Dutch mice is a name for Lathyrus tuberosus. Gerard says that the plant is so named from the “similitude or likeness of Domesticall Mise, which the blacke, rounde, and long nuts, with a peece of the slender string hanging out behind do represent.” From this description one would expect to see
mouse-like pods, but it is the tubers which give the name to the plant. This is clearly visible in Bentham’s illustration; [114] I hope the artist was unaware of the name when he made the drawing—but I have my doubts. The specimen from Cambridgeshire (which I owe to the kindness of Mr Shrubbs of the University Herbarium) are not especially mouse-like.
The names shepherd’s needle and Venus’ comb have been given to an umbelliferous plant, Scandix Pecten. The teeth of the comb are represented by what are practically seeds. These are elongated stick-like objects covered with minute prickles all pointing upwards. I do not know how the seeds germinate under ordinary conditions, but I learn from Mr Shrubbs that they are dragged into the holes of earthworms, as my father describes in the case of sticks and leaf-stalks. Unfortunately for the worms, the prickles on Venus’ needles do not allow the creatures to free themselves, and they actually die in considerable numbers with the needles fixed in their gullets.
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER [115a]
“Few, if indeed any, have ever known plants as he did.”
—Bower.
Joseph Dalton Hooker was born in 1817 and died in 1911; and of these ninety-four years eighty-one included botanical work, for at thirteen “Joseph” was “becoming a zealous botanist”; and Mr L. Huxley records (ii., 480) that he kept at work till a little before his death on 10th December 1911, and that although his physical strength began to fail in August, yet “till the end he was keenly interested in current topics and the latest contribution to natural science.” So far as actual research is concerned, it is remarkable that he should have continued to work at the Balsams—a very difficult class of plants—at least till 1910. Mr Huxley has wisely determined to make his book of a reasonable size, and the task of compressing his gigantic mass of material into two volumes must have been a difficult one. He has been thoroughly successful, [115b] and no aspect of Sir
Joseph’s life is neglected, the whole being admirably arranged and annotated, and treated throughout with conspicuous judgment and skill.
In an “autobiographical fragment” (i., p. 3) Sir Joseph records that he was born at Halesworth in Suffolk, “being the second child of William Jackson Hooker and Maria Turner.” He was not only the son of an eminent botanist, but fate went so far as to give him a botanical godfather in the person of Rev. J. Dalton, “a student of carices and mosses and discoverer of Scheuchzeria in England.” It was after Mr Dalton that Hooker was named, his first name, Joseph, commemorating his grandfather Hooker. In 1821 the family moved to Glasgow, where Sir William Hooker was appointed Professor of Botany. It was here that Sir Joseph, at the age of five or six, showed his innate love of plants, for he records [116]:—
“When I was still in petticoats, I was found grubbing in a wall in the dirty suburbs of the dirty city of Glasgow, and . . . when asked what I was about, I cried out that I had found Bryum argenteum (which it was not), a very pretty little moss which I had seen in my father’s collection, and to which I had taken a great fancy.”
While still a child his father used to take him on excursions in the Highlands, and on one occasion, on returning home, Joseph built up a heap of stones to represent a mountain and “stuck upon it specimens of the mosses I had collected on it, at heights relative to those at which I had gathered them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany.”