io PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 



with pedagogical force and scientific accuracy; and the presen- 

 tation of such expositions in the educational journals consti- 

 tutes also a form of serviceable educational investigation. For 

 success in any of these lines the teacher must carry on actual 

 careful prolonged experimentation and study, but in the doing 

 of any of them there is great reward. 



The successful student in this course recognizes that his 

 teacher's duty is simply to provide opportunities and advice, 

 while his own is to take advantage of them. He studies with 

 care the methods and results of the masters in his subject, and 

 seeks to acquire their open, judicial, evidential habit of mind, 

 which alone can lead to scientific success. He acquires a desire 

 to go always to original sources of information, and a prefer- 

 ence for knowledge acquired through his own efforts to that 

 derived from any other source. He comes to admire results 

 founded upon exact evidence and logical reasoning, and to dis- 

 trust and dislike conclusions based upon insufficient, badly 

 grounded, or emotional data. He believes not until convinced, 

 does his own work, asks for aid only when it is needed, and 

 profits both by his own mistakes and by the successes of others. 

 He develops such self-confidence that he expects all his work 

 to succeed, and is surprised when it does not. He is perfectly 

 honest with all his experiments, never views them through pre- 

 conceived expectations, never glosses irregularities, and never 

 ignores exceptions, not only because these things are dishonest 

 and unscientific, but also because he may thereby miss one of 

 those clues which, as experience has shown, often lead to the 

 greater discoveries. As to the more practical aspects of his 

 laboratory work, he is exact and neat in everything; he not only 

 keeps his own place and property in good order, but takes a 

 corporate pride in the appearance and condition of the labora- 

 tory as a whole. He takes steps to ensure that his work may 

 be done in physical comfort, and he does it with a feeling and 

 an air of academic calm and leisure. 



A college course in Plant Physiology should be dominated 

 by a spirit of precision, quantation, and logic. The aim in the 



