392 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 
* Elementary Lessons ' (1863). He also designed a series of 
botanical diagrams, with explanations, for use in the National 
Schools, then under the branch of the Board of Trade known 
later as the Science and Art Department. These diagrams 
were prepared at Kew, and Hooker writes of them to Asa Gray 
(March 29, 1857) : 
Fitch has just completed a most magnificent set of 9 
Elephant -folio plates with illustrations and analysis of 
about 50 Nat. Ords. and genera designed by Henslow, and 
superintended by yom' humble servant. It is done for 
National Schools under Board of Trade. 
These met with skilled appreciation in wider circles also. 
' I find your diagrams,' he tells Henslow, ' gi'eatly admired in 
Dublin. Harvey was copying them out in grand, and they 
had a very good effect ' ; while another letter remarks, ' I like 
your little explanatory book ; it will, I hope, do great execution 
at the schools.' 
In 1858 also : 
I met a Eev. J. T. Graves ^ at Dublin, a Fellow of Trinity 
Coll. Dublin, Mathematician, a man of renown in these parts 
who has been employed by Govt, in enquiring on Endowed 
schools and other Educational matters. He is immensely 
strong on your point of teaching the science of Ohservation 
to all men, especially to the young of all classes, and he has 
reported the same to Govt, in perhaps the very words you 
would have used. 
In formulating this scheme of teaching and condensing 
it from his naturally more diffuse oral style, Henslow gladly 
sought the help and keen criticism of his son-in-law. The 
following letters illustrate Hooker's own sympathy with such 
a plan, his insistence on the need for the pupil's perfect under- 
standing of the ' hard words ' and definitions which form the 
1 John Thomas Graves (1806-70), a great mathematician, whose corres- 
pondence gave stimulus and suggestion to his friend Sir William Rowan 
Hamilton in his discovery of quaternions. Called to the English as well as 
the Irish Bar, he became Professor of Jurisprudence at Ui iversity College, 
London, in 1839, and from 1846 was a Poor-law Inspector for England and 
Wales under the new Poor-law Act. 
