390 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 



they ought to know practically and well, and of so conducting 

 the examination in Physiology (when you take that as a 

 change) that it shall include Morphology and the Natural 

 Orders. Do stick to the motive that Botany is a knowledge 

 of plants and do not budge one inch from that. I am quite 

 convinced that one of the greatest evils done to science is 

 the fashion of making men learn solely or chiefly matters 

 of which they can have no practical knowledge : their 

 education is thus a forced one, the honors they get are not 

 for the kind or amount of knowledge which enables them 

 to make their way on afterwards, and they have been thus 

 led to form a low estimate of the only useful branches, and 

 they do not like to hark back upon these afterwards ; and are 

 deterred from going on with the science for ever after. The 

 whole subject of education in Science is being better appre- 

 ciated now that the German school is falling into disrepute. 1 



The writing of good handbooks was as essential to the 

 progress of Botany as the elaboration of a satisfactory system 

 of lecturing. 



Bentham's ' Handbook to the Flora of the British Isles ' 

 (published 1858) was a great step in advance, and a letter 

 to the author while still at work upon it strikes a confident 

 note (February 16, 1854) : 



I am rejoiced at the progress of the British Flora, and 

 regard its appearance as a new era to British Botany. The 

 public are really prepared for a change radical and complete. 

 Your Flora must appear as a Precursor. I shall keep your 

 letter in the hope that you will work out such remarks as 

 you embody in it for a good sound introduction to the book. 

 After all it is doing far more good to publish a Flora that will 

 set people on the right way to know plants for themselves 

 than one which aims to tell them everything about them. 

 I would announce boldly my aim as the desire to put people 

 on the right track and not to supply them with what they 

 ought to find out for themselves. 



Next came Henslow's work in elementary teaching of 

 botany. John Stevens Henslow, who was born in 1796, 

 and was therefore eleven years junior to Sir William Hooker, 



1 Compare the reference to Heer's lectures; p. 402. 



