PREFACE. 



UNTIL recent years the prevalent method of teaching botany 

 in the secondary schools, and in the first courses in many col- 

 leges, has been based on the "analysis" of flowers. The 

 method had its impetus in the study of systematic botany pur- 

 sued with such vigor by the pioneers of the science in America. 

 The great progress in our knowledge of the morphology and 

 physiology of plants during the last quarter of this century has 

 changed the whole problem of elementary instruction in botany, 

 and led to almost universal dissatisfaction with the old method 

 of secondary instruction in this subject. It is now generally 

 recognized that a study of the lower plants, like the algae, fungi, 

 liverworts, mosses, and ferns should form a part of a course of 

 secondary education in botany. 



To meet this end a number of books have sprung into exist- 

 ence during the past few years. If the need for some guid- 

 ance in the selection of topics, and an outline of the character 

 of the study, could be met by number alone of books, this want 

 would be fully met in the new treatises recently published, and 

 there would be no place for the present book. But a judicious 

 selection of a few forms to illustrate function, process, and 

 relationship throughout the wide range of plant life, and the 

 training in logical methods of induction, and accuracy of draw- 

 ing conclusions, is vastly more important in its influence on 

 the character of the pupil, even though he forget all about the 

 plants studied, than the handling of a great variety of objects, 

 and the drawing of haphazard conclusions, which are left to the 

 pupil in a large number of cases by the methods pursued in 

 many of the recent elementary works, 



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