402 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 



a visit to Oswald Heer l at Zurich and heard him lecture to 

 his pupils. 



All I can say [he tells Bentham] is that if he is a type of 

 the old school of German Bot. teachers, I do not wonder at 

 the Physiologico-Microscopists, Okeno-Schleidenists, carry- 

 ing the day ; for any more dull and dreary exposition of 

 Genera and species I never heard, with no specimens in 

 students' hands, none in the lecturer's, no diagrams, no 

 pictures, no nothing. It opened my eyes to the real facts 

 of the great battle between the systematists and Physio- 

 logists. 



The great change in English botanical teaching, when it 

 came at last, took shape under Huxley's inspiration. He it 

 was who revolutionised biological teaching in 1872, making 

 his students study the chief types of animal life not merely 

 through lectures and books and specimens prepared by other 

 hands, but from their own observation and dissection of 

 the actual objects, under the guidance of himself and his 

 enthusiastic lieutenants, Michael Foster 2 and Kutherford and 

 Eay Lankester. From animal to vegetable biology was but 

 a step. While Huxley was away ill in 1873, a similar course 

 in botany was instituted with equal enthusiasm by another 



1 Oswald Heer (1809-83), Swiss investigator of fossil plants and insects. 

 Educated at the University of Halle, ordained minister 1831. He went to 

 Zurich in 1 832 and lived all his life there. He studied medicine, but soon devoted 

 himself to botany and entomology. In 1834 he became Privat-docent and 

 was the first Professor of Botany at Zurich 1852, and in 1855 the Polytechnicum 

 there. His first publications were on fossil entomology, 1847 and 1853; and his 

 first paleo-botanical paper in 1851. He passed the winter of 1854-5 in Madeira. 

 His Urwdt der Schweiz was published in 1865 and his Flora Fossilis Helvetiae 

 in 1877. 



2 Sir Michael Foster, M.D. (1836-1907), the physiologist, after a brilliant 

 career at London University, was for some years in practice with his father at 

 Huntingdon. His career as a teacher of physiology began in 1867 as prelector, 

 1869, professor at University College, London, and Fullerian professor at the 

 Royal Institution. In 1870, after acting as Huxley's assistant, he migrated to 

 Cambridge, first as prelector at Trinity College, then 1883-1903 as professor in 

 the chair founded for him by the university. He became F.R.S. 1872, and 

 biological secretary U.S. 1881-1903 ; President of the British Association and 

 K.C.B. 1899 ; M.P. for London University 1900-6. A close friend of Huxley, 

 he carried forward his method of teaching, and edited his Scientific Memoirs, 

 1901. His chief works were a Textbook of Physiology and his Lectures on the 

 History of Physiology. He was the joint author of Elements of Physiology and 

 of Embryology. 



