> 



HENSLOW. i6l 



spring Henslow persuaded me to think of Geology, and intro- 

 duced me to Sedgwick. During Midsummer geologised a 

 little in Shropshire. 



^''August. — Went on Geological tour* by Llangollen, 

 Ruthin, Conway, Bangor, and Capel Curig, where I left Pro- 

 fessor Sedgwick, and crossed the mountain to Barmouth." 



In a letter to Fox (May, 1831), my father writes : — " I am 

 very busy . . . and see a great deal of Henslow, whom I do 

 not know whether I love or respect most." His feeling for 

 this admirable man is finely expressed in a letter which he 

 wrote to Rev. L. Blomefield (then Rev. L. Jenyns), when the 

 latter was engaged in his ' Memoir of Professor Henslow * 

 (published 1862). The passage f has been made use of in the 

 first of the memorial notices written for ' Nature,' and Mr. 

 Romanes points out that my father, " while describing the 

 character of another, is unconsciously giving a most accurate 

 description of his own " : — 



" I went to Cambridge early in the year 1828, and soon 

 became acquainted, through some of my brother entomolo- 

 gists, with Professor Henslow, for all who cared for any 

 branch of natural history were equally encouraged by him. 

 Nothing could be more simple, cordial, and unpretending 

 than the encouragement which he afforded to all young 

 naturalists. I soon became intimate with him, for he had a 

 remarkable power of making the young feel completely at ease 

 with him ; though we were all awe-struck with the amount of 

 his knowledge. Before I saw him, I heard one young man 

 sum up his attaintments by simply saying that he kneyv every- 

 thing. When I reflect how immediately we felt at perfect ease 

 with a man older, and in everyway so immensely our superior, 

 I think it was as much owing to the transparent sincerity of 



* Mentioned by Sedgwick in his preface to Salter's 'Catalogue of Cam- 

 brian and Silurian Fossils,' 1S73. 



f Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow, M. A.,'by the Rev. 

 Leonard Jenyns. 8vo. London, 1862, p. 51. 



