XXVlll PEOCEEDTNGS OF THE 



nifold acquirements to his new post (which had been wholly neg- 

 lected for many years), and speedily raising it from obscurity to 

 renown. He immediately arranged a course of lectures at once 

 scientific, practical and popular, gave chemistry and physiology 

 their legitimate places in botanical teaching, and, by applying his 

 mathematical powers in giving a prominent place to the geometrical 

 problems involved in phyllotaxis, he awakened interest in a study 

 to which some of the mathematicians of Cambridge had hitherto 

 hardly accorded the dignity of a science. Nor did he neglect the 

 more practical duties of a teacher ; no one knew so well as he did 

 that to make botanists of students they must quickly be brought to 

 believe that in some directions, at any rate, they can and ought to 

 walk imaided ; he therefore took them on excursions, taught them 

 eai'ly how to name plants by an artificial use of the natural method ; 

 gave each confidence in his earliest eftbrts, and led them on by 

 example, teaching and encouragement. Nor did botanists and 

 undergraduates alone profit : his lecture room was attended by 

 senior members of the University, and his excursions by entomo- 

 logists, conchologists, and geologists ; each deriving knowledge in 

 his own speciality from him, and he from them : thus exciting 

 amongst his pupils an admiration for his manifold acquirements 

 that was only equalled by their love of his personal character. 



" For 14 years Professor Henslow resided at Cambridge as bota- 

 nical professor, during which period the income attached to the 

 chair was very small ; this was, however, no obstacle to his in- 

 stituting weekly evening meetings at his own house for the recep- 

 tion of every one interested in science, including under-graduates ; 

 to which all were invited to bring specimens of interest in any 

 branch of science; and at which there was free intercourse 

 between young men and ' dons ' of every degree. This practice, 

 previously unknown in the University, and, we regret to say, as yet 

 unfollowed, was a step of immense importance in difi"usiug a taste 

 for science, no less than in inciting the young men to intellectual 

 pursuits. 



" During this period he contributed two papers to the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society on a hybrid Digitalis, and the structure of 

 the Mignonette, both of the highest merit as works of philoso- 

 phical research, and which established his reputation amongst 

 continental naturalists : he also wrote the volume on Botany for 

 Lardner's ' Cabiiaet Cyclopaedia,' an admirable little work, of which 

 two editions have been sold, and a third was under revision at the 

 time of his decease. It is a noticeable fact, that since Professor 



