390 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 
they ought to know practically and well, and of so conducting 
the examination in Physiology (when you take that as a 
change) that it shall include Morphology and the Natural 
Orders. Do stick to the motive that Botany is a knowledge 
of 'plants and do not budge one inch from that. I am quite 
convinced that one of the greatest evils done to science is 
the fashion of making men learn soleh^ or chiefly matters 
of which they can have no practical knowledge : their 
education is thus a forced one, the honors they get are not 
for the kind or amount of knowledge which enables them 
to make their way on afterwards, and they have been thus 
led to form a low estimate of the only useful branches, and 
they do not like to hark back upon these afterwards ; and are 
deterred from going on with the science for ever after. The 
whole subject of education in Science is being better appre- 
ciated now that the German school is falling into disrepute.^ 
The writing of good handbooks was as essential to the 
progress of Botany as the elaboration of a satisfactory system 
of lecturing. 
Bentham's ' Handbook to the Flora of the British Isles ' 
(published 1858) was a great step in advance, and a letter 
to the author while stiU at work upon it strikes a confident 
note (February 16, 1854) : 
I am rejoiced at the progress of the British Flora, and 
regard its appearance as a new era to British Botany. The 
pubhc are really prepared for a change radical and complete. 
Your Flora must appear as a Precursor. I shall keep your 
letter in the hope that you will work out such remarks as 
you embody in it for a good sound introduction to the book. 
After all it is doing far more good to pubhsh a Flora that will 
set people on the right way to know plants for themselves 
than one which aims to tell them everything about them. 
I would announce boldly my aim as the desire to put people 
on the right track and not to supply them ^Adth what they 
ought to find out for themselves. 
Next came Henslow's work in elementary teaching of 
botany. John Stevens Henslow, who was born in 1796, 
and was therefore eleven years junior to Sir WilHam Hooker, 
1 Compare the reference to Heer's lectures; p. 402. 
