1 4 THE NA TU RE-STUD V RE VIE IV ^ : ,-jan. , 1907 



look like. This knowledge is something that the high schools have 

 a right to demand of the pupils who come into them from the grade 

 schools, just as we now demand that pupils entering the high-school must 

 know the multiplication table. It is a waste of high school time to 

 use it in learning such simple processes, and so it is with a familiar- 

 ity with trees. It ought not to be necessary for the high-school 

 teacher to spend time in field work in order to teach this part of bot- 

 any. But just as when we find a pupil in high school who has not mas- 

 tered the multiplication table he must set about mastering the 

 subject, so it must be when the pupil's knowledge of trees, grasses, 

 weeds, etc., is defective — this must be remedied by an adequate 

 amount of field work. I have found it necessary, even in university 

 classes, to remedy a defective knowledge of the common trees by 

 giving a couple of months to their study in my classes in systematic 

 botany. It is a use of valuable time that ought not to be necessary, 

 since the whole matter should have been attended to much earlier in 

 the student's experience. 



The botany of the high school should be the systematic general 

 survey of the vegetable kingdom, beginning with the simplest and 

 most easily understood forms, and passing from these step by step 

 through the intermediate forms to the highest. This can only be done 

 by intensive laboratory work, in which the pupil makes out for himself 

 as many of the structural details as is possible m the time allotted to 

 him for the work. In such work the pupil should no more be sent 

 out to get his own material than should the pupil in chemistry be ex- 

 pected to collect from the drug stores, the gas works, the factories, 

 the rock piles, and the earth strata, the substances that he is to ana- 

 lyze in the chemical laboratory. In no general course in chemistry 

 today is such a procedure allowed. There are special courses in 

 chemistry in which this field work, as it may be called, is not only 

 permissible, but highly desirable. And so it is in botany. In the 

 general courses the pupil must have his material supplied to him in 

 such quantities and at such times that he may make his studies in 

 their right sequence and with no delay. This in brief should be the 

 work of the pupil in high-school botany. 



But what can the overworked teacher in the high school do for 

 his pupils who need field work in order to familiarize them with plants 

 as they grow in the fields, and woodlands .'' What kind of field work 

 will repair this defect in the pupil's education ? In other words, how 

 shall the necessary field botany of the high school be conducted ? 



