And thus was initiated that profuse and rapid course of publication which characterised the period of office of Sir William Hooker in Glasgow. The duties of the chair were comparatively light, and only in his later years did he extend them voluntarily into the winter months. He worked year in year out, early and late, at his writing, and rarely left home. The 21 years of his professorship were perhaps the most prolific period of his literary production. It was brought to a close in 1841, by his appointment to the directorship of the Royal Gardens at Kew, which had in March 1840 been transferred from the Crown, under the Lord Steward's Department, to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. Sir William had been for some time desirous of changing the scene of his activities from the relatively remote city of Glasgow to some more central point, and the opening at Kew not only satisfied this wish, but also put him in command of the establishment in which he saw, even in its then undeveloped state, the possibility of expansion into a botanical centre worthy of the nation.
In the spring of 1841 Sir William removed to Kew, taking with him his library, his private museum and herbarium. This was the first of those incidents of denudation of the botanical department in Glasgow, the direct result of the system that held its place in the Scottish Universities till the Act of 1889. Till that date the chair was "farmed" by the professor. Almost all the illustrative collections and books of reference were his private property. Whenever, as has repeatedly been the case in Glasgow, the occupant of the chair was promoted elsewhere, he naturally took his property with him, and the University was denuded, almost to blank walls. Fortunately that is so no longer. But in the present case the collections were removed, and finally formed the basis of the great museums, and of the herbarium of Kew.
At the time of Sir William's appointment Kew itself was in a very unsatisfactory state. The acreage of the garden was small compared with what it now is. The houses were old, and of patterns which have long become obsolete. Only two of them are now standing, viz. the Aroid house near the great gates, and the old Orangery, now used as a museum for timbers.
