LTXNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



xxix 



Heuslow's departure from Cambridge, not a single botanical paper, 

 and very few on other branches of natural history, have been 

 contributed to its Philosophical Transactions, of which he was 

 one of the founders. 



" In 1823 Professor Henslow married a daughter of the Rev. 

 Greorge Jenyns, of Bottisham Hall, in Cambridgeshire ; and in 

 1825 he took orders as curate of Little St. Mary's, in Cambridge. 

 In 1833 he was presented by Lord Brougham, then Chancellor, 

 to the Vicarage of Cholsey-cum-Moulsford, in Berkshire, where he 

 resided during the summer months of three years, passing the 

 rest of his time at Cambridge as before. In 1837 he was trans- 

 ferred by the Crown to the valuable Bectory of Hitcham in Suffolk, 

 and there from 1839 until his death, he resided throughout the 

 year, with the exception of six weeks of the Easter term, when he 

 lectured during the week in Cambridge ; for many years returning 

 to Hitcham for the Sunday service. 



" To the duties of his new position Professor Henslow brought 

 the same energy, and the same love of bettering his fellow-crea- 

 tures as had distinguished him in Cambridge, together with in- 

 creased fervor for teaching, matured faculties, and a deep sense of 

 his responsibility in ministering to the spiritual and temporal 

 wants of a large and wofully neglected parish. His flock were 

 notorious for belief in witchcraft, drunkenness, poaching, sheep- 

 stealing and other immoral habits ; they consisted of field labourers 

 living in wretched hovels, and of farmers, who, being intellectually 

 little better than their servants, were doggedly opposed to any 

 change in their moral or physical condition. Here was work 

 requiring all Professor Henslow' s indomitable energy and multi- 

 farious resources ; no one knew better than he what is the result 

 of throwing good seed on stony ground, and he consequently laid 

 his plans for tilling and fertilizing the ground committed to his cul- 

 ture with such sagacity and skill, and carried them out with such 

 unflinching steadfastness of purpose, that within less than a quar- 

 ter of a century he reaped his reward hundred-fold, and died 

 with a harvest garnered. It is quite impossible to estimate the 

 amount and kind of moral courage required for a clergyman to 

 break down the sturdy opposition to change of the farmers of 

 twenty years ago ; but his neighbours had to do with one who 

 never determined on a plan of action without carrying it into suc- 

 cessful effect, and whose downright honesty, frank bearing, and 

 imperturbable temper, were weapons proof against the outbursts 

 of prejudice, avarice, and malice with which he was assailed. 



