took these home for further examination. An interesting event in these half-hours was the professor calling upon such students as volunteered for being examined, to demonstrate the structure of a plant or fruit placed in the hands of the whole class for this purpose. The lectures were illustrated by blackboard drawings, probably these were a special feature in the hands of so experienced an artist as he, and also by large coloured drawings, chiefly of medicinal plants, which were hung on the walls. Another feature, which happily still survives, was the collection of lithographed illustrations of the organs of plants, a copy of which was placed before every two students. The first edition of these drawings appears to have been by his own hand. But in 1837 a thin quarto volume of Botanical Illustrations was produced, "being a series of above a thousand figures, selected from the best sources, designed to explain the terms employed in a course of Lectures on Botany." The plates were executed by Walter Fitch, who was originally a pattern-drawer in a calico-printing establishment, and entered the service of Sir William in 1834. This great botanical artist continued to assist Sir William till the death of the latter, and himself died at Kew in 1892. A number of copies of this early work of Fitch remain to the present day in the Botanical Department in Glasgow.
Other branches, however, besides Descriptive Organography were taken up. Naturally the plants of medicinal value figured largely in the course, which was primarily for medical students. Illustrative specimens, of which Sir William gathered a large collection, were handed round for inspection. These, together with other objects of economic interest finally made their way to Kew, and were embodied in the great collections of the Kew Museums. The branch of anatomy of the plant-tissues was not neglected. Of this he wrote at the time of taking up the duties of the chair, "it is a subject to which I have never attended, and authors are so much at variance as to their opinions, and on the facts too, that I really do not know whom to follow." He continues with a remark which is singularly like what one might have heard in the early seventies, just before the revival of the laboratory study of plants in this country. He remarked that "Mirbel has seen what nobody else can: so nobody contradicts
