892 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 



' Elementary Lessons ' (1863). He also designed a series of 

 botanical diagrams, with explanations, for use in the National 

 Schools, then under the branch of the Board of Trade known 

 later as the Science and Art Department. These diagrams 

 were prepared at Kew, and Hooker writes of them to Asa Gray 

 (March 29, 1857) : 



Fitch has just completed a most magnificent set of 9 

 Elephant -folio plates with illustrations and analysis of 

 about 50 Nat. Ords. and genera designed by Henslow, and 

 superintended by your humble servant. It is done for 

 National Schools under Board of Trade. 



These met with skilled appreciation in wider circles also. 

 * I find your diagrams,' he tells Henslow, * greatly admired in 

 Dublin. Harvey was copying them out in grand, and they 

 had a very good effect ' ; while another letter remarks, * I like 

 your little explanatory book ; it will, I hope, do great execution 

 at the schools.' 



In 1858 also : 



I met a Kev. J. T. Graves ^ at Dublin, a Fellow of Trinity 

 Coll. Dublin, Mathematician, a man of renown in these parts 

 who has been employed by Govt, in enquiring on Endowed 

 schools and other Educational matters. He is immensely 

 strong on your point of teaching the science of Observation 

 to all men, especially to the young of all classes, and he has 

 reported the same to Govt, in perhaps the very words you 

 would have used. 



In formulating this scheme of teaching and condensing 

 it from his naturally more diffuse oral style, Henslow gladly 

 sought the help and keen criticism of his son-in-law. The 

 following letters illustrate Hooker's own sympathy with such 

 a plan, his insistence on the need for the pupil's perfect under- 

 standing of the * hard words ' and definitions which form the 



^ John Thomas Graves (1806-70), a great mathematician, whose corres- 

 pondence gave stimulus and suggestion to his friend Sir William Rowan 

 Hamilton in his discovery of quaternions. Called to the English as well as 

 the Irish Bar, he became Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, 

 London, in 1839, and from 1846 was a Poor-law Inspector for England and 

 Wales under the new Poor-law Act. 



