Though he wrote against _mere_ collecting, he was an insatiable collector himself; but it was always with some definite, useful and generally educational purpose, and the _best_ of his collections invariably went to museums, especially those of the Philosophical Society of Cambridge, of Kew and of Ipswich. The first still has the fishes he collected at Weymouth in 1832, solely for his brother-in-law L. Jenyns, the author of _The British Vertebrate Animals_.
One of the first things to which his attention was directed was the Cambridge Botanic Garden. It was far too small and in the centre of the town, where the scientific buildings are now erected. He urged the necessity of a new one, but it was not till 1831 that the present site was secured; the first tree, however, was not planted until 1846.
His educational method of teaching was totally different from the mere instructional method of all previous lecturers. To cram up facts was the students' duty in the Medical schools, where botany was supposed to be taught. To learn by their own discovery was his new method, and so each student educated himself by examining and recording plant structures first seen by his own dissections. Having long been in the habit of observing himself, he was early convinced of the importance of practical work and he always had "demonstrations," as he called them, from living specimens. Each member of the class had a round wooden plate for dissecting upon. He had only sixteen lectures to give, but he succeeded in arousing an enthusiasm in some, and interest in all who attended, and thus many came besides undergraduates, as Dr Ainslie, the Master of Pembroke.
The value of "practical work" put a stop to cram, and he was the first to introduce the examination of flowers, not only at Cambridge but for the degrees in the University of London. "He insisted," wrote Dr Hooker, "that a knowledge of physiological botany, technical terms, minute anatomy, &c. were not subjects by which a candidate's real knowledge could be tested, for the longest memory must win the day, the less did it test the observing or reasoning faculties of the men. He, therefore, insisted in all his examinations that the men should dissect specimens, describe their organs systematically and be prepared to explain their relations, uses and significations in a physiological and classificatory point of view; and thus prove that they had used their eyes, hands and heads, as well as their books[100]."
