The Teaching of Science in Cambridge

This volume contains five pamphlets which illustrate the world in which Charles Darwin moved in Cambridge, and the slow development of life and earth sciences as subjects of academic study. (Darwin himself was officially following a course of study which would fit him to become an Anglican parson). The first pamphlet (from 1821) is a proposed series of lectures on geology by Adam Sedgwick, who taught Darwin the rudiments of the subject during a tour of north Wales. The next two are botany courses proposed by John Stevens Henslow, the mentor and close friend who first suggested that Darwin should go as naturalist on the Beagle voyage. Henslow read extracts of Darwin's letters to him to a meeting of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and published them at his own expense (the fourth pamphlet). The final pamphlet is an impassioned plea from Henslow for support for a new University Botanic Garden.