THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 37 



deciding from Gray's or Britton's Manual the name of the 

 plant, then as a court of appeal turn to Britton & Brown. 



PliiladclpJiia, Pa. 



[Mr. Wilkinson's account of his efforts to get acquainted 

 with the plants will have a familiar sound to a large number 

 of our readers. It is the road many of us have traveled 

 and the same that many others have before them. Our 

 schools and colleges are teaching botany, but it is not the 

 kind of botany that is calculated to make the general observer 

 more deeply interested in tlie flowers. Ordinarilv the botan- 

 ical course begins with seeds and seedlings and runs on 

 through the form and structure of roots, buds, stems and 

 leaves, until the beginner, who took botany because he thought 

 it had something to do with flowers, begins to wonder whether 

 flowers are a part of botany. From a pedagogical standpoint 

 there can, however, be no criticism of this course as compared 

 with the older study of plant analysis and flower dissection. 

 The province of school botany is not to produce botanists but 

 to train the observing and reasoning powers of the pupil, 

 give him exact ideas of the structure and evolution of plants, 

 and perhaps incidentally to inculcate an interest in the plants 

 as individuals. The botany that the general public is inter- 

 ested in — the public that buys such books as "How to Know 

 the W'ildflowers" — is seldom taught in up-to-date schools. It 

 usually has to be picked up here and there as chance affords. 

 It thus happens that nearly every town has several people 

 who would be glad to take up the study of plants if they only 

 knew how to begin, but who have become discouraged and 

 have concluded that botany is not for them. To many such, 

 the so-called popular flower-books like Dana's "How to Know 

 the Wildflowers," Lounsberry's "Guide to the W'ildflowers," 

 Matthews' "Field Book of American Wildflowers." Henshaw's 

 "Mountain Wildflowers of America" and others have partially 

 opened the way to the subject, but all of these books have two 



