170 ERYTHEA. 
He thought (and I think he proved) that botany might be 
used ‘for strengthening the observant faculties and expand- 
ing the reasoning powers of children in all classes of 
society.” The difficulty with which those who undertake 
now to teach our subject have to deal is that most people ask 
the question, What is the use of learning botany unless one 
means to be a botanist? It might indeed be replied that as 
the vast majority of people never learn anything effectively, 
they might as well try botany as anything else. But Henslow 
looked only to the mental discipline; and it was characteristic 
of the man and of his belief in his methods that when he was 
summoned to Court to lecture to the Royal family, his 
lectures ‘ were, in all respects, identical with those he was in 
the habit of giving to his little Hitcham scholars,’ and it 
must be added that they were not less successful. 
This success naturally attracted attention. Botanical 
teaching in schools was taken up by the Government, and 
continues to receive support to the present day. But the 
primitive spirit has, I am afraid, evaporated. The measure- 
ment of results by means of examination has been fatal to its 
survival. The teacher has to keep steadily before his eyes 
the necessity of earning his grant. The educational problem 
retires into the background. ‘The strengthening of the 
observant faculties,’ and the rest of the Henslowian pro- 
gramme must give way to the imperious necessity of 
presenting to the examiner candidates equipped with at 
least the minimum of text-book formulas reproducible on 
paper. I do not speak in this matter without painful 
experience. The most astute examiner is defeated by the 
still more astute crammer. The objective basis of the study 
on which its whole usefulness is built up is promptly thrown 
aside. If you supply the apple blossom for actual descrip- 
tion, you are as likely as not to be furnished with a detailed 
account of a buttercup. The training of observation has 
17 Memoir, 99. 18 [bid., 149. 
