402 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 
a visit to Oswald Heer ^ at Ziiricb and heard him lecture to 
his pupils. 
All I can say [he tells Bentham] is that if he is a type of 
the old school of German Bot. teachers, I do not wonder at 
the Physiologico-Microscopists, Okeno-Schleidenists, carry- 
ing the day ; for any more dull and dreary exposition of 
Genera and species I never heard, with no specimens in 
students' hands, none in the lectui'er's, no diagi'ams, no 
pictures, no nothing. It opened my eyes to the real facts 
of the great battle between the systematists and Physio- 
logists. 
The great change m English botanical teaching, when it 
came at last, took shape under Huxley's inspiration. He it 
was who revolutionised biological teaching in 1872, making 
his students study the chief types of animal life not merely 
through lectures and books and specimens prepared by other 
hands, but from their own observation and dissection of 
the actual objects, under the guidance of himself and his 
enthusiastic lieutenants, Michael Foster ^ and Eutherford and 
Eay Lankester. From animal to vegetable biology was but 
a step. While Huxley was away ill in 1873, a similar course 
in botany was instituted with equal enthusiasm by another 
^ Oswald Heer (1809-83), Swiss investigator of fossil plants and insects. 
Educated at the University of Halle, ordained minister 1831. He went to 
Ziirich in 1 832 and lived all his life there. He studied medicine, but soon devoted 
himself to botany and entomology. In 1834 he became Privat-docent and 
was the first Professor of Botany at Zurich 1852, and in 1855 the Polytechnicum 
there. His first publications were on fossil entomology, 1847 and 1853; and his 
first paleo-botanical paper in 1851, He passed the winter of 1854-5 in Madeira. 
His Urwelt der Schweiz was published in 1865 and his Flora Fossilis Helvetiae 
in 1877. 
2 Sir Michael Foster, M.D. (1836-1907), the physiologist, after a brilliant 
career at London University, was for some years in practice \\dth his father at 
Huntingdon. His career as a teacher of physiology began in 1867 as prelector, 
1869, professor at University College, London, and Fullerian professor at the 
Royal Institution. In 1870, after acting as Huxley's assistant, he migrated to 
Cambridge, first as prelector at Trinity College, then 1883-1903 as professor in 
the chair founded for him by the university. He became F.R.S. 1872, and 
biological secretary R.S. 1881-1903; President of the British Association and 
K.C.B. 1899 ; M.P. for London University 1900-6. A close friend of Huxley, 
he carried forward his method of teaching, and edited his Scientific Memoirs^ 
1901. His chief works were a Textbook of Physiology and his Lectures on the 
History of Physiology. He was the joint author oi Elements of Physiology and 
of Embryology. 
