490 Journal of Applied Microscopy. 



are various, as relations to soil, to water, to air, to mechanical support, etc. 

 Perhaps flowers and their clustering have been more deeply buried beneath 

 terminology than any other plant structures, but all of this is brushed aside when 

 the life-relations are found to be pollination and seed-distribution. 



This new standpoint does not abandon the microscope and the structures 

 which it reveals, but it approaches them with a new purpose. Nothing can 

 replace a general acquaintance with plant forms, for they must be known in 

 order to illustrate the various methods of work. Nothing is simpler than to 

 devise experiments in the laboratory to illustrate the common life-relations, and 

 to supplement the experiments with observations in the field. 



It is found further that plants are not scattered in hap-hazard fashion over the 

 surface of the earth, but are organized into definite associations or societies. A 

 certain combination of water, soil, heat, etc., determines a plant society, and in 

 it certain plants are permitted and others forbidden. The study of these plant 

 associations, the conditions which determine them, and the adaptations of the 

 plants, is most interesting and important. School plantations can reproduce many 

 conditions and plant associations, so that much of such study may be carried on 

 in the laboratory. 



For example, aquaria or glass jars can be used to contain representative 

 forms of the common societies of water plants, as floating forms, swamp 

 forms, etc., and their characteristic adaptations in position and structure studied. 

 In boxes may be grown representatives of dry sandy ground societies, also 

 societies of the more fertile soils, etc. To contrast these societies and their 

 adaptations is full of profitable work. 



Such a view of plants is a permanent possession, for every landscape becomes 

 significant, and in the student's subsequent experience such material is con- 

 stantly presenting itself. It is such a background that the. universities desire 

 for their botanical work, for the forms studied in their laboratories are thus put 

 into their proper places in nature through previous experience. 



The secondary schools can not introduce such work in revolutionary fashion, 

 but must gradually intersperse it among the old work as training and familiarity 

 with the material may permit. Those accustomed to an older method, and 

 adjusted to its demands, in the presence of the new may feel the shrinking which 

 comes from inertia, but this paper has in mind, not the feeling of the teacher, 

 but the good of the pupil. John M. Coulter. 



Head Professor of Botany, University of Chicago. 



The Microscope, its Educational and Practical Value. 



The saying that " truth is stranger than fiction " nowhere receives more 

 striking confirmation than in the revelations of the microscope. By its aid the 

 most commonplace and even insignificant objects are shown to be possessed 

 of beauty unapproachable by human device. Indeed it is a curious fact that the 

 more we magnify human productions the greater their imperfections appear, 

 while nature's handiwork requires a microscope to show its greatest perfections. 



