A SCIENTIFIC HOME MISSIONARY. 161 



had held the professorship for sixty-three years, and was a very old 

 man. In fact, there had been no lectnres on botany given in Cambridge 

 for at least thirty years. Prof. Henslow took hold of the work with 

 great zeal, improved the Botanical Gardens, rearranged and extended 

 the Botanical Museum, and established one of the most perfect collec- 

 tions of plants to be anywhere found. He made his lectures extremely 

 interesting by always having large numbers of specimens on hand 

 which the students were required to study directly. He often took 

 his class on botanizing excursions, which tended greatly to rouse their 

 interest in the subject. Entomologists and mineralogists often ac- 

 companied them, and Prof. Henslow's extensive acquaintance with 

 all branches of natural history, and the delight he took in imparting 

 information to all who sought it, served to kindle an enthusiasm which 

 aided very much to raise the position of science in the university. 



Prof. Henslow married in 1823. His parents had always been 

 desirous that he should go into the Church, and, as the salary from his 

 professorship was less than a thousand dollars a year, and insufficient 

 to support his family, he took orders and accepted a curacy which 

 yielded him some additional income. His engaging manners and sym- 

 pathetic disposition, combined with his intellectual accomplishments, 

 gave him great influence over the students, which was felt not only in 

 directing their tastes and pursuits, but in the formation of character. 

 As soon as he became settled in Cambridge as a married man, he in- 

 stituted the practice of receiving at his own house, one evening in the 

 week, all who took the slightest interest in scientific, and especially 

 natural history studies. At these gatherings all might learn some- 

 thing, and every one went away pleased. He would seek out any of 

 the students that were reported to him as attached to natural history, 

 and made converts to his favorite science of not a few who were 

 thrown accidentally in his way. If any young man through timidity 

 or reserve shrank from going to the professor's house, the open-hearted 

 welcome which he received soon inspired confidence and put him at 

 his ease. There are many now among the first naturalists of England 

 who were then students at Cambridge, and who gratefully acknowl- 

 edge the encouragement and assistance they received from Prof. Hens- 

 low, and bear testimony to his rare excellences, both of head and 

 heart. Among these is the now world-renowned naturalist Mr. Charles 

 Darwin, who furnished to Prof. Henslow's biographer the following 

 reminiscences, which will interest the reader as well on account of the 

 writer as of their subject. Mr. Darwin says : 



find that natural history is discouraged as much as possible, and regarded as idle trifling 

 by the thousand-and-one mathematicians of that venerated university." It was a life-long 

 struggle of Prof. Henslow to raise natural history to a coordinate place with other sub- 

 jects of university study, and it was but a short time before his death, in 1861, that he 

 saw the triumph of his efforts. Degrees were then first granted to those who had ob- 

 tained "honors" in natural history studies. 

 vol. in. 11 



