EXPERIMENTS IN TEACHING ISOTANY. 579 



living plants. Some teachers do not like this work. But if I 

 have a small class and no time is lost, and if I have a special 

 liking for preparing materials for direct observation, why must 

 I be compelled by a Syllabus to adopt what is to me an inferior 

 mode of teaching? And why is not cutting a section quite as 

 practical, quite as much of an experiment, as sticking a twig into 

 red ink ? 



At present all the fascinating study of hairs, glands, crystals, 

 stone-cells, oil-reservoirs, resin-canals, bordered pits, etc., is 

 utterly discouraged, though these things are as typical of struc- 

 ture and function as any other part of the plant. Syllabus 

 tyranny is as bad as any other form of the hateful thing. 



Once more, the Syllabus tells me to use an expensive instru- 

 ment called the klinostat to demonstrate heliotropism and geo- 

 tropism. I think the instrument-makers have a hand in this. I 

 got one, but have rejected it as either useless or insufficient. How 

 do our pupils know that the revolution of the plant does not 

 paralyse its movement ? If so, the apparatus proves nothing. So 

 we have to devise further experiments to justify the klinostat, 

 and meanwhile we can quite satisfactorily prove all that is wanted 

 with nothing but a cardboard box or so. Shakespeare, in Love's 

 Labour Lost, pokes fun at people who " climb o'er the house ta 

 unlock the little gate." 



Yet another point. Teachers in this country are not quite 

 fairly treated by the text-books, at whose mercy they usually are, 

 with regard to the simple and necessary experiment to show 

 assimilation. The demonstration often fails for want of warn- 

 ing that over 70° starch is sent away as soon as it is made. As 

 most bright days here are over 70°, teachers are often dis- 

 appointed and pupils bewildered. But they are warned, to an 

 unnecessary exitent, that the old simple plan of tin- foil or cork 

 will not do, because it excludes air as well as light. Of course 

 flat tin-foil and clean-cut cork will exclude air. All you have to 

 do is to crinkle the tin-foil or cut the cork with a blunt knife, and 

 you cannot exclude the air. My home-made arrangements of 

 this kind work just as well as an expensive little apparatus of 

 Professor Ganong's. A friend of mine tells me she is glad to 

 hear about the cork, for if there is one thing to be found in her 

 laboratory it is a blunt knife. The demonstration works still 

 better if a little hollow is scooped out of the cork. 



I think I have put forward a fair case by way of a plea for 

 greater elasticity in teaching. Moreover, when the Examination 

 Board demands a sub-minimum in " practical " or " experimental" 

 questions, it ought to rule that microscope work is practical, and 

 that cutting sections for such demonstration is also exi)erimental. 



