the known facts that could be gathered were incorporated, so that they became systematically elaborated and complete Floras of the several countries. Moreover, in the last of them, the Flora Tasmaniae, there is an Introductory Essay, which in itself would have made Hooker famous. We shall return to this later. Meanwhile we recognise that the publication of the Botanical Results of Ross's Voyage established Hooker's reputation as a Traveller and Botanist of the first rank.
What he did for the Antarctic in his youth he continued in mature life for British India. While the publication of the Antarctic Flora was still in progress, he made his Indian journeys. The vast collections amassed by himself and Dr Thomson were consigned by agreement with Government to Kew. Thither had also been brought in 1858 "seven waggonloads of collections from the cellars of the India House in Leadenhall Street, where they had been accumulating for many years." They included the herbaria of Falconer and Griffith. Such materials, with other large additions made from time to time, flowed into the already rich Herbarium at Kew. This was the material upon which Sir Joseph Hooker was to base his Magnum Opus, the Flora of British India.
Already in 1855 Sir Joseph, with his Glasgow college friend, Thomas Thomson, had essayed to prepare a "Flora Indica." It never advanced beyond its first volume. But if it had been completed on the scale set by that volume, it would have reached nearly 12,000 pages! After a pause of over fifteen years Hooker made a fresh start, aided now by a staff of collaborators, and the Flora of British India was the result. It was conceived, he says with regret, upon a restricted plan. Nevertheless it ran to seven volumes, published between the years 1872 and 1897. There are nearly 6000 pages of letterpress, relating to 16,000 species. It is, he says in the Preface, a pioneer work, and necessarily incomplete. But he hopes it may "help the phytographer to discuss problems of distribution of plants from the point of view of what is perhaps the richest, and is certainly the most varied botanical area on the surface of the globe."
Scarcely was this great work ended when Dr Trimen died. He left the Ceylon Flora, on which he had been engaged, incomplete.
