HENSLOW'S METHODS 391 



had been Professor of Botany at Cambridge since 1827. His 

 chief interest was not in systematic botany, but in the life 

 history and geographical distribution of plants ; his great 

 distinction to have been the pioneer of practical teaching in 

 England and the inspiration of those who came under him. 

 As a keen observer, he knew the value of learning through 

 one's own observations and discoveries. The average lecturer 

 taught the students in the Medical Schools to learn botanical 

 facts by memory ; Henslow led his students to discover their 

 facts by their own dissections of plants, and demonstrations 

 from living specimens. Teaching by things, not words only, 

 he made his subject alive, and on the same principle, arranged 

 the public galleries of the Ipswich museum to be a connected 

 demonstration of types, not a * raree show ' of curiosities. 



I am extremely glad [Hooker writes to him, May 10, 

 1856] to hear such good news about your class-men, and 

 hope that you will turn out a Botanist or two amongst 

 them. Pitch into the Dons and bigwigs. 



The enthusiasm he awakened among his University students 

 was renewed among the village children of Hitcham, to the 

 living of which he was presented in 1838. Here, every Monday 

 after school hours, he gave them lessons in botany, simple, 

 accurate, intensely interesting, combined with systematic 

 dissection of specimens and the making of local collections 

 and observations. These village lessons were the source and 

 pattern of the excellent nature-teaching now so widely diffused. 

 The enthusiasm of the children, the lasting effect in interest, 

 attention, character-building, were most remarkable. 



He was gradually putting together the MS. for a projected 

 book of Village Botany, which was left unfinished at his death 

 in 1861, but formed the basis of Professor D. Oliver's x 



1 Daniel Oliver (1830) came to Kew at the invitation of Sir Wm. Hooker, 

 and while working at the Herbarium found time to prepare and deliver, without 

 fee, lectures to the foremen and gardeners of the establishment, 1859-74. In 

 1864 he was appointed Keeper of the Herbarium and Library, a post he held 

 until 1890. He succeeded Lindley as Professor of Botany at London Univer- 

 sity (1861-88) and received the Royal Medal 1884, and the gold medal of the 

 Linnean 1893. He was editor of the first three volumes of the Flora of Tropical 

 Africa, one of the great Colonial Floras projected by Sir W. Hooker. Oliver 

 was both right-hand man and close friend of J. D. H., with whom his 

 ' omniscience ' was proverbial. 



