THE SELECTION OF PLANT TYPES. 195 



be amiss. The very common attempt of secondary schools 

 to ape the colleges and to anticipate their work is a grave 

 mistake, and nowhere has this tendency been more marked 

 than in biological teaching. It has been due in large measure, 

 doubtless, to the imperfect training of many high-school 

 teachers, whose chief biological stock in trade consists of the 

 notebooks of the general biology course. But it has also 

 been due to a widespread failure to appreciate the fact that 

 the experience which enables one to see well with the com- 

 pound microscope is readily gained only after one has learned 

 to see with the unaided eye. And the system of cramming 

 and memorizing of our primary schools brings pupils to the 

 secondary schools with atrophied powers of observation, and at 

 an age when the logical powers are still rudimentary. The 

 purpose, then, of natural history work in high schools should 

 be primarily to develop the ability to observe and to reason 

 from observation by the simplest and most familiar means, 

 without the intervention of technical or material difficulties. 

 This training may carry with it a good deal of information con- 

 cerning the grosser structure and vital activities of plants and 

 animals, as they may be made out by the aid, at most, of a 

 hand lens and of simple experiments. On the plant side it 

 may give a conception of morphology, as illustrated in the 

 modifications of foliar organs, for example; of physiology, from 

 the functions of roots and leaves ; and of the significance of 

 the life cycle. It may also illustrate classification as based on 

 structure and the value and meaning of distinctive characters. 

 Such a training would send to the colleges students who can 

 observe accurately and think about what they see, prepared to 

 learn the use of means for extending the range of their obser- 

 vations. This I believe to be an important preparation for the 

 general biology course. As a rule, such preliminary training 

 ought to be insisted on, and would render the work of that 

 course much more thorough and profitable. 



As a college course, then, following the preparatory training 

 just outlined, what plant types can the general biology course 

 most profitably present ? They ought fairly to illustrate plant 

 life and the structure and physiology of the great groups of 



