BOOKWORK AND EXAMINATION SCHEMES 389 



The following undated letter to Henslow further illustrates 

 his difficulties : 



Better not recommend books except perhaps to advise 

 the study of such a thing as Lindley's Is. pamphlet on 

 descriptive Botany, which is quite unique, and I think the 

 men should be told that it is best to work upon the Candollean 

 system of Orders. I should not recommend any other of 

 Lindley's works, or indeed any works as works : and the Is. 

 pamphlet only as indicating a method of working that will 

 certainly meet the exigencies of the Examiners. 



I find yearly the difficulty of having to do with men 

 who have never been taught on any system, or all on different 

 systems. I feel the difficulty of recommending books, but I 

 see in the present condition of the Science and its Professors, 

 the necessity of indicating a method both of working and of 

 arranging the Nat. Ords. To make the book work depend 

 on the coaching up a particular author's work, as Babington 1 

 proposes to do by Lindley's Elements, would be fatal to any 

 good examination. 



The proper method of examination is further dealt with 

 in a letter to Harvey, who had just been appointed Moderator 

 in the College examinations at Dublin. 



[March 24/1857.] What is a Moderator-ship ? Steam or 

 sail ? I like your programme of it, but do, I beg, insist on their 

 demonstrating characters both on dried and living specimens 

 of Brit, polypet [alae] and see that their knowledge is founded 

 on sound Morphological laws, as studied by themselves on 

 the plants. Henslow has just issued an admirable dried plant 

 Examination Scheme, write and ask him. You are quite 

 right to stick to elementary knowledge of British plants, 

 and however much you change - your subject never lose 

 sight of the principle of keeping within the limit of what 



1 Charles Cardale Babington (1808-95), botanist and archaeologist, who 

 succeeded Henslow as Professor of Botany at Cambridge in 1861, was especially 

 enthusiastic as a field botanist, and his Manual of British Botany in successive 

 editions from 1843 onwards brought the subject from the Linnean stage into 

 harmony with continental progress in systematic and descriptive botany. 

 His lectures, however, did not expand with the new developments of botanic 

 teaching in histology and physiology, and his detailed descriptive work, such 

 as the Synopsis of British Rubi, ran to an extreme of analysis in basing new 

 species in minute differences. 



VOL. i 2 c 



