had held the professorship for sixty-three years, and was a very old man. In fact, there had been no lectures on botany given in Cambridge for at least thirty years. Prof. Henslow took hold of the work with great zeal, improved the Botanical Gardens, rearranged and extended the Botanical Museum, and established one of the most perfect collections of plants to be anywhere found. He made his lectures extremely interesting by always having large numbers of specimens on hand which the students were required to study directly. He often took his class on botanizing excursions, which tended greatly to rouse their interest in the subject. Entomologists and mineralogists often accompanied them, and Prof. Henslow's extensive acquaintance with all branches of natural history, and the delight he took in imparting information to all who sought it, served to kindle an enthusiasm which aided very much to raise the position of science in the university.
Prof. Henslow married in 1823. His parents had always been desirous that he should go into the Church, and, as the salary from his professorship was less than a thousand dollars a year, and insufficient to support his family, he took orders and accepted a curacy which yielded him some additional income. His engaging manners and sympathetic disposition, combined with his intellectual accomplishments, gave him great influence over the students, which was felt not only in directing their tastes and pursuits, but in the formation of character. As soon as he became settled in Cambridge as a married man, he instituted the practice of receiving at his own house, one evening in the week, all who took the slightest interest in scientific, and especially natural history studies. At these gatherings all might learn something, and every one went away pleased. He would seek out any of the students that were reported to him as attached to natural history, and made converts to his favorite science of not a few who were thrown accidentally in his way. If any young man through timidity or reserve shrank from going to the professor's house, the open-hearted welcome which he received soon inspired confidence and put him at his ease. There are many now among the first naturalists of England who were then students at Cambridge, and who gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and assistance they received from Prof. Henslow, and bear testimony to his rare excellences, both of head and heart. Among these is the now world-renowned naturalist Mr. Charles Darwin, who furnished to Prof. Henslow's biographer the following reminiscences, which will interest the reader as well on account of the writer as of their subject. Mr. Darwin says:
find that natural history is discouraged as much as possible, and regarded as idle trifling by the thousand-and-one mathematicians of that venerated university." It was a life-long struggle of Prof. Henslow to raise natural history to a coördinate place with other subjects of university study, and it was but a short time before his death, in 1861, that he saw the triumph of his efforts. Degrees were then first granted to those who had obtained "honors" in natural history studies.
