BOTANICAL ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 167 
ship with him as ‘a circumstance which influenced my whole 
career more than any other’ (i. 52). The singular beauty of 
Henslow’s character, to which Darwin himself bore noble 
testimony, would count for something, but it would not in 
itself be a sufficient explanation. Nor was it that intellectual 
fascination which often binds pupils to the master’s feet; for, 
as Darwin tells us, ‘I do not suppose that anyone would say 
that he possessed much original genius’ (i. 52). The real 
attraction seems to me to be found in Henslow’s possession, 
in an extraordinary degree, of what may be called the 
Natural History spirit. This resolves itself into keen obser- 
vation and a lively interest in the facts observed. ‘His 
strongest taste was to draw conclusions from long-continued 
minute observations’ (i. 52). The old Natural History 
method, of which it seems to me that Henslow was so striking 
an embodiment, is now, and I think unhappily, almost a 
thing of the past. The modern university student of botany 
puts his elders to blush by his minute knowledge of some 
small point in vegetable histology. But he can tell“ you 
little of the contents of a country hedgerow; and if you put 
an unfamiliar plant in his hands he is pretty much at loss 
how to set about recognising its affinities. Disdaining the 
field of nature spread at his feet in his own country, he 
either seeks salvation in a German laboratory or hurries off 
to the Tropics, convinced that he will at once immortalise 
himself. But ‘celum non animum mutat’; he puts into 
‘pickle’ the same objects as his predecessors, never to be 
looked at again; or perhaps writes a paper on some obvious 
phenomena which he could have studied with less fatigue 
in the Palm House at Kew. 
The secret of the right use of travel is the possession of 
the Natural History instinct, and to those who contemplate 
it I can only recommend a careful study of Darwin’s 
‘Naturalist’s Voyage.’ Nothing that came in his way seems 
to have evaded him or to have seemed too inconsiderable for 
attention. No doubt some respectable travellers have lost 
themselves in a maze of observations that have led to noth- 
