Obituary. 171 
lished a Flora of Suffolk. His illustrations of natural orders, published 
by the Department of Science and Arts, are of great value, and deserve 
a place in every school where botany is taught. At the time of his death 
he was employed revising the third edition of his ‘‘ Principles of Botany,”’ 
and in preparing a popular volume on botany. He strongly advocated 
the importance of botany in an educational point of view. In a letter 
written by him in February last, he says:—‘‘ In my opinion botany is 
the best adapted of all the classificatory sciences for strictly educational 
purposes. It offers greater facilities to both pupils and examiners for 
avoiding mere cram. My promised little volume on ‘ Practical Lessons 
in Botany for all Classes,’ is at length in a forward state, and I hope and 
trust I shall be able to convince people of the value of this science in 
training the mental faculties when it is properly pursued and insisted on, 
and not made a mere plaything.” In the same letter he writes:—“ I 
am intending next week to deliver a lecture at Ipswich on the Pre-Celtic 
Celts, which are confounding all our geological notions, and turning the 
world upside down in regard to received chronologies, I strenuously 
advise caution, and repudiate some of the inferences which have been 
deduced from these remarkable discoveries. We shall hear of more of 
them. A new locality has just turned up at Herne Bay.” 
Henslow was one of the founders of the British Association, and 
was aregular attendant at its meetings. He was an Examiner in the 
University of London and a Member of its Council. 
In political matters he took a deep interest at one time, and was a 
decided liberal. He was strongly opposed to bribery, and involved 
himself in much trouble by his unflinching exposure of corrupt proceed- 
ings in the town of Cambridge. : 
He was the chief promoter of science in Cambridge, and his efforts to 
establish the scientific tripos and degrees in science were crowned with 
success. He has also done much to adapt natural history in all its de- 
partments to the wants of the common people, and to induce the working 
classes to enter upon the study of common things. During the latter 
years of his life, Professor Henslow’s health became impaired by in- 
cessant mental and manual labours, and he suffered from symptoms of 
disease of the heart, accompanied with dyspepsia. During the spring of 
the present year these were aggravated by an attack of bronchitis caught 
during a visit to the south of England, and after protracted suffering he 
expired at the Rectory at Hitcham on the 16th May last in the sixty-fifth 
year of his age. A biographer in the ‘‘Gardener’s Chronicle” says of 
him :—‘‘ There are few men whose loss will be more generally deplored. 
To give even a sketch of the varied attainments and personal qualifica- 
tions that were so blended in Professor Henslow, as te render him at 
once the most popular and useful man of science of his day, is quite im- 
possible here, for they depended on a combination of rare qualities of 
head and heart, each natural, but all well trained and conscientiously 
cultivated by their possessor during a long period of his life. These 
were a sense of truth and fair play so instinctive, that deception or even 
reticence, when the cause of truth was at stake, were things almost unin- 
telligible to him ; a geniality of disposition that rendered him an attrac- 
tive companion from his childhood upwards; a temper of which he was 
never known to lose command even by his most intimate friends; an 
organisation of brain that rendered all subjects of study equally easy of 
acquirement; a keen love of nature and of natural knowledge ; an ardour 
In communicating it; a quick perception; excellent powers of generalisa- 
tion; the largest charity; a total absence of vanity or pride; a winning 
countenance, and a robust frame. Few men, indeed, were more gifted by 
nature to take a commanding position in the many spheres of life, in one 
