PREFACE 



THE present text-book has been prepared to meet a specific 

 demand. There are many schools which, having outgrown certain 

 now antiquated methods of teaching botany, find the best of the 

 more recent text-books too difficult and comprehensive for practical 

 use in an elementary course. The large number of subjects included 

 in the modern high school course necessarily confines within narrow 

 time limits the attention which can be devoted to any one branch. 

 Thus, more than ever before, a careful selection and judicious ar- 

 rangement as well as great simplicity and definiteness in presentation 

 are all requisite to the practical success of any one course of study. 

 This book offers (1) a series of laboratory exercises in the morphology 

 and physiology of phanerogams, (2) directions for a practicable study 

 of typical cryptogams, representing the chief groups from the lowest 

 to the highest, and (3) a substantial body of information regarding 

 the forms, activities, and relationships of plants and supplementing 

 the laboratory studies. 



The practical exercises and experiments have been so chosen that 

 schools with compound microscopes and expensive laboratory appa- 

 ratus may have ample opportunity to employ to advantage their 

 superior equipment. On the other hand, the needs of less fortunate 

 schools, which possess as yet only simple microscopes and very limited 

 apparatus, have been constantly borne in mind. Even when the 

 cryptogams and certain anatomical features of the phanerogams are 

 to be dealt with, much may be accomplished with the hand lens, and, 

 where applicable at all, it is in an elementary course usually a better 

 aid to clear comprehension of objects examined than the compound 

 microscope. Furthermore, the experiments covering the fundamental 

 principles of plant physiology have been so far as possible arranged 

 in such a manner as to require only simple appliances. 



In arranging a scientific text-book it has been a common practice 

 to interpolate directions for observation and experiment in the body 

 of the text. In teaching, however, the writer has found this arrange- 

 ment highly objectionable. Both laboratory work and class-room 

 exercises suffer from it. Accordingly, in this book instructions for 

 laboratory study are placed in divisions by themselves, preceding the 

 related chapters of descriptive text. The pupil with his book open 

 before him in the laboratory will, therefore, not here be confronted 

 by pictures and statements constituting keys to the work which he 

 should carry out independently. Although it is not intended that 

 each laboratory chapter should of necessity be finished before the 

 following chapter of text is taken up, the examination of the plants 

 themselves should naturally be kept somewhat in advance of the 

 recitations which summarize and complement the information gained 

 from that study. 



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