636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with us all the year. The prevalent custom of assigning the 

 spring term only to botany is a relic of scientific ignorance which 

 should long since have been discarded. All Nature studies should 

 extend through the year." President, Coulter, of Lake Forest 

 University, writes : * " How many who teach botany are laboring 

 under the impression that botany can be taught only while 

 flowers are blooming ? Plants are always with us, and are 

 always fit subjects for study ; and is not a moss, or a toadstool, or 

 a seaweed as truly a plant as a buttercup ? The only difference 

 is that a buttercup is far more difiicult to understand than the 

 others, and is not so fit a subject for elementary study. It is 

 ignorance that makes the toadstool seem difl&cult and the butter- 

 cup easy. From my own experience, and from the testimony of 

 others, I know that children make no such distinctions and find 

 no such difficulties, and in this way they follow Nature." 



Unless pupils study the lower plants they get no conception of 

 the great scope of the vegetable kingdom and of the development 

 of one group from another. Fortunately, most colleges and uni- 

 versities are abandoning the old, irrational method, and are adopt- 

 ing the more rational one of giving instruction in the lower 

 plants, instead of spending so much time in learning, for example, 

 the different forms of leaves that seem to be able to perform their 

 functions just as well whether they are " elliptico-oblanceolate " or 

 " palmately-plurifoliate." They have been giving instruction in 

 bacteria, the group of plants that is probably of more importance 

 to man than all the rest combined ; they have been having their 

 pupils study the rusts, smuts, and mildews that destroy crops, as 

 well as the more beautiful forms that frequent water and are 

 considered offensive by those unacquainted with them. But the 

 secondary schools, not having properly trained teachers, and not 

 being properly equipped with instruments, have in most cases 

 followed the old method. In fact, most teachers of botany sup- 

 pose the lower forms too difficult for beginners in secondary 

 schools; but in a few the experiment of beginning with these 

 forms has been tried and the practicability of it verified. 



Further, unless pupils learn something of the lower forms of 

 plants they always have an erroneous idea of what a plant really 

 is, and how it differs from an animal. I have found, by testing 

 pupils that have studied in the old way, that they always define 

 a plant as something stationary, as composed of roots, stems, and 

 leaves, and as reproducing by seeds-;-all of which applies to the 

 higher plants only. In short, they have no real knowledge of the 

 science of botany. It is impossible to understand the structure 

 and the reproductive system of the flowering plants unless the 



* School Review, March, 1893, p. 143. 



