THE STUDY OF ALGy€ IN HIGH SCHOOLS. 

 By Josephine E. Tilden. 



IT is not difficult to interest children in this branch of botany. No 

 definitions and no text-book work are necessary. The children 

 should be encouraged to bring in specimens and should accom- 

 pany the teacher on collecting trips. It is not even necessary to 

 know the names of the plants discovered. There are plenty of high- 

 school subjects which place long arrays of facts before the 'students, 

 and his duty is to commit these facts to memory. There should be at 

 least one subject of which nothing is known but what the child finds 

 out for himself, either by observation or by asking questions. If the 

 teacher know nothing of the study, she should acknowledge it, and 

 place herself on a level with the students. But with very little effort 

 she can acquire enough knowledge from ordinary text-books to see 

 that the children are working in the right direction, and are getting 

 correct ideas. The time given to this branch may vary from two days 

 to four weeks, depending on the will of the teacher and the length of 

 the entire course in botany. In the first case, one recitation period 

 should be devoted to the collection of the plants, and the second to 

 observing them under the compound microscope. One such instru- 

 ment, with the aid of blackboard drawings, will suffice for a class, 

 though it is of course better to have more instruments. 



The main benefit to be derived from the study is this: Each child 

 will see under high magnification plant-structures which cannot be 

 seen with the naked eye. He should find out that the spores of these 

 plants, and in many cases the plants 'themselves, float about in great 

 quantity in the air, and that they occur in abundance in all natural 

 waters; that they are not harmful, but in many cases indicate the 

 purity of the water, for they could not live in it were it not pure ; that 

 their spores have the capacity of enduring heat, cold, darkness and 

 dryness to a wonderful extent, and that when they find themselves in 

 favorable circumstances they are able to develop into new plants. 



If every high-school student in the United States could compre- 

 hend these facts from having used his own eyes, the next generation 

 would be far better able to understand medical directions and to co- 

 operate with physicians in contending with germ diseases, for bacteria 

 are plants and very near relatives of the Algae. 



A few concise descriptions and directions are offered in this 

 paper for the benefit of the teacher. 



