458 BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



that we owe Darwin to him. As Romanes lias told us (Memorial 

 Notices, 13): "His letters written to Professor Henslow during his 

 voyage round the world overflow with feelings of affection, veneration, 

 and obligation to his accomplished master and dearest friend — feelings 

 which throughout his life he retained with no diminished intensity. 

 As he used himself to say, before he knew Professor Henslow, the only 

 objects he cared for were foxes and partridges." 



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

 lector's instinct, strong in Darwin from bis childhcod, as is usually the 

 case in great naturalists," to use Huxley's (Proc. R. S., XLIY, 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 been 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 1 is no small matter. 

 Again, he speaks of bis friendship with him as " a circumstance which 

 influenced my whole career more tban 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 

 sufficient explanation. Nor was it that intellectual fascination which 

 often binds pupils to the master's feet; for, as Darwin tells us, "I do 

 not suppose that anyone would say that he possessed much original 

 genius " (I, 52). The real attraction seems to me to be found in Hens- 

 low's possession, in an extraordinary degree, of what may be called the 

 natural history spirit. This resolves itself into keen observation aud a 

 lively interest in the facts observed. " His strongest taste was to draw 

 conclusions from long-continued minute observations" (I, 52). The 

 old natural history method, of which it seems to me that Henslow was 

 so striking an embodiment, 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 vege- 

 table histology. But he can tell you little of the contents of a country 

 hedgerow, and if you put an unfamiliar plant in his hands he is pretty 

 much at a loss how to set about recognizing its affinities. Disdaining 

 the field of nature spread at his feet in his own country, he either seeks 

 salvation in a German laboratory or hurries off to the tropics, con- 

 vinced that he will at once immortalize himself. But ccelum non animuin 

 mutat; he puts into "pickle" the same objects as his predecessors, 



1 As I shall have frequent occasion to quote the Life and Letters, I shall insert the 

 references in the text. 



