From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Asa Gray
Date:
26 July 1875
Source of text:
Asa Gray Correspondence 11, Archives of the Gray Herbarium
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
Showing 21–40 of 73 items
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JDH informs Asa Gray that he has just visited his friend from Nepal, Brian Houghton Hodgson & also his sister in law Mrs Barnard. William Turner Thiselton-Dyer has been organising books & manuscripts at RBG Kew. JDH thanks Gray for his criticisms on GENERA PLANTARUM, specifically mentioning his own & [George] Bentham's work on Vaccinieae & Orabancheae incl Hypopithys, various Andromeda species, oxycoccos & whether Gaylussacia is a natural genus. Asks for Gray to clarify his stance on whether Orobanche should be made a separate order or part of Ericaceae. JDH has been assured by Bureau & Decaisne that there is no Pleuricospora in Borgeau's Mexican collection. Agrees that Gray, not Lindley, should have been acknowledged under Diapensiaceae, though it is a weak order that JDH considered putting into Ericaceae. JDH does not agree with Gray's desire to be acknowledged under Galax. JDH, Thiselton-Dyer, Oliver & Baker were all unaware of Gray's conspectus of Mertensia & JDH complains that he cannot be expected to keep up with all of Gray's extensive work. Thanks Gray for seeds of Arctostaphylos bicolor. Hopes Jackson & plant case have arrived. Harriet [Hooker later Thiselton-Dyer, Hooker's daughter] & co will return from Boulogne the following week. Harriet is generally a good housekeeper but as she is pretty she is asked out a lot & is 'too lazy to take the lead as head of the house' JDH is kept very busy with family matters & is glad to have the help of Mrs Turner & a cousin who will recommence their stay with the Hooker's once returned from Boulogne.
JDH informs Asa Gray that he is writing to Waldo Ross to thank him for a barrel of apples. JDH has received Gray's letter of 6 Dec [1875] & thanks him for a second copy of AESTIVATION AND TERMINOLOGY. JDH agrees with Gray regarding the importance of keeping [herbarium] material out of bad hands. He praises Decaisne's Pirus essay & Gray's notes in it, but notes that [Henri Ernest] Baillon has inserted a mistake into Decaisne's work; regarding the position of ovules. JDH dismisses Baillon's HISTOIRE [DES PLANTES] & calls his work on Phytolacceae a poor rehash of a bad work by Moquin-Tandon. JDH is puzzled what to do with Stegnosperma. He & George Bentham[GB] have decided to keep up Paronychieae [in GENERA PLANTARUM] & put Limeum & Gisekia [Gisechia] into Mollugineae. JDH has done Nyotaginea & had a dreadful task with Mirabilis Oxybaphus & co. But with GB's agreement kept Mirabilis for the big flowers & Oxybaphus for the small as a poor compromise. He offers to send Gray the glossary. He thinks Gray's varieties of O. cervantesii are both good distinct species. JDH is now working on Paronychieae & GB on Labiatae. Acanthaceae is being printed, to be followed by Verbenaceae. In response to Gray's entreaty JDH states he cannot visit him in the USA as he has 6 children to deal with. Hardy will go to New York in July & JDH would like to visit Gray at that time. Parish lives up to expectations. Diggs has given another grant to print the CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS for 1863-73. GB has recovered from a cold. Munro has settled near Taunton. [Thomas] Thomson has been very ill, he lives near Maidstone. [Charles Robert] Darwin is well, for him.
JDH has invited Judge Hastings & family to lunch. JDH currently working on GENERA PLANTARUM & proofs of FLORA OF BRITISH INDIA, with the sub-par help of Baker. JDH sending Asa Gray a copy of his [SCIENCE] PRIMER[: BOTANY] for critique. Looks forward to seeing the synoptic sample of Gray's FLORA BOREALIS AMERICANA. JDH would like to visit Gray but cannot leave his family with nobody to care for them. Thinks he must marry again. His daughter, Harriet [Anne Hooker] is ill & has been staying with the Munros near Taunton & her aunt, JDH's sister, in Torquay. Mentions Tyndall's marriage: ceremony performed by Dean Stanley, hopes the new Mrs Tyndall will be a good influence. Lady Augusta died the day after the wedding & the flowers JDH sent for the wedding became wreaths for a coffin. [Sir E. Ray] Lankester has been voted into the Linnean Society despite Carruther's opposition. Comments on George Allman as president of the Linnean Society & his own wish to resign the Vice President-ship. Mentions sending ROYAL SOCIETY TRANSACTIONS & clavis of Nyctago[?] to Gray. Reports on the progress of getting the new Herbarium building approved & constructed. It transpires the site & present herbarium house belong to RBG Kew having been sold by King George IV, meaning subsequent monarchs William IV & Queen Victoria never actually owned Hanover House. The existing building will become a library, as originally intended by Joseph Banks, & an extension built for the herbarium. JDH is called away to work on the BOTANICAL MAGAZINE.
