Part 28

It may be asked by cynics, "What can be the use of teaching science to such children?" It is not the mere fact that a child knows the structure of a rose, but it is the training in accuracy of observation, mind and habit, which the minute and close observation demands, i.e. if it be properly taught, and to secure that, is all important in children, who are naturally inattentive and inaccurate in consequence. In teaching them botany as described above, the child is trained to avoid this bad habit in an interesting way, because inattention is solely due to want of interest.

The Ipswich Museum was a great source of pleasure to him. As President he carried out his plan of making it a "typical" museum, never letting it degenerate into a mere show, as so many country museums are, or at least used to be.

The Ipswich Museum has been a model for all others in that typical series of fossils, etc., are exhibited in the visible cases, all others being relegated to drawers, for students to examine. In allusion to the uses of Museums in his inaugural address referred to above, he remarked:--"Our collections should be viewed as the means of assisting us in the acquisition of real knowledge, and not merely to be gazed at as raree shows, or as only valuable in proportion to the number or scarcity of the objects they contain."

Of course, periodical lectures were delivered by the Professor at Ipswich, and he was a most lucid and admirable exponent.

He was the first to maintain that in museums of animals, they should, whenever possible, as, e.g. with birds, be represented in their natural conditions. With this object he collected nests with the boughs, or whatever it was in which they rested. Since then this plan has been admirably carried out at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. He also supplied several museums with wasps' and hornets' nests with their surroundings. The plan he discovered most convenient for taking them, was to saturate tow with spirits of turpentine and place it at night in the hole, covered over with an inverted and corked flower-pot. The nest could then be dug up with impunity, as all the wasps were dead or torpid by the following morning. He always preserved the "pavement" or bottom-soil covered with stones which accumulated as the hollow for the nest increased in size. The nest was then suspended over it on rods to show the exact position. It was also half-dissected, to exhibit the interior, all the grubs having been carefully extracted. The village carpenter, the late Mr W. Baker, was a most enthusiastic assistant in taking and mounting the specimens.

When the potato famine occurred in Ireland in 1845-46, the disease was very prevalent in Hitcham. This induced the Professor to explain to his parishioners and others--for he published his recommendations--how they could utilise their rotten potatoes by extracting the valuable starch, which still remained sound within the tubers, even when these were refused by pigs. The process is so simple that it may be mentioned here. The potatoes must be grated (a piece of tin with holes punched through it will do); the pulp is then stirred with a stream of cold water through a hair-sieve. The brown water must be allowed a few minutes for the starch, carried through, to settle. The water is poured off, and the layer of starch must be stirred up and washed with fresh cold water. This may be done two or three times, till it becomes perfectly white. It must then be carefully dried in the sun or in a warm room (our method was to hang it up in small muslin bags in the kitchen); the bags must be repeatedly "kneaded" to prevent its clotting. When perfectly dry, it will keep for any length of time. Of course, it is precisely the same thing as sago, tapioca, cornflour, arrowroot, etc. and can be used like them. All our potatoes in the Rectory garden were rotten, but we recovered at least two sacks of starch. I remember taking a large sponge-cake to school, more or less made with this potato-flour, and making my reverend master somewhat incredulous by telling him it was made out of rotten potatoes!

Professor Henslow printed and circulated the receipt for the extraction of starch, in the village; so that several, who thought it worth while, obtained considerable quantities of starch.

In one of his lectures, dealing with this subject, he pointed out how a good basin of "arrowroot" can be made in ten minutes from two or three fair-sized potatoes; for as soon as the starch has been thoroughly "washed," it is ready for the boiling milk. It is essential the milk or water should be actually boiling, or the granules of starch do not burst and so make the required "jelly."

The school children of Hitcham were by no means left out in the cold as to the knowledge of natural phenomena. They were early instructed as to the harmless nature of toads and slow-worms, which were very abundant, on the one hand; and of the danger of handling a viper, on the other. This last is the only poisonous reptile in England, and easily recognisable by the lozenge-shaped marks down the back. Having specimens in spirit, they had no excuse for confounding them; but, as always happens with children, if there is an alternative of any sort between which they are well taught the difference, some one is sure to get them transposed in his memory. Consequently, a boy came up to the Rectory with his arm greatly swollen; he had been bitten by a viper which he had taken up, thinking it was a slow-worm, because, as he said, it had the marks along its back!

