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BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



broadly trained teacher. It is not supposed that the following 

 discussion contains anything new. It has been suggested by 

 conversations with college teachers of biology, and is offered 

 with the wish to correlate the two aspects of the work of the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory and to make its botanical work 

 an integral part of the whole. 



Most chairs of biology in America are now held by zoolo- 

 o-ists who have their own ideas about the choice of animal 

 types, but trust to books or follow the example of some teacher 

 in the selection of the forms of plants to be studied. It is 

 equally true that most of the laboratory handbooks in general 

 biology have been written by men who are chiefly zoologists, 

 and who, in their turn, have been guided more by example than 

 by a wide knowledge of plant forms in the choice of types, 

 however well the chosen types may have been treated. Thus 

 it has happened that certain plants have come to be regarded 

 as classic forms for use in such a course of instruction. And 

 not a few botanists seem to have been more impressed by the 

 weight of precedent than by any consideration of the real rep- 

 resentative character of the plants in question. The ease of 

 obtaining suitable material of a given plant may fairly receive 

 some attention in the selection of types, but it is evident that 

 in some cases the long-continued and now confirmed use of 

 badly chosen forms rests on a quite erroneous impression of 

 the difficulty of obtaining suitable ones, or on unwillingness to 

 make a slight effort in obtaining or becoming acquainted with 

 new plants. If this paper shall aid in banishing some untypical 

 "types," and in replacing them by others more useful, one of 

 its purposes will have been realized. 



The purpose, then, of the so-called general biology course 

 should be twofold. It should aim to give an intelligent con- 

 ception of biological methods and problems as a part of a lib- 

 eral education, and it should lay a foundation for future study in 

 pure or applied biology. Incidentally to these chief aims it 

 may be used to convey some knowledge of the structure and 

 relationships of the chief great groups of plants and animals. 

 Its place is in the college, not in the high school. A paren- 

 thesis here concerning high-school work in biology may not 



