be a love of children? This, at all events, was a prime qualification of Prof. Henslow. His biographer says: "He had a playful way with children, which won their affections, as well as their attention to what he was teaching them, and which was one secret of their success. He would always speak kindly to them, and encourage them in their different little ways. All who competed for the wild-flower nosegay prizes, though they did not succeed in getting a prize, were allowed a pinch of 'white snuff,' as he jokingly called it, or sugar-plums. He generally had a snuffbox full of these sugar-plums in his pocket when he went into the village, offering a pinch to any of the little children whom he happened to meet." Of course, his botanical pupils were all volunteers. They entered with spirit into their work, took it home with them, pursued it in their rambles, recurred to it in hours of play, compared notes among themselves, and needed no "compulsion." How eager was their delight, was shown by their grief whenever the lessons were interrupted. In a public address, Prof. Henslow said: "No one who had heard the lamentations uttered upon my announcing, at our last lesson before Easter, the necessity of six weeks' absence at Cambridge duties, could possibly have doubted the great interest the children took in these exercises."
As to the educational value of this teaching, although it occupied but a small fraction of regular school-time, it was of the highest importance. It was not merely that the children got a knowledge of botany, but that they mastered its rudiments in such a way as to gain the most important intellectual benefits. There is plenty of unmistakable evidence upon this point; we have space only for an extract from the cautious statement of one of her Majesty's inspectors of schools, who says: "That the botanical lessons, as handled by the professor in his own national school, did draw largely upon the intelligent powers of his little pupils' minds, there can be no question. The simple system to which he had reduced his plan of making the children break up the various specimens into their component parts, arrange those parts, observe their characters and relations to each other, and thence arrive at conclusions for themselves, was very far from being the mechanical process which many, before witnessing it, might have supposed 'botany in the national schools' to represent. And I think it is not at all unfair to say that these children, who, out of school, were (as I had many opportunities of judging) much more conversable than the generality of children in rural parishes, owed a considerable share of the general development of their minds to the botanical lessons and the self-exercise connected with them."
Prof. Henslow's method of teaching botany to the young was one of his great successes, and is a permanent contribution to education. He commenced a little book embodying the plan, but did not live to finish it; and he got along with printed lists, forms, and schedules, all being directed by his lectures and by his constant supervision of
