ORDER OF STUDY 3 



the study of ecology is that the plant is not an organism of fixed 

 form, structure, and habits, sprung from a long line of precisely 

 similar ancestors and destined to leave an indefinite series of 

 forms like itself to succeed each other in the same area. On the 

 other hand, each generation is a little more or less numerous 

 than its predecessors, covering more or less territory than they 

 did, and varying from them this way or that under the influ- 

 ence of changing conditions of life. This is an interesting depart- 

 ment of botany, but it has to be studied mainly out of doors. 

 Economic botany is the study of the uses of plants to man. 



Many of the topics suggested in the above outline cannot 

 be studied in detail in an elementary course. It ought, however, 

 to be possible for the student to learn a good deal about the 

 simpler facts of morphology and of plant physiology. It is 

 necessary to study plants themselves, to take them to pieces 

 and to make out the connection of their parts, to examine with 

 the microscope small portions of the exterior surface and thin 

 slices of all the variously built tissues of which the plant consists. 

 Among the lower plants there will be found a most attractive 

 study of cell structure, reproductive processes, and life histories, 

 all requiring the use of the compound microscope. Living 

 plants must be watched in order to ascertain what kinds of food 

 they take, what kinds of waste substances they excrete, how and 

 where their growth takes place and what circumstances favor it, 

 how they move, and indeed to get as complete an idea as pos- 

 sible of what has been called the behavior of plants. 



Since the most familiar plants spring from seeds, the beginner 

 in botany may well examine at the outset the structure of a few 

 familiar seeds, then sprout them, and watch the growth of the 

 seedlings which spring from them. Afterwards he can study in a 

 few examples the organs, structure, and functions of seed plants, 

 trace their life history, and so, step by step, follow the process 

 by which a new crop of seeds at last results from the growth and 

 development of such a seed as that with which he began. 



