September 26, 1895] 



NATURE 



0'/ 



Henslow the only objects he cared for were foxes and partridges." 

 I do not wish to overstate the facts. The possession of " the 

 collector's instinct, strong in Darwin from his childhood, as is 

 usually the case in great naturalists," to u.se Huxley's {Proc. 

 R.S., xliv. vi.) words, would have borne its usual fruit in after 

 life, in some shape or other, even if Darwin had not fallen into 

 Henslow's hands. But then the particular train of events 

 which culminated in the great work of his life would never have 

 lieen started. It appeared to me, then, that it would not be an 

 altogether uninteresting investigation to ascertain something 

 about Henslow himself. The result has been to provide me 

 with several texts, which I think it may be not unprofitable to 

 dwell upon on the present occasion. 



In the first place, what was the secret of his influence over 

 Darwin ? " .My dear old master in Natural History" (" Life," 

 ii. 317) he calls him ; and to have stood in this relation to 

 Darwin' is no small matter, .-^gain, he speaks of his friendship 

 with him as "a circunist.ince which influenced my whole career 

 more than any other " (i. 52). The singular beauty of Henslow's 

 character, to which Darwin himself bore noble testimony, would 

 count for something, but it would not in itself be a sufiicient 

 explanation. Nor was it that intellectual fascination which 

 often binds pupils to the masters feet ; for, as Darwin 

 tells us, " I do not suppose that any one would say 

 that he possessed much original genius" (i. yi). The 

 real attraction seems to me to be found in Henslow's pos- 

 session, in an extraordinary degree, of what may be called the 

 Natural History spirit. This resolves itself into kten observa- 

 tion and a lively interest in the facts observed. " His strongest 

 la.ste was to draw conclusions from long-continued minute 

 observations" (i. 52). The old Natural Histor)' method, of 

 which it seems to me that Henslow was so striking an embodi- 

 ment, is now, and I think unhappily, almost a thing of the past. 

 The modern university student of botany puts his elders to blush 

 by his minute knowledge of some small point in vegetable histo- 

 logy. But he can tell you little of the contents of a countrj- hedge- 

 row ; and if you put an unfamiliar plant in his hands he is 

 pretty much at a loss how to set about recognising its affinities. 

 Disdaining the field of nature sprea<l at his feet in his own 

 country, he either seeks salvation in a German laboratory or 

 hurries off to the Tropics, convinced that he will at once im- ^ 

 niortalise himself. But ca/ttm iion aniiiium iiitilal : he puts 

 into " pickle " the same objects as his predece.ssoi^s, never to be 

 looked at again ; or perhaps writes a paper on some obvious 

 phenomena which he could have studied with less fatigue in the j 

 I'alm House at Kew. 



The secret of the right use of travel is the jwssession of the | 

 Natural History instinct, and to those who contemplate it I can 

 only recommend a careful study of Darwin's " Naturalist's 

 \oyage." Nothing that came in his way .seems to have evaded 

 him or to have seemed too inconsiderable for attention. No 

 doubt .some respectable travellers have lost themselves in a maze , 

 of observations that have led to nothing. But the example of 

 Darwin, and I might add of Wallace, of Huxley, and of Moseley, 1 

 show that that result is the fault of the man and not of the i 

 method. The right moment comes when the fruitful oppor- 

 tunity arrives to him who can seize it. The first strain of the 

 prelude with which the "Origin" commences are these words: 

 " When on board H.M.S. Beaglea^ naturalist, I was much struck | 

 with cert.iin facts in the distribution of the organic beings in- 

 habiting South America." But this sort of vein is not struck at 

 hazard or by him who has not served a tolerably long apprentice- 

 ship to the work. 



When one reads and re-reads the " Voyage," it is simply 

 amazing to see how much could be achieved with a previous 

 training which we now should think ludicrously inadequate. 

 Before Henslow's time the state of the natural sciences at Cam- 

 bridge was incredible. In fact, Leonard Jenyns (" Memoir," 175)' 

 his biographer, speaks of the " utter disregarcl paid to Natural 

 History in the University previous to his taking up his residence 

 there." The I'rofessor of Botany had delivered no lectures for 

 thirty years, and though Sir James Smith, the founder of the 

 Linnean .Society, had offered his services, they were declined on 

 the ground of his being a Nimconformist (t/>ii/., 37). 



.■\s to Henslow's own scientific work, I can but rely on the 

 judgment of whose who could appreciate it in relation to its 

 time. According to Berkeley (ibhl., 56), " he wxs certainly one 

 of the first, if not the very first, to see that two forms of fruit 



1 .\s I shall h.ive fre;]ui;iu occasion to quote ihe ' 

 insert the references in the text. 



