PREFACE 



IT may appear at first sight that the title of this 

 work is of wider scope than its contents. Addressed 

 broadly to the teaching botanist, and professing to serve 

 as a manual of information upon botanical instruction, 

 it nevertheless deals chiefly with one phase of botanical 

 teaching ; namely, with its elementary presentation as a 

 science. Yet in this it represents the actual condition 

 of the problems in botanical teaching at the present 

 day. On the one hand, our university and advanced 

 college teaching, carried on as investigation or in that 

 spirit, represents a well-nigh ideal relation of teacher to 

 student ; and on the other, the botanical part of nature 

 study in the lower schools has hardly yet begun to 

 attract the attention it deserves. It is just between 

 these two, between advanced college and lower school 

 work, that is, in elementary courses in Botany treated 

 as a science, whether in high school or college, that the 

 present problems lie. Here is the real centre of discus- 

 sion, effort, and advance in botanical teaching to-day. 



This part of botanical teaching is now in a state 

 of wonderfully rapid expansion and transition. Three 

 causes are contributing to this result : first, the natural 

 reaction from its former extreme backwardness ; second, 

 a widening recognition of the value of the sciences, of 

 which Botany is a leading one, in general education; 



