First published in 2003. Sir Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the nineteenth century. He succeeded his father as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and was a close friend and supporter of Charles Darwin. His journey to the Himalayas and India was undertaken between 1847 and 1851 to collect plants for Kew, and his account, published in 1854, was dedicated to Darwin. Hooker collected some 7,000 species in India and Nepal, and carried out surveys and made maps which proved of economic and military importance to the British. He makes many observations about the inhabitants of the areas he visited, making this volume a useful resource for anyone interested in nineteenth-century India.