THE RELATIONS OF BOTANY AND NATURE-STUDY 



By WILLARD N. CLUTE 

 Editor of American Botanist 



Pupils who have had nature-study in the grades are finding 

 their way into the science classes in the high school in constantly 

 increasing numbers and the occasional familiarity they show with 

 various phases of plant life inclines the teacher of botany to ask 

 whether it is possible for him to assume a working knowledge of 

 certain plant phenomena in all such pupils, which he can, in con- 

 sequence, eliminate from his own courses, or whether he must 

 take nothing for granted and begin at the beginning just as if 

 nature-study had never been discovered. I am well aware that 

 nature-study makes no claim to fitting its students for any special 

 class in science, but it seems to me that in so far as this study 

 relates to botany, the advantages to be derived from such fitting, 

 if it can be accomplished without essential change in the subject- 

 matter, is great enough to make the attempt worth while. If we 

 are to have studies of plants at all in the grades below the high 

 school, it would seem as if these studies ought to be of advantage 

 to the pupil in his later work, but in order to secure him this 

 advantage some sort of an agreement will be necessary as to the 

 main topics to be taught and all the pupils in the schools tributary 

 to any certain high school will have to become familiar with 

 approximately the same body of facts. It will not do for the 

 eighth grade in one school to study seeds and seedlings, while 

 that in another is wasting its time on photosynthesis. 



The unifying of the subject-matter would seem to work good 

 rather than harm. Its chief effect would be to eliminate from 

 some courses the showy things of botany upon which some 

 teachers depend for arousing a factitious interest in nature-study 

 and in their places to emphasize the fundamentals of both botany 

 and the nature-study of plants. At present, pupils who have 

 had a few of these showy experiments, and perhaps peeped at an 

 occasional specimen through a compound microscope, are 

 inclined to feel that there is nothing more in the study of plants 

 for them and so avoid the real botany of high school and college. 

 Or, if they really have had a pretty thorough excursion into the 

 realm of botany by the nature-study route, they will be obliged 



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