Botany as a School-Subject. 509 



the earth will be annulled and roots and shoots will grow in all 

 directions, or, secondly, by placing them on a rapidly-revolving wheel, 

 when the centrifugal force will take the place of gravitation, and 

 the roots will grow outwards, and the shoots towards the 

 centre. Again, the fact that seeds require air for their germinatiori 

 can, by a few simple experiments, be shown, and it can further be 

 easily demonstrated that we have here a process going on which is 

 verv similar to the respiration in animals and man himself. 



You can very easily see that in Botany of this description there 

 is very little use for counting of stamens, or long names for shapes of 

 leaves, or unpronounceable names for the plants themselves. Still, 

 Botany must give the pupil a picture of the whole science, and the 

 study of systematic Botany has also a great value. It should, in 

 the first place, stimulate exact observation, and, when based on 

 careful study of Morphology, it will give even the elementary student 

 a remarkable instance of order in an apparently complex whole, and 

 its study should further help the pupil, on the basis of exact dates, 

 to acquire a power of terse, logical, complete expression. 



Systematic Botany further brings us into touch with the native 

 Flora in the country, and I ask you : Is it right that we call our- 

 selves civilised, and let our children grow up without the slightest 

 knowledge of the things that are commonest around us? Is it right 

 that our children should not even get an intelligent glimpse of the 

 richest Flora in the world with which they are surrounded? If, as is 

 generally the case out here, all pure knowledge is despised, and this 

 state of things continues, there is one thing quite certain, that the 

 hordes of savages over whom we are supposed to rule will raise 

 themselves to the intellectual level of the white population, and 

 there can only be one result, ' and that is — there will be no room for 

 a white population in South Africa. If it is quite certain that 

 European nations owe their present superiority over other nations 

 to a large extent to their study of subjects which do not immediately 

 pay, we cannot afford to break away from a course that has so 

 admirably succeeded in Europe. We hear so much about the 

 progress of Japan, but it is a significant fact that the Japanese have 

 paid just as much attention during recent years to pure Science as to 

 applie 1 Science. I may mention, in passing, that the most important 

 fact discovered during recent years in Botany, was found and rightly 

 interpreted by a Japanese Botanist. 



Of course, in studying Systematic Botany, even in elementary 

 courses, we should always remember that we are dealing with living 

 beings. We must know " how plants live, why thev have their 

 shapes and colours, how each one fits so exactly its individual 

 surroundings." This, in the hands of a trained teacher, and in a 

 country like ours, gives endless possibilities for interesting pupils in 

 their work, and the grouping of plants in a system of classification 

 is, after this, not a mechanical piece of work done with great exer- 

 tion bv bored pupils, but is simply the orderly arrangement of facts 

 with which the pupils are more or less familiar. 



