Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/169

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A SCIENTIFIC HOME MISSIONARY.
159

it is contingent, it originates, it is modified, through circumstances, aided by time, and through ages helped by scarcely-perceptible accidents. In its turn, it insensibly leads the organs to become perfect in the direction conformed to the use made of them by the animal. Regarded in this way, connected in the last analysis with other first properties from which it results, instinct, instead of baffling investigation by the human mind, as they do, becomes a possible and proper object of research by experimental science. It is a new horizon opening before the physiologist for the discovery of the laws of life.—Revue des Deux Mondes.

Professor Henslow.

A SCIENTIFIC HOME MISSIONARY.[1]

JOHN STEPHENS HENSLOW is described as having been a beautiful boy with brown curling hair, a fine straight nose, a brilliant complexion, soft eyes, and a smile that reached everybody's

  1. The subject of the present sketch, who became an eminent clergyman, botanical professor, and scientific philanthropist, was born in Kent, England, in 1796. For the principal facts of the present article we are indebted to his biography by Rev. Leonard Jenyns, Henslow's brother-in-law, published by Van Voorst, of London, and we have made free use of his statements.—Ed.