PREFACE 



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The accumulation of the tacts of science, as well as the interpretation, 

 evaluation, and application of these facts, is a continuing process. It 

 must follow, then, that the teaching of science cannot remain a static 

 procedure and that new texts of science must from time to time be 

 written. 



This textbook of botany represents the authors' ideas of some of the 

 gradual changes in objectives, content, emphasis, sequence, and pro- 

 cedure in general botany that are necessary to incorporate effectively 

 appropriate new discoveries in science and their various applications 

 to human welfare. For anyone to assume that these features of general 

 botany are already standardized is to close one's eyes to the continual 

 increase of new material available for general botany courses as well 

 as to a scientific consideration of the problems of teaching. 



Present-day botanists, moreover, cannot escape responsibility for 

 some share in a general educational program for students and laymen. 

 Many students of diverse interests elect general botany as their sole 

 requirement for a course in science; a smaller number will enroll 

 because of a desire for special training in the subject, still others merely 

 because it is one of the science requirements in the college program. 

 We cannot meet our obligations to these students merely by insisting 

 that they memorize what scientists ha\e disco\ered or by trying to tell 

 them what the scientific method is and what may be accomplished 

 by it. For the scientific method to become meaningful and a habit of 

 procedure, the students must experience it repeatedly and see it ex- 

 emplified as a nomial part of classroom procedure as well as a fait 

 accompli in the literature they are required to read. 



As all botanists are fully aware, plants are complex systems influenced 

 by and in turn influencing other systems of their immediate environ- 

 ment, both animate and inanimate. There can be no clear appreciation 

 of the fundamental interrelations among these dissimilar systems with- 

 out some basic knowledge of the organization of the structures and the 

 nature of the processes inherent in them. In short, courses in botany 

 much of the time in the classroom must necessarily be devoted to acquir- 



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