156 LECTURE ROOMS AND LABORATORIES 



Dr. Daubeny, finding the Library unsuited for herbaria 

 books and lectures, moved the former into the Central Western 

 Conservatory and lectured in the Magdalen College Lecture 

 Room, built by him in 1848. 



After his death, lectures were given in the Fielding 

 Herbarium, as the Western Conservatory was then called, 

 and this sometimes caused injury to the specimens. 



An interesting survival of this period may be seen in the 

 University Accounts of the present day, where the large 

 balance-sheet of the present Botanical Laboratory appears 

 under the somewhat inadequate title of " Fielding Herbarium." 



Laboratory teaching of biological science is only of modern 

 growth in Oxford. Dr. Daubeny had already made a begin- 

 ning, by showing some slides of vegetable tissues, " made in 

 Germany," to his classes. For students of medicine, chemical 

 laboratory and dissecting-room had sufficed for a long period, 

 and it was not until quite recent times that the value 

 of thorough training in practical microscopic methods and 

 results was fully realised. Students of biological science had 

 to depend almost entirely upon their lectures and upon in- 

 spection of collections and apparatus. Opportunities for ex- 

 perimental training did not exist. From 1861 onwards, 

 George Rolleston, the Linacre Professor of Physiology, had 

 regular classes for practical instruction in comparative 

 anatomy at the New Museum ; but botanical teaching still 

 proceeded on old lines. 



Among the earlier attempts to raise the standard were the 

 original Regulations of the National Science Board of 1872, 

 superseded some ten years later. In the summer of 1873, 

 Professor Lawson advertised lectures on Structural, Systematic, 

 and Economic Botany, and in the following year commenced 



conveyed by the Dean of Rochester's "note is certainly very erroneous, 

 for in the forties and fifties we are surprised at the variety of subjects, 

 botanical and agricultural, upon which Dr. Daubeny held forth in his 

 lecture-room "contiguous to the Botanic Garden." 



