o ^ x EDIT ORIAL j , o 



With this number we begin a department devoted to 

 school botany which, though intended primarily for teachers, 

 we hope will be of value to all students of plants. The ordin- 

 ary botanist — by which we mean the person interested prin- 

 cipally in collecting and exchanging — rarely realizes how 

 much he is affected by the botany taught in schools. We are 

 all desirous of seeing the tribe of botanists increase, if only 

 for the satisfaction to be derived from the knowledge that our 

 favorite study is a popular one, and we must therefore be 

 concerned with the subject matter and extent of the botany 

 courses in the schools. Not until recently has botany been 

 taught by the laboratory method, unless we dignify by that 

 name the pulling to pieces of a few flowers in the class-room, 

 and in possibly a majority of schools in America botany is 

 still taught "out of a book." Good botanical teaching by the 

 laboratoi'y method is not without its difficulties and it is our 

 aim to remove as many obstacles of this kind as possible from 

 the path of the young teacher. To this end we solicit the 

 notes, queries and suggestions of the large number of teachers 

 amon? our readers. 



*t3 



During the past few months we have been hearing a 

 great deal about a deficit in the postal service of the govern- 

 ment, and the effort that is being made to remedy matters in 

 future. The proposal to make up the loss in other depart- 

 ments by raising the mailing rate on magazines has met with 

 very decided objections, not only by the magazines concerned 

 but by the reading public as well. As is well known, maga- 

 zines regularly published go through the mails at the rate of 

 one cent a pound, but over in Canada the same magazines are 

 carried at the rate of a quartCx- of a cent a pound and there is 



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