BOTANY AT OXFOED AND CAMBEIDGE 383 



Botanical Fellowship or two might be insisted upon, from 

 whom the Professors should be chosen. Eooms and £50 

 a year should do a great deal for a Herbarium, supposing 

 it to have the superintendence and zealous curatorship of 

 a working Professor, such as Henslow would have made 

 before he got his Father's hving, or as Berkeley might now. 



Though there was at first no very reassuring answer from 

 friends in either University, affairs straightened themselves 

 out. By March 16 Henslow is told that 



Oxford is inclined to behave much more handsomely than 

 we anticipated, offers £1000 for a building, £50 and a good 

 suite of rooms for a keeper, and £25 for annual increase — 

 constant accessibihty to the public without a Master of Arts 

 or any other drawback. 



On Bentham's advice Mrs. Fielding withdrew some of 

 her conditions ; the gift was accepted, and before long a 

 curator was found in the person of Maxwell Masters,^ of whom 

 Hooker wrote to Harvey : 



We are hunting for a curator for Hb. Fielding. I hope 

 young Masters will get it, a fine lad setat. 20 who has just 

 finished a most distinguished medical education at King's 

 College and took medals galore — ^is son of Masters, nursery- 

 man at Canterbury, and early passionately attached to 

 &c., &c., &c., &c., &c., &c. It is only £50 and two rooms 

 at present and worth no one's having but a scrub's, or a 

 man who will take zealously to science and trust to provi- 

 dence for a future competence as a Botanist. I have a great 

 idea that a good Botanist and good Herb, would advance 

 science greatly in the Univs. Daddy cannot see it somehow, 

 but I had Masters out to dinner yesterday and the old Gent. 

 takes to him — a mere scrub or half educated man would 

 lower the position of Botanical Science in the eyes of ignorant 

 bigoted Oxford (I hope I do not offend your High Church ears), 



1 Maxwell Tylden Masters (1833-1907) was a pupil of Edward Forbes 

 and of Lindley at King's College, and Sub-Curator of the Fielding Herbarium. 

 After standing unsuccessfully against Henf rey for the Chair of Botany at Eling's 

 College in 1854, he took up general practice, but lectured on Botany at St. 

 George's Hospital and edited the Gardeners' Chronicle after Lindley's death 

 in 1865, besides writing many botanical monographs. 



