94 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



be brought into the ordinary class-room ; so that outdoor excursions 

 are a necessary corollary of Circular 369. We sincerely hope that 

 the teachers, with whom after all the initiative must lie, will not be 

 afraid of laying on themselves too great a burden, and we trust 

 that they will not be prevented from putting these ideas in force by 

 the apprehension, far too common among them, that a day in the 

 country, or an hour of school time spent anywhere but in the school 

 house, means a loss of marks and a consequent reduction of grant. 



Science and Art Department. 



The examinations of the Science and Art Department have done 

 good service in setting a high standard for elementary science 

 teaching, especially in evening classes. This is evident from the 

 syllabus published under authority, and becomes still more so from 

 the examination papers and the list of passes. When we consider 

 the hard work, and frequent self-denial, which an approach to the 

 required standards must often mean to students of that class which 

 the whole arrangement is supposed primarily to benefit, it is only fair 

 that an honourable observance of the syllabus should be rigidly 

 adhered to by those to whom the work of examining is entrusted. 

 A correspondent seems, however, to have just reason for dissatisfaction 

 with the botany papers of recent years. 



" I write," he says, "as one who has heard many complaints 

 from candidates with regard to the advanced stage of this examination, 

 and also as one who, knowing their opportunities, can sympathise 

 with them. In the first place, they say that it is hardly fair to send a 

 plant for description belonging to an uncommon British order 

 (Apocynaceae), especially when the only species that has the slightest 

 claim to be indigenous is classed by Watson as a denizen. I have 

 consulted several well-known field botanists resident north of the 

 Midlands, and they — as well as myself — have never met with a plant 

 of this order after rambling over the country for a score of years, and 

 observing nearly all our native plants in a growing condition ; we are, 

 in fact, compelled to steal a flower for dissection from some public 

 park when a favourable opportunity offers, as it is never on sale at the 

 florists. 



" In the elementary stage a knowledge of only fourteen orders is 

 required, while in the advanced stage an acquaintance with more 

 than ninety is demanded, besides a fair knowledge of physiology and 

 morphology, as well as an acquaintance with a dozen cryptogamic 

 types. 



"When a student who (after passing the elementary stage) has 

 been doing his utmost by collecting and examining all the plants he can 

 meet with, to make himself conversant with the greater number of 

 our native orders, finds that his endeavour to get a pass in the first 

 class is entirely frustrated by having handed out to him from the 

 corner of a box a pinch of pinkish fragments between three fingers 

 and a thumb of a superintendent, he certainly feels that the advanced 

 stage in any other subject is much easier and certainly safer. The 

 pinkish fragments in question were such as one can pick up under a 

 vase of cut flowers ; and belonged to a cultivated plant of a foreign 



