endeavoured, by every means in my power, to advance this peaceful study, it is because, in my opinion, it is more capable than any other of supplying that want of occupation which has so largely contributed to the troubles of our age.'

EVIDENCE OF DR. JOSEPH HOOKER.

2. I believe you are a Fellow of the Royal Society, AssistantDirector of the Botanical Gardens at Kew, and the author of "Travels in the Himalaya" ?-A. Yes.

2. From your experience, and the means of observation you have had, have you formed any opinion as to the state of knowledge in natural and physical science, with respect to the education of the upper and middle classes, as it exists at present?-A. At Kew, we are thrown into contact with persons belonging to the middle. and upper classes in very large numbers; and I think the regret that they know nothing of botany is quite apparent in all their communications with us. Hardly a day passes but what we receive communications from some part of the world in which such regret is expressed.

Q. What is the nature of the communications into which you are brought with these classes at Kew?-A. Most prominently now with regard to vegetable fibres. Sometimes two or three letters a day come to us requiring information with regard to wellknown fibres, which the slightest habit of observation, or the slightest knowledge, would assure the persons who send them that they cannot, in any way, be used for cotton.

Q. Then these have been comparatively recent communications? -A. No: they have gone on for the last twenty years of my father's experience, and the last ten years of my own; not so much formerly with regard to cotton fibre for the use of yarns as for making paper, and for many other purposes to which cotton is applied.

Q. In fact, you say, that the upper and middle classes in this country are in the habit of constantly consulting either your father or yourself at Kew? A. Yes, both officially and unofficially. Q. And both the subjects upon which they wish to have knowledge, and their mode of inquiry, lead you to think that they are in a state of great ignorance?—A. Yes. Q. That that study in particular has been greatly neglected by those classes ?-A. Yery greatly. Q. And they have generally expressed their regret that it has been so neglected?—A. Universally, I may say. 2. You have probably considered that the neglect of this important study is a matter of national regret ?-A. I have always thought so.

2. Have you ever turned your attention at all to the possibility of teaching botany to boys in classes at school?—Â. I have thought that it might be done very easily; that this deficiency might be easily remedied. Q. What are your ideas on the subject? -A. My own ideas are chiefly drawn from the experience of my

father-in-law, the late Professor Henslow, Professor of Botany at Cambridge. He introduced botany into one of the lowest possible class of schools,—that of village labourers' children in a remote part of Suffolk.

2. Perhaps you will have the goodness to tell us the system he pursued?-A. It was an entirely voluntary system. He offered to enrol the school children in a class to be taught botany once a week. The number of children in the class was limited, I think, to forty-two. As his parish contained only 1,000 inhabitants, there never were, I suppose, the full forty-two children in the class; their ages varied from about eight years old to about fourteen or fifteen. The class mostly consisted of girls. He required, that, before they were enrolled in the class, they should be able to spell a few elementary botanical terms, including some of the most difficult to spell, and those that were the most essential to begin with. Those who brought proof that they could do this were put into the third class; then they were taught once a week, by himself generally, for an hour or an hour and a half, sometimes for two hours (for they were exceedingly fond of it).

2. Did he use to take them out in the country, or was it simply lessons in the school?-A. He left them to collect for themselves; but he visited his parish daily, when the children used to come up to him, and bring the plants they had collected; so that the lessons went on all the week round. There was only one day in the week on which definite instruction was given to the class; but on Sunday afternoon he used to allow the senior class, and those who got marks at the examinations, to attend at his house.

Q. Did he find any difficulty in teaching this subject in class ?A. None whatever; less than he would have had in dealing with almost any other subject.

Q. Do you know in what way he taught it? did he illustrate it? A. Invariably: he made it practical. He made it an objective study. The children were taught to know the plants, and to pull them to pieces; to give their proper names to the parts; to indicate the relations of the parts to one another; and to find out the relation of one plant to another by the knowledge thus obtained.

