5o6 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



with Hooke and Grew the new light was extinguished in England, 

 one might almost say up to the present day, but this is far too 

 sweeping an assertion. There arose from time to time giants amongst 

 English botanical investigators, such as Robert Brown, Lindley, 

 Knight, and last, but not least, Charles Darwin. However, the first 

 half of the last century saw, especially in Germany, a revival of 

 investigations in Vegetable Anatomy, Physiology, and Morphology, 

 based on developmental studies which, until the last 15 or 20 years, 

 were not in a striking degree forwarded or even shared by English 

 Botanists, and not until the best German text-books had been trans- 

 lated into English, and all coming men of distinction amongst English 

 Botanists had been trained in Germany, did a striking change take 

 place. Naturally, therefore, we could not expect to have English teach- 

 ers trained to teach Botany properly in schools. It is curious to find that 

 even Charles Darwin's works were more highly appreciated in Ger- 

 many, and led, generally speaking, to more fruitful results amongst 

 German Botanists than amongst their English colleagues. I cannot 

 go fully into the reasons for this apparent anomaly. Splendid work 

 was done, especially at Kew, during this time by the Hookers, 

 Bentham, Oliver, Baker, and others, but the time of these men was 

 fully occupied by work in Systematic Botany, and, incidentally, by 

 work on the distribution of plants, with the abundant material which 

 was poured in from all parts of the British Empire, South Africa 

 included, but at the centres of learning, little original work was ac- 

 complished, and the students were mostly fed with such dry stuff 

 as the external morphology of plants and their systematic arrange- 

 ment affords. It was not realised that to make the study of plants 

 worthy of a place amongst academical studies, the teaching of Botany 

 must deal with flants in the -first place as living beings. That under 

 such circumstances the general public looked upon Botany with 

 indifference or even contempt goes without saying. A Science which 

 dealt chiefly with hard names could not command sympathy, 

 and quite rightly, too. It was forgotten that these names are only 

 a means to an end, and I am afraid that this wrong notion has 

 largely survived. All seats of higher teaching in Great Britain are 

 now splendidly equipped both for research and the training of 

 students in Botany, but I am not aware that the teaching of Botany 

 in British schools has made very great progress yet. 



It is different in America. From a book called the " Teaching 

 Botanist," published at New York in 1899 by Dr. W. F. Ganong, 

 I gather that in the United States between the advanced college and 

 the lower school work, " botanical teaching is now in a state of 

 wonderfully rapid expansion and transition. Three causes are con- 

 tributin<T to this result. First, the natural reaction from its former 

 extreme backwardness ; second, a widening recognition of the value 

 of the science, of which Botany is a leading one, in general educa- 

 tion ; third, its acceptance as an entrance subject by some of the 

 leading colleges." Such a breaking away from old traditions on the 

 part of the Americans, who are always looked upon as so remarkably 

 acute, deserves our most serious attention. American educationalists, 



