nd I, if we last ten years longer--and you by a long while
first--will be representatives of our respective lines in the country.
In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform, to ourselves,
to the outside world, and to Science. We shall have to swallow praise,
which is no great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous bastings and
irritations." And this was doubtless a true prophecy for both the
friends.

Hooker's work--both his botanical research and duties of a more public
character--was ever on the increase.

In the first category comes the _Genera Plantarum_, a gigantic piece of
work begun with the co-operation of Bentham in the '60's, and continued
until 1883. The aim of this celebrated publication was no less than to
give a revised definition of every genus of flowering plants. If this
had been the only publication by the two friends, it had been enough to
found a high and permanent place in the botanical world. But as far as
Hooker was concerned, it may almost be said to have been carried out in
his spare moments. It should be remembered that for part of this period
he was aided in the management of the Gardens by Sir William
Thiselton-Dyer, who began as Hooker's Private Secretary and was then made
Assistant Director. {128a}

The Presidency of the Royal Society, which Hooker held 1873-78, was
clearly a great strain, but he carried out the work (which is in fact
that of a ministry of science) with conspicuous success.

In January 1873 he wrote to Darwin:--"I quite agree as to the awful
honour of P. R. S. . . . but, my dear fellow, I don't want to be crowned
head of science. I dread it--'Uneasy is the head, etc.'--and my beloved
Gen. Plant. will be grievously impeded." It gives some idea of the
strain of his work as a whole when we find him writing {128b} to Darwin
(Jan. 14, 1875): "I have 15 Committees of the R[oyal] S[ociety] to attend
to. I cannot tell you what a relief they are to me--matters are so ably
and quietly conducted by Stokes, Huxley, and Spottiswoode that to me they
are of the same sort of relaxation that metaphysics are to Huxley."

He speaks, {128c} too (1874), of the annual conversazione as "a
tremendous affair. . . . How I did pity the President of the United
States." I am reminded of an American caricature of the President of the
United States with red, swollen fingers, inscribed:--"The hand we have
shaken so often." With regard to other honours, he declined at once the