144 THE TEACHING BOTANIST 



high schools because high school students are not 

 mature enough, and cannot think. It is true that many 

 of them do not think, but this is because their think- 

 ing powers are aborted by disuse or crushed to earth by 

 the weight of incessant memory work. But experience 

 shows that, given a fair chance, high school students 

 can think, and are fully able to profit by even the most 

 scientific treatment of the subject. 



These, however, are but minor errors, though it is well 

 for the teacher to be on the watch for them, and to 

 attack them whenever they appear. More serious are 

 the errors of botanical fact and theory current among 

 teachers themselves. Thus, morphology, as commonly 

 taught in our schools, is dominated by a rigid formal- 

 ism, an inheritance from the idealistic system of Goethe, 

 which implies modification within the limits of some 

 distinct plan rather than modification in adaptation to 

 conditions as they exist. It is commonly taught that 

 the higher plant consists of root, stem, and leaf (with, 

 perhaps, also " plant hair "), and that every part of it 

 is composed of some one or more of these, which, like 

 the chemical elements, may be variously combined and 

 united, but retain their identity through it all. This 

 view is a natural one where evidence is drawn from 

 comparative anatomy alone, and most of those who 

 have held it have been students in that line and not in 

 embryology. It is a very poor working hypothesis, for 

 it leads always to a blank wall blocking further prog- 



