Side by side with this almost unconscious education in Botany the ordinary curriculum of school and of college was pursued. There is no record of academic successes either at the High School, or at the University of Glasgow, beyond a prize "for the best Essay on the Brain and Nerves," in 1836. But the following year saw his first publication: for he described, while still a student, three new species of Mosses. It may be remarked that, like his father, his first writings related to the lower Plants. He never lost his interest in them, though in later years duty diverted him to the study of the Flowering Plants. An incident of his student period, which he himself relates, is, however, a more clear indication of the life that was to follow than any early publication of new species. He tells how an opportunity was given him of reading the proofs of Darwin's _Voyage of the Beagle_. "I was hurrying on my studies (that is for the final examination in Medicine) ... and so pressed for time was I that I used to sleep with the sheets of 'The Journal' under my pillow, that I might read them between waking and rising. They impressed me profoundly, whilst they stimulated me to enthusiasm in the desire to travel and observe." The opportunity came to him almost at once in the four years' voyage to the Antarctic. At the age of 22, having passed his examinations, and graduated as M.D., he was equipped at every necessary point for his duties as Assistant Surgeon and Botanist in the "Erebus," then about to start, along with the "Terror," on the famous voyage under the command of Sir James Clark Ross. No attempt will here be made to give any consecutive biographical sketch of Sir Joseph Hooker. Several such have already appeared. The interest of the reader will be more readily engaged by indicating the various lines of activity in which he excelled. He was never a professional teacher, except for a short period of service as deputy for Graham in Edinburgh. There was a moment when he might have been Professor in Edinburgh, but it passed. He left no pupils, except in the sense that all botanists have learned from him through his books. We shall contemplate him rather as a Traveller and Geographer, as a Geologist, as a Morphologist, as an Administrator, as a Scientific Systematist, and above all as a Philosophical Biologist. He played each of these several parts in the Drama of Science. The endeavour will be made, however imperfectly, to touch upon them all.