NO. 1352, VOL. 52] 



Life and Letters" I shall 



might exist in the same fungus." And this, as we now know, 

 was a fundamental advance in this branch of morphologj'. 

 Sir Joseph Hooker tells me that his papers were all distinctly in 

 advance ofhis day. Before occupying the chair of botany, he 

 held for some years that of mineralogy. Probably he owed thi.s 

 to his paper on the Isle of Anglesey, published when he was 

 only twenty-six. I learn from the same authority, that this to 

 some extent anticipated, but at any rate strongly influenced, 

 Sedgwick's subsequent work in the same region. 



BoiANic.Ai. Teachini;. 



Henslow's method of teaching deserves study. Darwin says 

 of his lectures " that he liked them much for their extreme 

 clearness." •' But," he adds, " I did not study tiotany " (i. 48). 

 ^'el we must not take this too seriously. Darwin (" X'oyage," 

 421), when at the Galapagos, "indiscriminately collected every 

 thing in flower on the different islands, and fcjrtunately kept my 

 collections separate." fortunately indeed ; for it was the results, 

 extraclefl from these collections, when worked up subsequently 

 by Sir Joseph Ilcjoker, which determined the main work of his 

 life. " It was such cases as that of the Galapagos -ArchipeKago 

 which chiefly led me to study the origin of species " (iii. 159)- 



HensIo\v's actual method of teaching went someway to amici- 

 pate the practical methods of which we are all so proud. " He 

 was the first to introduce into the botanical examination for de- 

 grees in London the system of practical examination " ( " Memoir, ' 

 161). But there was a direct simplicity about his class arrange- 

 ments characteristic of the man. "A large number of specimen* 

 . . . were placed in baskets on a side-table in the lecture-room, 

 with a mmiber of wooden plates and other requisites for dissect- 

 ing them after a rough fashion, each student providing himself 

 with what he wanted before taking his seat" (ibid., 39). I do 

 not doubt that the results were, in their way, as efficient as 

 we obtain now in more stately laboratories. 



The most interesting feature about his teaching was not, how- 

 ever, its academic aspect, but the use he made of botany as a 

 general educational instrument. " He always held that a man 

 of «(j powers of observ,ation was quite an exception " (ibid., 163). 

 He thought (and I think he proved) that botany might be used 

 " for strengthening the observant faculties and expanding the 

 reasoning powers of children in all classes of society " 

 (ibid., 99). The difiiculty with which those who under- 

 take now to teach our subject have to deal is that most people 

 ask the question. What is the use of learning botany unless 

 one means to be a botanist ? It might indeed be replied that a* 

 the vast majority of people never learn anything eft'ectively, they 

 might as well try botany :vs an)'thing else. But Henslow looked 

 only to the mental discipline ; and it was characteristic of the 

 man and of his belief in his methods that when he was sum- 

 moned to Court to lecture to the Royal family, his lectures 

 " were, in all respects, identical with those he was in the habit of 

 giving to his little Hitcham scholars" (" Memoir," 149) ; and it 

 must be added that they were not less successful. 



This success naturally attracted attention. Botanical teaching 

 in schools was taken up by the Government, and continues to 

 receive support to the present day. But the primitive spirit h;is, 

 I am afraid, evaporated. The measurement of results by means 

 of examination has been fatal to its survival. The teacher has 

 to keep steadily before his eyes the necessity of earning his grant. 

 The educational problem retires into the background. "The 

 strengthening of the observant faculties," and the rest of the 

 Henslowian jirogramme must give way to the imperious neces- 

 sity of presenting to the examiner candidates etjuipped with at 

 least the minimum of text-book fornudas reproducible on |>ai>er. 

 I do not speak in this matter without painful experience. The 

 most a,stute examiner is defeated by the still more astute crammer. 

 The objective basis of the study on which its whole uselulncss i.s 

 built up is promjitly thrown aside. If you supply the apple 

 blossom for actual description, you are as likely as not to be 

 furnished with a detailed account of a buttercup. The train- 

 ing of observation has gone by the board, and the exercise of 

 mere memory has taken its place. But a table of logarithms or 

 a Hebrew grammar would serve this pur])ose equally well. \'et 

 I do not despair of Henslow's work still bearing fruit. The 

 examination system will collapse from the sheer impossibilitv of 

 carrying it on beyond a certain point. Freed from its trammels, 

 the teacher will have greater scope for individuality, and the 

 result of his labours will be rewarded after some intelligent 

 system of inspecticm. \n<\ here I may claim support from an 

 unexpected tpiarter. Mr. Gladstone has recently wrjtleii to a 