2. They were children, you say, generally from eight to twelve? -A. Yes, and up to fourteen. Q. And they learnt it readily ?—A. Readily and voluntarily, entirely. Q. And were interested in it ?— A. Extremely interested in it. They were exceedingly fond of it.

Q. Do you happen to know whether Professor Henslow thought that the study of botany. developed the faculties of the mind,--that it taught these children to think? and do you know whether he perceived any improvement in their mental faculties from that?— A. Yes he used to think it was the most important agent that could be employed for cultivating their faculties of observation, and for strengthening their reasoning powers.

Q. He really thought that he had arrived at a practical result?--A. Undoubtedly; and so did every one who visited the school or

the parish. 2. They were children of quite the lower class ?—A. The labouring agricultural class. Q. And in other branches receiving the most elementary instruction ?-A. Yes.

2. And Professor Henslow thought that their minds were more developed; that they were become more reasoning beings, from having this study superadded to the others?-A. Most decidedly. It was also the opinion of some of the inspectors of schools, who came to visit him, that such children were in general more intelligent than those of other parishes; and they attribute the difference to their observant and reasoning faculties being thus developed.

2. So that the intellectual success of this objective study was beyond question?-A. Beyond question. . . . In conducting the examinations of medical men for the army, which I have now conducted for several years, and those for the East-India Company's service, which I have conducted for, I think, seven years, the questions which I am in the habit of putting, and which are not answered by the majority of the candidates, are what would have been answered by the children in Professor Henslow's village school. I believe the chief reason to be, that these students' observing faculties, as children, had never been trained, such faculties having lain dormant with those who naturally possessed them in a high degree; and having never been developed, by training, in those who possessed them in a low degree. In most medical schools, the whole sum and substance of botanical science is crammed into a few weeks of lectures, and the men leave the class without having acquired an accurate knowledge of the merest elements of the science.

Q. At the High School in Glasgow, did you observe among the boys a difference of aptitude for the three branches of languages, mathematics, and the sciences of observation ?-A. Very great.

Q. A boy who distinguishes himself in classics might have an inaptitude for mathematics and natural science, and vice versâ ?— A. Yes. One of my own classmates was a dull boy in the High School, where mathematics were not then taught, except in the senior class, which I did not attend. He was the best mathematician of his year at the University afterwards.

Q. Do you not think that it is very undesirable that a boy at school, having faculties of a particular kind, should have them wholly neglected? Take the example of a boy who has really an aptitude for the natural sciences; do you not think it a very hard case that his faculties should be wholly neglected?-A. I think it is very hard. Nothing is more destructive to his whole education. Q. Supposing that a boy happened not to have a turn for languages, his place in school would be very low down. Would it not have an injurious moral effect habitually for him to be regarded as stupid, because he had no talent for languages?—A. Yes.

Q. It would have a tendency to impair his self-respect? A. Yes. 2. The same boy, if he had an opportunity of cultivating his faculties in the natural sciences, and using his abilities there, would

be likely to become a much more useful member of society?— A. Yes, much more....

2. The majority of the young men who are intended for the medical profession, and who come from the various public schools of the country, scarcely ever bring with them iny physical science, do they?-A. None whatever, or very rarely.

2. As far as your observation goes, that is generally neglected in your profession?-A. Yes; and it is a want more felt by medical men than by any others. The amount of botany and chemistry required by the medical man might be as easily obtained at school as during the time he is undergoing his medical curriculum.

Q. I suppose you have found a sentiment of regret prevailing amongst them at the manner in which those valuable years of their lives had been employed?-A. Very generally.

Q. And they would have liked to have spent them differently? A. Yes, to a great extent. I never knew them regret their classics and mathematics; quite the contrary: but they do regret very much that their faculties were not early trained to habits of observation. When they go round the hospitals, they have felt that they have not been taught to observe, and to reason upon what they observe, as they might have been.

Q. Do you think there is a general feeling amongst those men, that the study of physical science might have been added to the classics, without impairing that knowledge which they would be glad to have acquired?—A. That was the universal feeling.

THE END.