XXXIV PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
vide the labourer with the means of improving his condition, and 
secure to him as an irrefragable right, what alone offered a pro- 
spect of keeping him from the workhouse when unemployed by the 
farmer, and from the beershop when disposed to be idle, was an 
object worth every effort on the part of the rector ; and in 1849, 
by dint of his indomitable moral courage and determination, he 
succeededin establishing nofewer than fifty quarter-acre allotments 
in the parish. For several years the battle raged, but with the 
aid of one or two staunch supporters—honourable exceptions to 
the mass—he overcame all difficulties, and finally almost tripled the 
number of allotments. Throughout the whole of this agitating 
period Professor Henslow preserved not only a calm, but a con- 
ciliatory bearing: he announced himself from the first as a cham- 
pion of the rights of the poor, sought no quarter himself, but 
gave it liberally to all the vanquished ; he printed and circulated 
was contained in a separate phial of water, and two or three hundred or more, 
all fully labelled, were arranged along the wall in wooden shelves drilled for their 
reception. The prizes awarded to the most successful field botanists were now 
brought out for distribution. They were of three classes—botanical boxes, 
pocket lenses, and cases of forceps. The little villagers received their philoso- 
phical instruments witha shrewd appreciation of the use of them, and brought 
them to bear on a dissection of the products of the day with the dexterity of a 
Hooker or a Lindley. The forceps was lifted to separate the sepals and petals, 
the lens to examine the number of pistils and stamens, and class, order, and 
genus were determined by the competing botanists ina moment. ‘They beat 
my Cambridge boys,’ said the Professor. ‘We don’t trouble ourselves here 
about the Artificial system of botany ; we jump smack to the Natural.’ One 
little girl had detected a species of reed grass new to her. It was new, as occur- 
ring in this locality, to the Professor. It was new even to his own private her- 
bariwn, and rare in all England. A liberal pinch of white snuff from Pandora’s 
box was the welcome reward. The girls were now examined as to the general 
characters of plants. A specimen was held up and systematically pulled to 
pieces, and the questions put were promptly answered in the course of the dis- 
section. All we can ourselves remember is a lifting of the forceps, a quizzing 
through lenses, a general consultation and whispering, and the simultaneous 
echo now and then of such words as ‘ tetradynamous,’ ‘ hypogynous,’ ‘ polypeta- 
lous,’ ‘syngenesious,’ and the like, learned out of a printed formula, which, 
owing to the assistance of the bountiful goddess hereinbefore mentioned, had 
proved much easier to them than the multiplication table. ‘They beat my 
Cambridge boys hollow,’ again remarked the Professor, with a smile. In con- 
clusion, all kneeled down on the clean brick floor, to repeat a short prayer to 
the gracious Giver of plants that open out spring lessons for intelligent minds, 
and we went out thoroughly impressed with the importance of nature-teaching, 
even in this sequestered pastoral spot. We would have given the world at that 
moment for some claim to a share in the blessing that followed the Reverend 
Professor home to the Rectory.” 
