HOOKER, Sir Joseph Dalton

Son of Sir William Jackson (see below) and also a famous botanist who made many important contributions to botanical taxonomy but who is probably best known for introducing into Britain a range of previously unknown Rhododendron species and for his improvements to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. There are several references to beetles being either collected or donated by 'Dr Hooker' or 'Prof Hooker', and I am confused as to which Hooker is referred to since it would appear that an interest in entomology was handed down from father to son through two generations. The NHM Accessions Registers record a number of gifts of beetles which appear to have been from Sir Joseph as follows: 44 from Guayaguil (1845/142 and 1846/4), 8 from Hergucleus land (1847/31), 45 from New Zealand and 11 from Magallen St. (1848/80), 5 from New Zealand (1852/3) and 254 from N. India, 'selected from a very large series'. The localities mentioned are ones which he could have visited on the two major botanical expeditions he made, firstly as assistant surgeon and naturalist on the expedition led by Captain James Clark Ross to locate the magnetic South Pole and to visit the Great Ice Barrier but which also included the Falkland Islands, Tasmania and New Zealand, and secondly his expedition to north eastern India from 1847 which resulted in his seven volume Flora of British India and a general account of his travels Himalayan Journals, 1854 (which I have not seen). There are also examples of Bruchus from Cuba, and four beetles from Caracas presented by Sir Joseph to the HDO ( Smith (1986), p.26.) Sir Joseph 's collections in the Khasi Hills, Assam in 1853 are referred to by Arrow (1917). (MD 5/03)