ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 33 



BOTANY AS A DISCIPLINARY STUDY. 



GERALD McCarthy, B. Sc. 



Of all branches of natural science the study of plants, viewed 

 merely as an instrument of mental discipline, offers the greatest 

 inducements for the majority of pupils. During three-fourths 

 of the year trees, shrubs and flowers are the most abundant 

 objects in nature. They greet the eye on every side, and by their 

 graceful forms, beautiful foliage and pleasant odors invite our 

 attention. Since the maintenance of animal and human life 

 depends upon the pre-existence of the vegetable world, plants 

 appeal to the sympathies of even the most hardened admirer of 

 pavements and gas-light. 



Appealing in so many ways to human sympathies the study 

 of plant-life is admirably fitted for awakening and stimulating 

 the embryonic or dormant faculties of the mind. The facts with 

 which this study stores the mind are interesting, useful and 

 easily comprehended by even the very young, while riper and 

 more disciplined minds will find therein unsolved problems 

 worthy of the most extended reflection. 



A few of the benefits conferred by a systematic study of plant- 

 life may be here enumerated : 



1. Plants are peculiarly adapted for cultivating in the student 

 a love for form, symmetry and color — for stimulating the aesthetic 

 faculties, faculties almost wholly and lamentably neglected in 

 our common schools. 



2. The study of plants trains the mind to habits of close 

 observation and discriminating judgment, orderly arrangement 

 and the 'Mogic of systematization." All of these habits are of 

 the very greatest utility to every human being. 



3. The study of plant-life introduces the student to the study 

 of the phenomena of life in its least complicated manifestations. 

 The fundamental laws of organic life are the same in plants and 



