2 FOUNDATIONS OF BOTANY 



earth's surface. Another subdivision of botany, usually 

 studied along with geology, describes the history of plant 

 life on the earth from the appearance of the first plants 

 until the present time. 



Systematic Botany, or the classification of plants, should 

 naturally follow the examination of the groups of seed- 

 plants and spore-plants. 



Plant Ecology treats of the relations of the plant to 

 the conditions under which it lives. Under this division 

 of the science are studied the effects of soil, climate, and 

 friendly or hostile animals and plants on the external 

 form, the internal structure, and the habits of plants. 

 This is in many respects the most interesting department 

 of botany, but it has to be studied for the most part out 

 of doors. 



Many of the topics suggested in the above outline cannot 

 well be studied in the high school. There is not usually 

 time to take up more than the merest outline of botanical 

 geography, or to do much more than mention the impor- 

 tant subject of Economic Botany the study of the uses 

 of plants to man. It ought, however, to be possible for 

 the student to learn in his high-school course a good deal 

 about the simpler facts of morphology and of vegetable 

 physiology. One does not become a botanist not even 

 much of an amateur in the subject by reading books 

 about botany. It is necessary to study plants themselves, 

 to take them to pieces and make out the connection of their 

 parts, to examine with the microscope small portions of the 

 exterior surface and thin slices of all the variously built 

 materials or tissues of which the plant consists. All this 

 can be done with living specimens or with those taken 



