TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 839 



evaded him or to have seemed too inconsiderable for attention. No douht 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, show that that result is the fault of the man and not of the 

 method. The right moment comes when the fruitful opportunity arrives to him 

 who can seize it. The first strain of the prelude -with which the ' Origin ' com- 

 mences are these words: ' When on board H.M.S. " Beagle " as naturalist, I was 

 much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting 

 South America.' But this sort of vein is not struck at hazard or by him who has 

 not served a tolerably long apprenticeship 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 Cambridge 

 was incredible. In fact, Leonard Jenyns,^ his biographer, speaks of the ' utter 

 disregard paid to Natural History in the University previous to his taking up his 

 residence there.' The Professor of Botany had delivered no lectures for thirty 

 3'ears, and though Sir James Smith, the founder of the Linnean Society, had 

 offered his services, tliey were declined on the ground of his being a Noncon- 

 formist.^ 



As to Henslow's own scientific work, I can but rely on the judgment of those 

 who could appreciate it in relation to its time. According to Berkeley,^ ' he was 

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

 exist in the same fungus.' And this, as we now know, was a fundamental 

 advance in this branch of morphology. Sir Joseph Hooker tells me that bis papers 

 were all distinctly in advance of his day. Before occupying the chair of botany, 

 he held for some years that of mineralogy. Probably he owed this 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. 



BOTANIC.\.L TeACHIITG. 



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 botany ' (i. 48). Yet we must not take this too seriously. Darwin,* 

 when at the Galapagos, ' indiscriminately collected everything in flower on the 

 diti^ereut islands, and fortunately kept my collections separate.' Fortunately 

 indeed ; for it was the results extracted from these collections, when worked up 

 subsequently by Sir Joseph Hooker, which determined the main work of his life. 

 ' It was .such cases as that of the Galapagos Archipelago which chiefly led me to 

 study the origin of species ' (iii. 169). 



Henslow's actual method of teaching went some way to anticipate the practical 

 methods of which we are all so proud. ' He was the first to introduce into the 

 botanical examination for degrees in London the system of practical examination.' * 

 But there was a direct simplicity about his class arrangements characteristic of the 

 man. ' A large number of specimens . . . were placed in baskets on a side-table 

 in the lecture-room, with a number of wooden plates and other requisites for 

 dissecting them after a rough fashion, each student providing himself with what 

 he wanted before taking his seat.'" 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 wos not, however, its academic 

 aspect, but the use he made of botany as a general educational instrument. ' He 

 always held that a man of no powers of observation was quite an exception.' ' 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.' *" The difficulty with which those who undertake now to teach our 

 subject have to deal is that most people ask the question, What is the use of 



' Memoir, 175. - Ihid., 37. ' Ihkl., 50. ■• Voyage, 421. 



» Memoir, 161. « Ibid., 39. ' Ibid., 163. « Ibid.. 99. 