Besides the tiny harvest mice, he at one time possessed for some two or three years two "pet" Jersey toads, or the great crapaud. They were kept in a wire-gauze cage, and it was our delight as children to feed these monsters every morning. A butterfly net swept over the lawn was sure to secure all sorts of flying and jumping creatures. The lid of the cage being lifted up, the net was turned inside out over the toads, and quickly closed. Then began the matutinal breakfast. They would never notice anything that did not move. Seeing, however, say a grasshopper, stir, the toad would stalk it like a cat after a bird; and when within tongue-shot, out came its long tongue like a flash of lightning, and the grasshopper vanished in the flash. Worms were a great delight. Snapping up one in the middle, the two ends were carefully cleaned from earth by passing them between the toes two or three times; then followed a mighty gulp, and all was over.

Shell-traps were always laid about the grass, consisting of slates, under which there would generally be found a various crop of sorts. I have now two glass cases containing all the shells, land and fresh-water, of Hitcham, mounted by the Professor himself. A reward was offered for every specimen of a Helix with the shell reversed. They are very rare, but one was brought by a little boy who discovered it, for he found he was unable to get his thumb into the opening the right way when playing at "conquerors." So he got the only sixpence earned in twenty-three years that the Professor was incumbent of Hitcham. The collection of butterflies was always being added to; now and then a rare one would appear at Hitcham, as, e.g. the Camberwell Beauty. The Professor was walking in the Rectory garden with the late Judge Eagle, of Bury St Edmunds, when one settled on a wall. Mr Eagle stood sentry while the Professor ran indoors for his net. It need hardly be added that the specimen still rests in the collection, which passed into the possession of his son-in-law, the late Sir J. D. Hooker, F.R.S., etc.

I cannot do better than conclude with my uncle's words at the end of his Memoir:--"When a good man dies the world does not cease to benefit from those labours of love which he undertook for his fellow men. Though personally removed from them his example remains; his voice too, is still heard in the lessons left to be handed down to those who come after him. The influences of Professor Henslow's teaching have been felt in other places than those in which he himself taught, they have borne fruit far beyond the obscure neighbourhood in which he first sowed the good seed, and who shall say to what further results they may not grow in years to come, bringing honour to his memory, and what is far more, glory to God? ''A word spoken in due season, how good is it!'"

FOOTNOTES:

Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., F.C.P.S. (J. Van Voorst, 1862).

Memoir, pp. 17 ff.

Memoir, p. 29.

Such are the "Conditions of Life," upon the "Direct Action," of which Darwin lays so much stress, as resulting in "Definite Variations ... without the aid of selection." (Var. of An. and Pl. under Dom. II. p. 271 ff.; Origin etc. 6th ed. p. 106, etc.)

Quoted in Memoir, p. 161.

On enquiring at Rothamstead, Mr Hall has kindly informed me that a "good deal of attention was given in Germany to this and other possible materials for the conservation of the nitrogen; but the general result was adverse to their employment."

A misnomer, as the coralloid organisms are Bryozoa.

In his printed Report on the Diseases of Wheat, written for private circulation only, he has added in MS.--"In specimens of true mildew, the three forms--Uredo rubigo, U. lincaris and Puccinia graminis, coexist simultaneously in the same sori, as well as numerous intermediate forms, which establish the specific identity of these fungi." U. rubigo-vera is now regarded as a form of Puccinia rubigo-vera and Æcidium asperifolii.

From the Professor's display of the methods he adopted of teaching Botany in schools, now in the South Kensington Museum, and Prof. D. Oliver's Lessons, etc. based on MS. left unfinished at my father's death, the floral schedule has been adopted in schools, not only all through the British Isles, but the Colonies as well.

A more complete account will be found in Jenyns' Memoir.

JOHN LINDLEY

1799-1865

BY FREDERICK KEEBLE

Rise of Systematic Botany--Lindley's place--early history--services to Horticulture--Professor at University College, London--The Gardeners' Chronicle--Theory and Practice of Horticulture--The Vegetable Kingdom--Orchids--his interest in Fossil Botany--personal characteristics.

Introduction.