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JDH & his wife [Hyacinth Hooker] have just returned from their honeymoon to North Wales where they climbed Cadair Idris & Snowdon. They also went to the Botanical Association at Glasgow where they & George Bentham stayed with JDH's niece Mrs Campbell. The married tour continued around Scotland to the Clyde, some of JDH's 'old haunts' on Loch Lomond & Inveray [Inveraray], Loch Awe via Crinan, Oban via Ben Cruachan, Skye, Gari Loch [Gairloch], Loch Maree, Dingwall, Inverness, Forres, Rothiemurchus, Stirling, to stay with the McGilvrays at Bridge of Allan & with Brian Houghton Hodgson in Gloucestershire & another visit in Worcestershire. Hyacinth Hooker proved an excellent walker & climber, enduring a long walk through the bogs in Skye, a 25 mile walk to a church in the Cuchillins [Cuillin], & a trek to 2000 feet over Loch Coruisk. He wonders whether Mrs [Jane Loring] Gray is an equally robust walker. JDH has found that he is very compatible with his new wife, she has a genuine interest in plants & will make an excellent step mother. Discusses the correct author attributions for Tripetalia & Tuckermannia. Olvey[?] has not turned up. Thanks Gray for Abies fraseri cones & asks what soil they should be grown in. JDH will begin working on his Anniversary Address for the Royal Society. Thanks Gray for a cheque for Gay's plants.
JDH thanks Asa Gray for a letter of 16 Oct pointing out a mistake in a plant description, the plant as identified incorrectly by Thompson & [John Gilbert] Baker & JDH missed the mistake in the absence of [Daniel] Oliver. JDH asks Gray to explain why he has kept D. elegans & D. puchella [pulchella?] separate as it is not clear from Gray's BOTANY OF CALIFORNIA. Baker & Oliver are certain Gray is wrong about an Iris. Baker is progressing fast with the Mauritian flora. Bennett has bequeathed RBG Kew a share of the Brownian Australia Herbarium. George Bentham is working on Cyperaceae & waiting for Muller to send Australian specimens. Munro is working on Gramineae for Alphonse De Candolle. JDH is busy with Royal Society affairs & preparing his Royal Society Presidential Anniversary Address. Discusses a dispute between the British Museum & Sir Wyville Thomson over distribution & publication of the Challenger expedition collections. The expedition was arranged by the Royal Society so they will adjudicate the dispute on behalf of the government. JDH is strongly against the collections going to the British Museum but is in a difficult position regarding the dispute as he is a Trustee of the British Museum as well as President of the Royal Society & Director of RBG Kew. JDH states that Richard Owen [Superintendant of the natural history department of the British Museum] is unpopular. JDH incredulously cites a claim Owen made to the Treasury that the Keepers of Botany at the British Museum, from Robert Brown to William Carruthers, were responsible for describing the plants collected on Government expeditions dating from the voyages of James Cooke & Matthew Flinders to Berthold Carl Seemann. JDH is especially busy as Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer is on holiday in Italy.
JDH is busy working on a new edition of his STUDENT'S FLORA OF THE BRITISH ISLES he compares the delineation of species in the flora to that in Asa Gray's MANUAL OF THE BOTANY OF THE NORTHERN UNITED STATES. JDH consults Gray on whether Gymnosperms should be a subclass of Dicotyledons or a group equal to all other Phaenogams? Joseph Decaisne, Gray & JDH favour the former position, Daniel Oliver & William Thiselton-Dyer the latter. Gnetum, esp. Formation of the embryo, will be key in determining the correct arrangement. JDH has sent the corrected SCIENCE PRIMER: BOTANY to the press, he would find such works easier to write if he also lectured. Life with his new wife Hyacinth Hooker is good & his future looks bright though sad times behind him make him doubt its security. JDH's sister Mrs Elizabeth Evans-Lombe, née Hooker is suffering less from neuralgia & melancholy. George Bentham is well. Oliver is working on the African flora, & Moore[?] is working on grasses. Asks if Charles Sprague Sargent can send American Southern Bamboo.
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