HENSLOW'S BOTANICAL CHAETS. 



LARGE colored diagrams for teaching botany are so valua- 

 ble that, in the absence of any publications for the full and sys- 

 tematic illustration of the subject, lecturers have been in the 

 habit of roughly preparing them for class-room use. Recog- 

 nizing this want of schools and students, Prof. J. S. Henslow, 

 the eminent English botanist, who has done so much to sim- 

 plify and improve the elementary teaching of the subject, took 

 the matter up ; and one of the last works of his life was to 

 prepare a set of botanical charts for educational purposes. 

 There was perhaps no other living man so competent to the 

 task, as his thorough knowledge of the science, his experience 

 as a lecturer to the Cambridge students when he was profess- 

 or in that university, and his subsequent teaching of the par- 

 ish children at Hitcham, qualified him to meet the wants of all 

 grades of learners. He prepared a series of nine large sheets, 

 and, as their publication was expensive, it was undertaken as 

 an important educational work by the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment of the English Educational Council. " Henslow's Botan- 

 ical Diagrams " have had a high reputation for their scientific 

 accuracy, their completeness of illustration, their judicious se- 

 lection of typical specimens, and their skilful arrangement for 

 the purposes of education. In bringing out a method of ele- 

 mentary botany, which desires to give every advantage in its 

 thorough acquisition, the author of the First and Second 

 Books felt the need of large colored diagrams, and, as there is 

 nothing of the kind in this country, while the importation 

 of Henslow's series is costly, her publishers were induced 

 to incur the very considerable expense of publishing a revised 

 edition of the English charts. This revision and reissue were 

 the more necessary, as the foreign edition has one very serious 

 defect ; it was compressed into so small a space that the figures 

 often overlapped, producing an indistinct and confused effect. 



