462 BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION, 



the eye in a fascinating way in a carefully arranged museum. The 

 most successful and, indeed, almost the only attempt which has been 

 made in this direction is that at Cambridge, which, I believe, is due to 

 Mr. Gardiner. But our technical methods for preserving specimens 

 still leave much to desire. Something more satisfactory will, it may be 

 hoped, some day be devised, and the whole subject is one which is 

 well worth the careful consideration of our section. Henslow at least 

 effected a vast improvement in the mode of displaying botanical objects; 

 and a collection prepared by his own hands, which was exhibited at one 

 of the Paris exhibitions, excited the warm admiration of the French 

 botanists, who always appreciate the clear illustration of morpholog- 

 ical facts. 



OLD SCHOOL OF NATURAL HISTORY. - 



If the old school of natural history, of which Henslow in his day 

 was a living spirit, is at present, as seems to be the case, continually 

 losing its hold upon us, this has certainly not been due to its want of 

 value as an educational discipline or to its sterility in contributing 

 new ideas to human knowledge. Darwin's Origin of Species may 

 certainly be regarded as its offspring, and of this Huxley (Proe. R. S., 

 XLIV, xvii,) says with justice: "It is doubtful if any single book 

 except the Principia, ever worked so great and rapid a revolution in 

 science or made so deep an impression on the general mind." Yet 

 Darwin's biographer, in that admirable Life which ranks with the 

 few really great biographies in our language, remarks (I, 155): "In 

 reading his books, one is reminded of the older naturalists rather 

 than of the modern school of writers. He was a naturalist in the old 

 sense of the word, that is, a man who works at many branches of science, 

 not merely a specialist in one." This is no doubt true, but does not 

 exactly hit off the distinction between the kind of study which has 

 gone out of fashion and that which has come in. The older workers 

 in biology were occupied mainly with the external or, at any rate, 

 grosser features of organisms and their relation to surrounding condi- 

 tions; the modern, on the other hand, are engaged on the study of 

 internal and intimate structure. Work in the laboratory, with its 

 necessary limitations, takes the place of research in the field. One 

 may almost, in fact, say that the use of the compound microscope 

 divides the two classes. Asa Gray has compared Eobert Brown with 

 Darwin as the "two British naturalists" who have "more than any 

 others, impressed their influence upon science in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury" (Nature, X, 80). Now, it is noteworthy that Robert Brown did 

 all his work with a simple microscope. And Francis Darwin writes of 

 his father: "It strikes us nowadays as extraordinary that he should 

 have had no compound microscope when he went his Beagle voyage; 

 but in this he followed the advice of Robert Brown, who was an 

 authority on such matters" (I, 145). One often meets Avith persons, 

 and sometimes of no small eminence, who speak as if there were some 



