INTRODUCTION 



IT is plain to all who read the signs of the times that 

 we in these days are seeing the beginning of a great 

 movement toward the introduction of the Sciences into 

 general Education. The chief obstacle to their rapid 

 utilization, however, next to the conservatism of educa- 

 tional bodies, is the widespread ignorance of how to 

 use them economically. In their modern form they 

 are too new, and their advance has been too rapid, to 

 let them grow gradually into the framework of our 

 educational system, and they are forcing themselves in 

 upon it from the outside. It becomes, therefore, a 

 problem, and a difficult one, how best to assimilate 

 them with what is already there, and as well how to 

 present them in their optimum value and with the 

 greatest possible economy. This book is an attempt 

 to face squarely these issues for the Science of Botany. 



From the point of view of general Education, the 

 subject is not so vast as it seems. It has nothing to do 

 with the special study of particular phases of the Sci- 

 ence as followed in the universities, and only indirectly 

 anything to do with that use of Plants and their phe- 

 nomena which, as a part of Nature Study, is coming 



B I 



