A SCIENTIFIC HOME MISSIONARY. 171 



be a love of children? This, at all events, was a prime qualification 

 of Prof. Henslow. His biographer says : " He had a playful way with 

 children, which won their affections, as well as their attention to what 

 he was teaching them, and which was one secret of their success. He 

 would always speak kindly to them, and encourage them in their dif- 

 ferent little ways. All who competed for the wild-flower nosegay 

 prizes, though they did not succeed in getting a prize, were allowed a 

 pinch of ' white snuff,' as he jokingly called it, or sugar-plums. He 

 generally had a snuffbox full of these sugar-plums in his pocket when 

 he went into the village, offering a pinch to any of the little children 

 whom he happened to meet." Of course, his botanical pupils were 

 all volunteers. They entered with spirit into their work, took it home 

 with them, pursued it in their rambles, recurred to it in hours of play, 

 compared notes among themselves, and needed no " compulsion. 5 ' 

 How eager was their delight, was shown by their grief whenever the 

 lessons were interrupted. In a public address, Prof. Henslow said : 

 "No one who had heard the lamentations uttered upon my announ- 

 cing, at our last lesson before Easter, the necessity of six weeks' ab- 

 sence at Cambridge duties, could possibly have doubted the great in- 

 terest the children took in these exercises." 



As to the educational value of this teaching, although it occupied 

 but a small fraction of regular school-time, it was of the highest im- 

 portance. It was not merely that the children got a knowledge of 

 botany, but that they mastered its rudiments in such a way as to gain 

 the most important intellectual benefits. There is plenty of unmis- 

 takable evidence upon this point ; we have space only for an extract 

 from the cautious statement of one of her Majesty's inspectors of 

 schools, who says: "That the botanical lessons, as handled by the 

 professor in his own national school, did draw largely upon the in- 

 telligent powers of his little pupils' minds, there can be no question. 

 The simple system to which he had reduced his plan of making the 

 children break up the various specimens into their component parts, 

 arrange those parts, observe their characters and relations to each 

 other, and thence arrive at conclusions for themselves, was very far 

 from being the mechanical process which many, before witnessing it, 

 might have supposed ' botany in the national schools ' to represent. 

 And I think it is not at all unfair to say that these children, who, out 

 of school, were (as I had many opportunities of judging) much more 

 conversable than the generality of children in rural parishes, owed a 

 considerable share of the general development of their minds to the 

 botanical lessons and the self-exercise connected with them." 



Prof. Henslow's method of teaching botany to the young was one 

 of his great successes, and is a permanent contribution to education. 

 He commenced a little book embodying the plan, but did not live to 

 finish it ; and he got along with printed lists, forms, and schedules, 

 all being directed by his lectures and by his constant supervision of 



