106 . MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



modes of plant dispersal, the struggle for existence and more room, 

 zonal distributions, plant communities, adaptation to climate, how plants 

 protect themselves. 



Fortunate, thrice fortunate is the botanical teacher who can draw 

 diagrams well and with some alacrity, for it helps amazingly in making 

 explanations. It will save many tedious repetitions in the explanations, 

 if a short syllabus or specific statements be produced in duplicate, so 

 that each student can have a copy. There will always be some in a 

 class who were not giving close attention when something was said, 

 or some member will be absent. 



No person for the first twenty weeks of botany should be at the 

 trouble of learning to use a compound microscope. He should leave it 

 until he has made a somewhat intimate acquaintance with the gross 

 anatomy of plants. 



There are a dozen or more designs or blank forms published, leaving 

 spaces opposite printed names in which to answer direct questions about 

 a plant in flower. It is well enough to place about three copies of this 

 in the hands of each student as he examines three different plants, 

 but to continue their use for a greater length of time will tend to relieve 

 the student of thinking and make a machine of him. The quicker 

 he learns to ask his own questions and answer them the better, even 

 at the risk of some omissions. 



It seems to be necessary to spend some time in the class room, to aid 

 pupils in becoming familiar with artificial keys which lead to families 

 where a plant in hand may be described and named, but with the other 

 instruction provided for, but little time need be given to this work. 

 This is too often spoken of as analyzing plants, instead of identifying 

 plants. I place a very low estimate on a common practice of requiring 

 each person in the class to collect, dry and mount fifty to one hundred 

 plants. 



I haven't had much experience in conducting field excursions, because 

 my teaching has been done at a college which had a large campus 

 containing a great assortment of trees and shrubs, and because there 

 was at hand a botanic garden where the plants were arranged in 

 families, each plant growing back of a label which contained its name. 



It is a part of our plan, in the spring term to go once a week, with 

 the students in small companies of about a dozen, where some inter- 

 esting features can be pointed out. 



A botanical club or a natural history society in a school is well worth 

 encouraging. Let it be officered by the students, and help them to get 

 up programs, remembering that no society of this kind can long maintain 

 an interest among its members, if they plan to have little else than a 

 lecture at each meeting. The members should be the actors on the 

 program. (Here the interested reader may consult Vol. 1, Michigan 

 Academy of Science, pp. 94, 95, 96, for a list of topics suitable for dis- 

 cussion by members of a botanical club.) 



For many years I have assigned each term one or more suitable topics, 

 a different one to each member of the class, which he considers his per- 

 sonal property. Those topics the pupils investigate thoroughly so far 

 as they can, and each member in turn presents his paper or talk, usually 

 with illustrations, to the other members of the class. The quality of 



