132 THE TEACHING BOTANIST 



vidual student. Such books were formerly all-impor- 

 tant and all-sufficient in botanical education. With 

 the rise of the laboratory method of instruction they 

 fell into disfavor, and many teachers attempted to teach 

 without them or with the aid only of laboratory guides, 

 on the ground that the student should learn only from 

 nature. Experience, however, is showing that labora- 

 tory study, while absolutely essential for the training of 

 natural powers and the correct understanding of natural 

 facts and phenomena, is, nevertheless, not alone suffi- 

 cient ; for, dealing as it necessarily does, even at its best, 

 with a few selected types, the view it gives of the sub- 

 ject is more or less disconnected and incomplete, the 

 more especially since many topics of the greatest im- 

 portance cannot for practical reasons be introduced into 

 the laboratory at all. Of course, instruction by lectures, 

 or talks by the teacher, partly overcomes these draw- 

 backs ; but I, in common with other teachers, have 

 found after trial of different plans that it is an immense 

 advantage to the students to have some good book to 

 which they can turn for additional information, and for 

 correcting the many errors and distortions that inev- 

 itably arise from lectures and laboratory work alone. 

 It is well to require students to read such a book with 

 great care. It does not matter whether or not the book 

 follows the same course as the teacher's instruction, 

 though the more nearly they correspond the better. 

 This book should be a text-book in the true sense, a 



