BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 459 



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 Palm 

 House at Kew. 



The secret of the right use of travel is the possession of the natural 

 history instinct, and to those who contemplate it I can only recommend 

 a careful study of Darwin's Naturalist's Voyage. Nothing that came 

 in his way seems to have evaded him or to have seemed too incon- 

 siderable for attention. No doubt some respectable travelers 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" commences 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 rereads 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 Heuslow's time the 

 state of the natural sciences at Cambridge was incredible. In fact, 

 Leonard Jenyns (Memoir, 175), 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 years, and though Sir James Smith, the founder 

 of the Linna?au Society, had offered his services, they were declined on 

 the ground of his being a Nonconformist (ibid., 37). 



As to Heuslow'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 (ibid., 56), "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 his 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 26. 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 regiou. 



BOTANICAL TEACHING. 



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 (Voyage, 421), when at the Galapagos, "indisi. 

 criminately collected everything in flower on the different islands, and 



