SEXUALITY IN FLOWERING PLANTS 193 



a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1843. I n con ~ 

 sequence of bronchial trouble, to which he eventually succumbed 

 at the early age of 39, Henfrey never practised his profession. 

 Compelled to a life of seclusion he at once turned to a scientific 

 career and more particularly to the pursuit of botany. In 1847 

 he undertook the duties of Lecturer in Botany at St George's 

 Hospital Medical School, where among his colleagues was Edwin 

 Lankester, himself a redoubtable naturalist and the father of 

 Sir Ray Lankester, the eminent zoologist of our own day. 



Henfrey succeeded Edward Forbes as Professor of Botany 

 in King's College, London, in 1852 a post which he held till 

 his death. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal 

 Society in the same year. 



He died quite suddenly in 1859, at the house on Turnham 

 Green, where he had resided for many years. 



In order to understand the part played by Henfrey, it is 

 necessary briefly to review the state of botany in the first half of 

 the nineteenth century. 



Linnaeus of course, botanically, the outstanding fact of the 

 eighteenth century, was no exception to the dictum that "the 

 evil that men do lives after them." 



It was supposed that botany had reached its culminating 

 point in Linnaeus and that improvement could only be made in 

 details elaborating and extending his system. As Sachs tells 

 us in his History, the result was that "Botany ceased to be 

 a science; even the describing of plants which Linnaeus had 

 raised to an art became once more loose and negligent in the 

 hands of his successors. Botany gradually degenerated under 

 the influence of his authority into an insipid dilettantism a dull 

 occupation for plant collectors who called themselves systema- 

 tists, in entire contravention of the meaning of the word." 



This was written with especial reference to Germany, but it 

 applied with no less force to our own country where the Linnaean 

 idea had taken deep root and the Linnaean collections had found 

 a sanctuary. 



However, by 1840, a change was coming over the face of 

 botany. Little as it can have been dreamt, the Golden Age was 

 already beginning destined in a relatively short time to transform 



o. B. 13 



