In those days, I am speaking of the "fifties," Darwin had not enlightened us as to the wonderful adaptations of flowers for fertilization by insects. This adds enormously to the interest of the study—as the present writer soon found with village children of the parishes in which he has lived, and taught them botany—but even without that attraction the Hitcham children were intensely enthusiastic.
The Professor also taught them how to dry plants. The village Herbarium, containing all the plants growing wild in Hitcham, was entirely made by them.
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."