EDUCATIONAL VIEWS i53 



he wrote : " We had thought of saying something in regard to 

 the Geographic distribution of the species, but found our 

 material insufficient for treating this question to advantage." 

 As an alternative he suggests interleaving the ' Catalogue,' as 

 the book was also called, in which observers could add obser- 

 vations on the Geological formations and superficial soils upon 

 which each species grows, e.g. Chalk, the Crags, Gravels of 

 post-tertiary period, &c. as well as maritime, marshy, boggy, 

 healthy and cultivated soils\" 



Though he wrote against mere collecting, he was an in- 

 satiable collector himself; but it was always with some definite, 

 useful and generally educational purpose, and the best of his 

 collections invariably went to museums, especially those of the 

 Philosophical Society of Cambridge, of Kew and of Ipswich. 

 The first still has the fishes he collected at Weymouth in 1832, 

 solely for his brother-in-law L. Jenyns, the author of Tlie British 

 Vertebrate Ajmnals. 



One of the first things to which his attention was directed 

 was the Cambridge Botanic Garden. It was far too small and 

 in the centre of the town, where the scientific buildings are now 

 erected. He urged the necessity of a new one, but it was not 

 till 1 83 1 that the present site was secured; the first tree, how- 

 ever, was not planted until 1846. 



His educational method of teaching was totally different 

 from the mere instructional method of all previous lecturers. 

 To cram up facts was the students' duty in the Medical schools, 

 where botany was supposed to be taught. To learn by their 

 own discovery was his new method, and so each student edu- 

 cated himself by examining and recording plant structures first 

 seen by his own dissections. Having long been in the habit of 

 observing himself, he was early convinced of the importance of 

 practical work and he always had "demonstrations," as he called 

 them, from living specimens. Each member of the class had a 

 round wooden plate for dissecting upon. He had only sixteen 

 lectures to give, but he succeeded in arousing an enthusiasm in 



1 Such are the " Conditions of Life," upon the " Direct Action," of which Darmn 

 lays so much stress, as resulting in "Definite Variations... without the aid of selection." 

 (Var. of An. and PI. under Dotn. ii. p. 271 ff . ; Origin etc. 6th ed. p. 106, etc.) 



