388 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 
If I had asked him the economic value of Rosaceae he would 
have quoted Shillelaghs ! Another told me that the freezing 
point of water was 50° below zero, and another that the 
boiHng point was fixed by filling a thermometer tube with 
boiling mercury ! What are yom' Colleges of Surgeons about ? 
Some of their licentiates are consummate ignoramuses. 
Nevertheless he was convinced of the value of Botany in 
medical education, writing to Henslow in 1855 : 
I wish very much you could afford half an hour to think 
over the subject of ' Botany as a branch of education and 
a means of mental culture specially adapted to the early 
education of Medical men,' and send me a few notions on 
the subject. I am preparing a notice of the mode of con- 
ducting the Botanical Examinations for the E.I.C., and 
w^ant to drive it into the heads of Medical men and students ; 
that it is not with the hope that the Botanical knowledge 
obtained will ever be of the slightest direct advantage to 
the man in practice that it should be taught, but because 
a right elementary knowledge is necessary to the right 
understanding of the Pharmacopoeia, Hygiene, therapeutics, 
Mat. Med., etc., and especially because the mental training 
of a good elementary Botanical or Nat. Hist, course is the 
best means of becoming skilful in diagnosis of diseases and 
of developing his ideas. I am, however, a bad hand at 
expressing my ideas in mental philosophy and yet would 
like to do it properly. 
Thus he was the more bent upon estabUshing good scientific 
teaching and reasonable examinations. He is consulted by 
Henslow^ in 1855 as to the papers the latter is setting in the 
Tripos at Cambridge, and later by Harvey on the corresponding 
papers set at Dubhn. In querying various points he says 
to Henslow (March 15) : ' I am no scholar, but sometimes 
do instinctively sniff out a clumsy expression, and in this case 
certainly did not know a good one.' In another case, criticising 
the wording of a sentence, ' I do not doubt you mean right, 
but it appeared very wrong on the paper.' He also urges 
Henslow not to use a descriptive term which had already 
failed to win general acceptance among botanists. 
