EXOTIC FERNS).

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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June 13, Monday: Abundant gold was discovered on this day at diggings in the town of Navarre, Australia. James Law, John Fewster, W.R. Marshall, and George Mill would receive awards of £150 each. The 5-mile area would soon be inundated by some 6,000 gold-seekers, and would be renamed Barkly in honor of Victoria governor Sir Henry Barkly.

June 13. To Boston.My rail’s egg of June 1st looks like that of the Virginia rail in the Boston collection. A boy brought me aremarkably large cuckoo’s egg on the 11th. Was it not that of the yellow-billed? The one in the collection lookslike it. This one at B. is not only larger but lighter-colored.In the plates of Hooker’s “Flora Boreali-Americana,” the leaves of Vaccinium cæspitosum are not so wide asthe fruit; yet mine of Tuckerman’s Ravine may be it.

1859

FLORA BOREALI AMERICANA

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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Mr. Shaw’s Garden, later to become the Missouri Botanical Garden, in St. Louis, opened to the public.

Professor William Henry Harvey’s “Algae” (pages 242-383, plates 185-196 in THE BOTANY OF THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE, PART III. FLORA TASMANIAE (Volume 2, edited by J.D. Hooker) (London: L. Reeve).

During this year and the following one, Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s A SECOND CENTURY OF FERNS.

1860

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE: WITH OBSERVATIONS ON VARIOUS PARTS OF NATURE, AND THE NATURALIST’S CALENDAR / BY THE LATE REV. GILBERT WHITE; WITH ADDITIONS AND SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES BY SIR WILLIAM JARDINE; edited,… London: Henry G. Bohn.9

During this year and the following one, Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s THE BRITISH FERNS.

1861

9. The Reverend White’s NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE is only the 4th most reprinted book in the English language.

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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March 26, Tuesday: Frederick Earnest Charles Byron (later the 10th Baron Byron), son of Frederick and Mary Jane Byron and grandson of the 7th Lord Byron, was born.

It is extremely difficult for us to grasp the nature of the primary activities of the antebellum federal United States, because we live with a federal establishment whose primary activities are in entitlement programs such as welfare, medicare, and retirement, and in constant worldwide military operations. The government wasn’t like that before our civil war. Back then, back before entitlement programs and a large armaments industry, the primary expenditures of the federal government went toward what it regarded as science, but which in actuality amounted to a continual boondoggle. As evidence for this we have a letter of this date from Sir William Jackson Hooker to Harvard professor Asa Gray:

Such boondoggles were being conducted at first by the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, and then by the Army Corps of Engineers and the US Geographical Surveys. The Pacific Railroad reports, for instance, issued for free, cost our federal government over a million dollars, at a time when a million dollars was a very, very large fraction of the government’s total annual expenditures.

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR 26 MARCH]

What a pest, plague & nuisance are your official, semi-official & unofficial Railroad reports, surveys &c.&c. &c. Your valuable researches are scattered beyondthe power of anyone but yourself finding them.Who on earth is to keep in their heads or quote sucha medley of books - double-paged, double titled & halffinished as your Govt. vomits periodically into thegreat ocean of Scientific bibliography.

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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August 12, Saturday: William Jackson Hooker succumbed to a throat infection then epidemic at Kew while engaged with John Gilbert Baker in the preparation of SYNOPSIS FILICUM. The body would be placed at St. Anne’s Church in Kew. He would be succeeded as director of Kew Gardens by his son Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1865

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William J. Hooker

PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER WILLIAM J. HOOKER

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: February 15, 2015

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.

WILLIAM J. HOOKER PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.