PHANEROGAMIC LABORATORY STUDIES 253 



Further work on the flower will be directed toward illustration of 

 the principles of floral structure and biology, given in the following 

 chapter of text. The extent and exact character of this study are left 

 to the discretion of the teacher in view of the material obtainable. 



Systematic Botany. — AVith regard to the study of Systematic 

 Botany, when this forms a part of the school course, the following 

 suggestions may prove helpful. 



In many schools it has been the custom to require each pupil to 

 determine or ' analyze ' a certain number of plants, perhaps a hun- 

 dred or more. While this exercise has value, it may be doubted 

 whether the pupil ordinarily receives from it information or training 

 commensurate with the time it requires. Through the recognition in 

 recent years of a greater and greater number of species the accurate 

 identification of plants has become a matter so technical as to require 

 a degree of attention and precision rarely possessed by elementary 

 pupils. Nevertheless, the teacher should spare no effort to impart by 

 direct instruction or incidental suggestions as clear an idea as possible 

 of the general classification and relationship's of the plants studied in 

 the laboratory. Experience shows that pupils grasp without difficulty 

 the more obvious features which distinguish the larger families. Thus 

 it requires but a few moments to show that nearly all grasslike plants 

 may be divided into three great families, the true grasses with round 

 stems and split leaf sheaths, the sedges with triangular stems, and the 

 rushes with regular 6-parted flowers. Copious illustrative material 

 (readily obtained even by city teachers) should be given to the pupils 

 to exercise their discriminative powers after or during any such instruc- 

 tion as this. Similarly, it requires but a few moments to show how 

 most of the remaining monocotyledons may be divided into Liliacece 

 with superior ovary and six stamens, Amaryllidacece ^^'lih. inferior ovary 

 and six stamens, Iridaceoe with inferior ovary and three stamens, and 

 Orchidacece with inferior ovary and one or two stamens. In like 

 manner the leading families of dicotyledons will be found to possess 

 such characteristic features as the peculiar inflorescence of the Umhel- 

 liferce, the dense heads of the Compositce, the square stems, oj)posite 

 leaves, and aromatic qualities of the Labiatce, or sheathing stipules of 

 the Polygonacece. Indeed a very few exercises, in which the pupil is 

 encouraged to sort for himself, along such simple lines as these, great 

 piles of mixed flowering plants (including the commonest dooryard 

 weeds), will enable him to determine at sight the twelve to twenty 

 more important families, which include four fifths of the flowering 

 plants he is likely to meet in after life. A similar discrimination of 

 plants in fields and woods should, whenever practicable, supplement 

 laboratory exercises. The pupil will, naturally, make many mistakes 

 at first, being inclined, perhaps, to place a Potentilla in the Ranun- 

 culacece, a Datura in the Convolvulacece, or even a clover in the Com- 



