INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 65 



strange that the student to whom this is the ultimatum 

 should be sometimes thought lightly of, and his attainments 

 regarded as of little value. The question of time, however, 

 precludes the addition of other subjects to this, if anything 

 ITke proficiency in any of them is desired, as it should be in 

 any course that is worthy of being taught. 



Within a generation a younger school of botanists — 

 younger, but already with graying locks — has sought to 

 avoid the faults of their predecessors by a very different 

 plan of work. So far as the English-speaking world is con- 

 cerned, this school may be said to date from the organiza- 

 tion of the South Kensington courses, under the direction 

 of Professor Huxley. Instead of devoting his time to a 

 class-room study of the theoretical organography of plants, 

 supplemented by the examination, in the laboratory, of the 

 more obvious characters that can be made out by the naked 

 eye or with the aid of a hand lens, the student is initiated 

 at once into the mysteries of the compound microscope, 

 and learns at the start that the yeast we use to raise our 

 bread and the bacteria that swarm in turned broth, are 

 plants. His ideas of the limits of botany are, of necessity, 

 broadened. He is successively carried through the study 

 of representatives of the principal groups of the Vegetable 

 Kingdom, seeing with his own eyes and recording by de- 

 tailed description and faithful drawings, not only their ex- 

 ternal characters, but their minute structure. He learns at 

 once how to use the microscope and how to prepare objects 

 for microscopic examination ; and the simpler experiments 

 for demonstrating the mode of life — the physiology, of 

 each plant studied, are not omitted. 



Let us contrast the students who have respectively fol- 

 lowed these two methods. The first has acquired the use 

 of the penknife, the needle and the pocket magnifier. His 

 notion of the Vegetable Kingdom is restricted ; but when he 

 sees a flowering plant he knows it or can identify it. More 

 than this, he can generally tell what it is good for. He 

 has, as you might say, a speaking acquaintance with nearly 



5 



