THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 53 



The Need of Science — The physician, the scientist, 

 the engineer, etc., must acquire the necessary knowledge and 

 skill in the course of his special studies. The jurist ,the 

 philologist or the theologian who has not acquired these ex- 

 tremely important elements while at school, will later find no 

 opportunity for getting them and run the constant risk of aton- 

 ing for his shortcoming through unpleasant or even danger- 

 ous experiences with his own person. What naive ideas on 

 matters of hygeine, chemistry and physics does not one meet 

 with in the lives of jurist and linguists. There is here evident 

 a serious defect in our choice of the educative material in the 

 schools and in the application to the needs of civilized life. 

 Science teaching in the high school is demanded, not for the 

 training of those who are to enter scientific professions, but 

 for the training of just those who do not select a medical or 

 scientific course. — Max Verzvorn in School Science. 



Teaching Botany. — It is no easy matter to teach high 

 school botany well. Unless the instructor knows a good deal 

 about plants ; what they are, how they are built, what they do, 

 and how and (partly) why they do it, and knows fairly well 

 what his pupils are seeing and what they are thinking about, 

 he will accomplish little. Most of us have known dozens of 

 botany teachers but we could count the superemely successful 

 ones — in school or college — on the fingers of one hand. If the 

 time should ever come when most secondary schools are will- 

 ing to devote at least a year to botany, to give all reasonable 

 facilities to teachers of the subject and in turn to demand of 

 them as adequate preparation as is required of a teacher • 

 Latin or geometry in a first rate fitting school, we would 

 surely find that the educational value of botany is greater than 

 most of us have ever ventured to rate it. — Prof, J. Y. Bergen, 

 in School Science. 



