REPORT OF THE SOCIETY 65 



against technical names. As soon as he hears one of these scientific terms he 

 mmediately tells himself that this is a hard, scientific subject and by scientific 

 he means something difficult and unpractical. He therefore immediately 

 shuts his mind against it — and the capacity of the student mind to resist the in- 

 troduction of knowledge vmder these circumstances is practically unlimited. 

 Personnally I do not share the average student's horror of long Latin or Greek 

 names, but when I see that look of patient suffering come over the faces of suc- 

 cessive classes of students, when they bear the word metamorphosis, I make up 

 my mind to forego the use of this word entirely as far as our farm students are 

 concerned and to invent a simple one that will convey the same idea. Similar 

 terms such as mandibles, maxilla?, etc., are heard no more in our class room, but 

 Anglo-Saxon words that serve our purpose equally well. Similarly there are no 

 longer any Coleoptera, Hemiptera and Diptera, etc. but beetles, bugs and flies. 

 It is our duty to give our students certain facts and a certain training, if we can 

 do without clothing our ideas in technical language, surely it is better to do so 

 and, if we are willing to take the trouble, it should be quite possible for us to 

 devise suitable terms in cases where the}^ are not ready to hand. 



The use of keys such as are commonh- found in our text books are also' 

 difficult for the boy taking this course to understand. Of course, with time, he 

 can be taught to master them, but we have no time to spend unnecessarily and 

 yet it is of the greatest practical advantage for them to be able to recognize the 

 main orders of insects and not adults alone but their larvae as well. For this 

 purpose simple recognition charts may be devised which do not require the same 

 amount of practice to use and which can be made to serve the purpose equally 

 well. 



All science teachers recognize the great value of drawings, especially in biolo- 

 gical subjects. But here again it is easy to overdo the idea in the case of this 

 class of students. There is not the time again and it is hard to convince these 

 students that such time is well spent. While I would not do away with drawings 

 altogether, 1 would reduce them to a minimum in this course. 



Then the question arises in studying economic insects whether it is best to 

 study them according to their natural grouping or according to their host. 

 The speaker has experimented with both methods and feels bound to say that 

 while the latter would seem to be the most natural one for this class of students 

 in actual practice it does not appear to give the best results, in spite of its appa- 

 rent greater simplicity. When we consider that almost every plant that grows 

 is affected with one or more species of aphis, it will be seen that by studying 

 insects according to the host plant the student has to make a separate mental 

 effort for each species, whereas if he studies them simply as aphids, a single 

 effort will enable him to master the main facts of aphid life histoiy and control. 

 Similarly the control of a leaf-eating caterpillar, whether it affects a turnip or an 

 apple tree, is affected in a similar manner and this is perhaps the reason that 



