K.C.M.G.; he then began to dread a K.C.B.; finally he was trapped into
the K.C.S.I., an honour which most men would desire quite as much as
Hooker longed to decline it.

In 1873 Hooker made a series of experiments on the digestion and
absorption of food by certain insectivorous plants, notably Nepenthes,
with the object of helping Darwin in his work on that subject.

We must return a year or two to deal with a matter which, as Mr L. Huxley
remarks, "ravaged and embittered" the period 1870-72--namely, his
conflict with Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works in Gladstone's
Government. Mr L. Huxley, like a clever musician, gives a touch of
Ayrton's tone in the opening phrases of his composition. At a grand
festivity in honour of the Shah of Persia this sovereign was
unaccountably anxious to meet the Commissioner of Works. Ayrton was at
supper, and bluntly responded, with his mouth full of chicken, "I'll see
the old nigger in Jericho first!"

He began to show his quality by sending an "official reprimand to the
Director of Kew." This, the first received in twenty-nine years'
service, was based "on a misapprehension." Ayrton's aim seems to have
been to compel Hooker to resign and convert Kew Gardens into a public
park.

In 1871 Hooker casually discovered from a subordinate "that he himself
had been superseded . . . in one of his most important duties--namely,
the heating of the plant-houses." It would take too long to enumerate
the endless acts of insolence and folly which marked Ayrton's treatment
of Hooker. A full statement of the case was drawn up and signed by a
small body of the most distinguished scientific men of the day, and after
a debate in the House of Commons, Mr Ayrton was kicked upstairs "from the
Board of Works to the resuscitated office of Judge Advocate General." I
remember an anecdote which illustrates Ayrton's stupendous ignorance of
the great department over which he was called to rule. Hooker was taking
Ayrton round the Gardens when they met Mr Bentham, who happened to remark
that he had come from the Herbarium. "Oh," said Ayrton, "did you get
your feet wet?" For the official ruler of Kew there was no difference
between a Herbarium and an Aquarium.

This period has pleasanter memories, for it was in 1873 that Huxley, much
out of health and "heavily mulcted" by having to pay the costs of an
unsuccessful action brought against him by a man of straw, was persuaded
to accept from a group of