304: THE EDUCATIONAL CLAIMS OF BOTANY. 



VIII. DEFECTS OF COMMON BOTANICAL STUDY. 



But the benefits here sought are not to be gained by the 

 usual way of dealing with the subject. For this end it must 

 be pursued by the direct study of its objects, and in a definite 

 order. The concrete and elementary characters of plants must 

 be made familiar before the truths based upon them can 

 become real mental possessions. The common method of 

 acquiring Botany, in its results, that is, by going at once to 

 its general principles, is hence peculiarly futile for purposes of 

 education. The mere reading up of vegetable physiology is 

 no better than getting any other second-hand information. To 

 learn a number of hard botanical terms without really know- 

 ing what they represent, or to con over classifications that are 

 equally void of significance, is much the same as any other 

 verbal cramming. The objection to ordinary botanical study is, 

 not that the books do not tell the pupil a great many interesting 

 and useful things about plants, but that he studies it as he 

 does ancient history, treating its objects as if they had all gone 

 to dust thousands of years ago. 



Besides, that which goes under the name in many of our 

 schools is not Botany in any true sense ; it is only a "branch of it. 

 In the early part of the century, the subject had become so 

 overgrown with the mere pedantries of naming, that there 

 came a reaction against systematic Botany, or the study of the 

 relationships of plants, and some went so far as to insist that 

 the whole science could be " evolved " by studying a single 

 plant. Under the influence of this tendency, Botany became 

 merged in the study of vegetable physiology to the neglect of 

 its descriptive and relational elements. But it is now recog- 

 nized that all parts of the science are intimately correlated, and 

 that the inner relations of plants can only be well understood 

 y first getting a knowledge of their outer relations. Never- 

 theless, the tendency to sink it in mere physiology was strongly 

 felt in education, which instinctively seized upon a view of 

 the subject most easily got through books. But vegetable 

 physiology is not Botany any more than the rule of three is 

 arithmetic ; and to engage with the body of generalized truths, 



