PREKACK. 



This book is specially designed to supply the needs of 

 pupils who must work with simple appliances at ordinary 

 school desks, and under the supervision of a teacher who 

 can devote but little time to the subject. But it is believed 

 that it will be equally useful to those who have the advan- 

 tages of a well-equipped laboratory and the aid of a special 

 teacher. 



An attempt has been made to lay out the work from day 

 to day, so that the teacher, burdened with other duties, 

 need have little to do in the way of preparing outlines of 

 the daily work. It is expected that the pupils, not the 

 teacher, will provide all the material used. Each exercise 

 directs work easy enough to be profitable to the weakest 

 pupil in the higher grammar grades, and at the same time 

 suggests problems which will try the power of the brightest 

 pupil in the last year of the high school. The object of the 

 exercises is chiefly to teach how to study plants, not to give 

 information about them. A few facts are given for the pur- 

 pose of encouraging pupils to look for more of the same 

 kind, and, at the same time, furnishing material for the 

 important work of verifying the discoveries of others, by 

 repeating the observations or experiments which revealed 

 them. President Jordan says, " To verify the fact gives 

 training; to discover it gives inspiration. Training and 

 inspiration, not the facts themselves, are the justification of 



