PREFACE. IX 



Q. And in other branches receiving the most elementary 

 Instruction ? 



A. Yes. 



Q. And Prof. Henslow thought that their minds were more 

 developed ; that they were become more reasoning beings, from 

 having this study superadded to the others ? 



A. Most decidedly. It was also the opinion of some of the 

 inspectors of schools, who came to visit him, that such chil- 

 dren were in general more intelligent than those of other 

 parishes ; and they attribute the difference to their observant 

 and reasoning faculties being thus developed. . . . 



Q. So that the intellectual success of this objective study 

 was beyond question ? 



A. Beyond question. ... In conducting the examinations 

 of medical men for the army, which I have now conducted for 

 several years, and those for the East-India Company's Service, 

 which I have conducted for, I think, seven years, the questions 

 which I am in the habit of putting, and which are not an- 

 swered by the majority of the candidates, are what would have 

 been answered by the children in Prof. Henslow's village- 

 Bchool. I believe the chief reason .to be, that these students' 

 observing faculties, as children, had never been trained such 

 faculties having lain dormant with those who naturally pos- 

 sessed them in a high degree ; and having never been de- 

 veloped, by training, in those who possessed them in a low 

 degree. In most medical schools, the whole sum and sub- 

 stance of botanical science is crammed into a few weeks of lec- 

 tures, and the men leave the class without having acquired an 

 accurate knowledge of the merest elements of the science. . . . 



The printed form or schedule contrived by Prof. 

 Henslow, and used in these classes, applied only to 

 the flower, the most complex part of the plant, and 

 the attention of children was directed by it chiefly to 

 those features upon which orders depend in classifica- 

 tion. But, instead of confining its use to the study 



