THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 93 



lie schools end their days of study with little or no knowledge 

 of the earth upon which they live, of the plants and animals 

 among which they must live, or of the natural forces which 

 make such living possible. Is it at all remarkable, then, that 

 the great public is still back in the middle ages so far as its 

 understanding of natural phenomena is concerned? Absolutely 

 ignorant of botany, it is not surprising that many people still 

 plant their seeds in "the sign of the moon," believe in man-eat- 

 ing plants, dose their ailing shade trees with calomel and sul- 

 phur, and swallow with gusto the silly stories about plants 

 in the Sunday paper. With no idea of zoology, they may well 

 believe horse-hairs tuni to snakes, that dragon flies will sew 

 up their ears, that a crow with its tongue split can talk, that a 

 snake's tail always lives until the sun sets, that a snapping tur- 

 tle never lets go until it thunders and so on through the list. 

 A large number of the people in enlightened America still be- 

 lieve in ghosts, dreams, fortune-telling, divining rods, the evil 

 eye, luck, witches, charms, etc., but these are the people who 

 have never studied the sciences. At present educational circles 

 are wrought up over the question of whether we should teach 

 for vocation or for avocation but behind this is the more im- 

 portant question of shall we teach pupils of the past or fit them 

 for the future? If for the future, history, art, literature and 

 the languages, however valuable they may be in any form of 

 culture must give place in large measures to the sciences, 

 mathematics and a thorough drill in our mother tongue . It is 

 inconceivable that the world will much longer tolerate a system 

 of education that does not look toward a knowledge of the 

 earth, the animals and the plants for every pupil. Science and 

 superstition cannot dwell in harmony To foster the one, is to 



eradicate the other. 



* * * 



Occasioiially we hear it said that the study of botany is a 

 fad that is bound to decline in popularity, but recent statistics 



