140 
SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
and, most admirable though I can from my own experience 
attest it to have been both in matter and in method, it 
cannot be stated to have fairly included representatives of the 
vegetable kingdom. Now in Cambridge this did not act 
altogether disadvantageously, since Botany was there taught 
as a subject by itself by specialists of renown, who were able 
by their own force of character and inherent ability to hold 
their own. But what its effect would be in the country at 
large, and in the formation of the new local colleges, would 
not need the eye of a major prophet to determine. 
Before 1870, two great metropolitan colleges, those of 
University and King’s, and one provincial college, Owens at 
Manchester, were in existence, and at these the old distribution 
of the teaching power, modified by the improved nature of 
the teaching, naturally persisted. But what occurred in 
Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Notting¬ 
ham, and Sheffield, where colleges of the university type one by 
one came into existence ? In each of these, under the name 
either of Biology or of Natural History, a chair was founded, 
the primary teaching of which was to be “ Biology,” with, in 
the case of Nottingham, Geology thrown in. Of these seven 
professorships two were filled by geologists, the other five 
were occupied by zoologists. Thus Biology, instead of being 
a fair representative of the two sides of life, came, and from 
a natural sequence of events, to be looked upon as an 
appanage to Zoology. In some cases a demonstrator was 
appointed, and it is fair to assume, though this is difficult to 
verify, that he was in such cases appointed for Ins botanical 
qualifications. Now this could not fail to react upon the 
quality of the teaching; primarily, no doubt, causing the 
botanical side of Biology to be treated in the most perfunctory 
manner, for teachers are not all Huxleys and Fosters, and 
even they, as we have seen, were not free from this; and 
secondarily, by having their teaching energy frittered away in 
teaching subjects with which it is no injustice to them to say 
they were not familiarised, the interests of Zoology itself 
would come to suffer. Some colleges have not been slow to 
recognise this. Mason College, Birmingham, divided the 
chair into two of equivalent importance in less than two 
years after its opening; in 1886 Liverpool raised its 
demonstrator of Botany to the rank of a lecturer; while 
University College, Bristol, which, up to 1887, had had a 
professor of Zoology and a lecturer in Botany, in that year, 
as is stated in the calendar, “In consequence of the new 
regulations for the Intermediate Examinations in Science of 
the University of London ; by which Botany is raised to 
