1 6 PLANT PHYSIOLOGY. 



no means designed to include details already embodied in the 

 laboratory books, but are studies in proportion, generalization, 

 condensation, and expression. They demand in their writing 

 a correctly proportioned and logically complete knowledge of 

 the subject covered by them, and enable the teacher to judge 

 whether the student has acquired it. To prevent diffuseness it 

 is needful to restrict their length, and it is well to have them 

 preceded by a tabular synopsis of contents. So well does the 

 laboratory work and book keep the teacher informed upon the 

 student's progress, and so well do the essays accomplish the 

 purposes of review, that examinations are quite unnecessary, 

 and the time saved from them and their preparation may be 

 turned into the course work. 



The students should be required to complete particular 

 problems, and to make full records of them, before they submit 

 results for- the teacher's inspection. They naturally tend at 

 first to ask whether each step is correct ^before they proceed to 

 the next; but, if this be allowed, soon the students are doing 

 the mechanical and the teacher the mental work. Pride in the 

 neatness of their books, too, leads the students to dislike to 

 mar them by corrections. But the books are simply a record 

 of the owner's work, and it is essential to the formation of 

 habits of self-reliance that students should carry work through 

 to completion the best they can for themselves. When thus 

 completed the records should be critically examined by the 

 teacher in consultation with the student, and corrections made 

 or approval expressed. In my own experience I have found 

 it profitable to use a short oblique mark at the outer lower 

 corner of pages examined, making it a cross for pages that are 

 satisfactory; and the students are held responsible for having 

 the corrections examined and all pages crossed. But all such 

 devices, and labor-saving methods generally, must not be 

 allowed to become dominant, and give the course an aspect or 

 a spirit of formalism ; they must be rigidly subordinated to the 

 liberal, scientific, optimistic spirit in which such a course should 

 be carried on. 



