October 1, 1895.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



217 



\^ AN ILLUSTRATED «^^ 



MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE 



SIMPLY WORDED— EXACTLY DESCRIBED 



LONDON: OCTOBER 1, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



Everyday Botany. By "W. Bottino Hemslet 



The Field-Naturalist and the Camera. The Kestrel 



Hawk. By Harry F. Witiierby. (Illustrated) 

 The International Geographical Congress In London 



[Cunt in lied from j}ai/e IdG) 



Lightning Photographs. (Illustrated) 



Coal IVIine Explosions and Coal Mine Fires 

 Occurrence and Suppression. Bv D. A. 



(Illustrated) 



Science Notes 



Notices of Books. (Illustrated) 



The Visibility of Change in the Moon. Ev 



Weixs, B.Sc '.. 



The Size of the Solar System. By .T. E. Gore, ] 

 Photographs of the Cluster Messier 13 Herculis. 



By Isaac Roberts, D.Sc, F.R.S 



Letters: — T. W. Backhouse; Arthur Kennedy; C. F. 

 Marshall, M.D. ; Alfred J. Johnson ; Walter 

 Wesche. {Illustrated) 



The Voyage of H.M.S. " Challenger" and its Achieve- 

 ments. By II. N. Dickson, F.E.G.S 



The Face of the Sky for October. By Hehbeex 

 Sadler, F.E.A.S 



Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, B-A..Oion 



FASE 



217 

 218 



EVERYDAY BOTANY. 



By W. BoTTiNG Hemsley, 



BOTANICAL teaching and botanical knowledge Lave, 

 doubtless, considerably advanced in this country 

 during the last twenty years ; but it is doubtful 

 whether the right kind of knowledge is being 

 taught to children and young persons who have 

 no prospect of obtaining an advanced education. Many 

 travellers assert that savage and semi-civilized races 

 possess a more useful and a more general knowledge of 

 the plants of their respective countries than our own 

 people do of British plants ; and Mr. H. 0. Forbes goes so 

 far as to state that the Sundanese, a race inhabiting Java, 

 had a name for and could tell the history of every tree 

 and plant and minute shrub of their country. " In this 

 respect," he says, " the Sundanese excel far and away the 

 rural population of our own country, among whom, with- 

 out exaggeration, scarcely one man in a hundred is able to 

 name one tree from another, or describe the colour of its 

 fJowers or fruit, far less to name a tree from a portion 

 indiscriminately given to him." As examples of their 

 botanical knowledge, he states that they group the laurels 

 and oaks each under a generic name, and of the former 

 they distinguish by name no fewer than sixty-three species, 

 and of the latter sixteen. 



Whether Mr. Forbes had to do with Sundanese of 

 exceptional knowledge of natural history, we cannot say, 

 but it is to be feared that his estimate of the acquirements 

 of his own countrymen is only too true, in spite of the 

 thousands of candidates that present themselves annually 

 for examination in this subject by the Science and Art 

 Department. 



Unfortunately, the simple, practical, and useful are often 

 lost sight of in elementary teaching and examining, and 

 technicalities and theories are taught before the pupil is 

 able to distinguish the commonest plants. This should 

 not be understood as decrying the study of botany from a 

 more philosophical standpoint than was formerly the case; 

 but considering the importance of the subject in everyday 

 life, it is surely more desirable that persons having little 

 time for botany should learn domestic or economic botany, 

 rather than a smattering of vegetable anatomy and physio- 

 logy, or the life-history by rote of some microscopical 

 organism, which they probably may never see. Our food 

 and drink, our clothing, furniture and dwellings, our 

 gardens, fields, woods, and mountain-sides, are all so many 

 books full of botanical facts, that it is both useful and 

 intellectual to know, even if only superficially. To be able to 

 tell an apple tree from a pear tree, an ash from a walnut, or 

 a beech from a birch ; to be able to distinguish cotton from 

 linen, and say what part of the plant yields each respec- 

 tively ; to know that tea is the leaf of a kind of camellia, 

 that cofiee is the seed of a tree of the same family as the 

 gardenia, that chicory is the root of a plant closely allied 

 to the dandelion and lettuce, that mustard is the seed of a 

 plant hardly distinguishable from the turnip, that white 

 and black pepper are berries of the same plant, the former 

 with the outer skin removed ; that ginger is a root, that 

 cork is the bark of an oak tree, that quinine is obtained 

 from the bark of trees of the same family as the coffee, 

 that sugar is extracted from beet-root as well as from 

 the giant grass called sugar-cane — such is the kind of 

 elementary botany that should be taught, because it 

 is all useful knowledge, and its acquirement is a good 

 preparation of the mind to receive more, and a good 

 foundation on which to build. It may be urged by 

 some persons that this is not botanical knowledge, but 

 this is a point that does not call for discussion. For the 

 same utilitarian reasons, children, or adults for that 

 matter, should be taught to discriminate between horse- 

 radish and aconite-roots, parsley from the similar and 

 often poisonous members of the same family, the mush- 

 room, and other common edible fimgi, from such as are 

 deleterious, and that no fungus should be eaten except in 

 a young and fresh state. Following such knowledge, or 

 concurrently with its acquirement, practical demonstrations 

 are recommended of the natural orders and important or 

 exceedingly common genera from fresh specimens ; always 

 fresh specimens, and, by preference, the commonest 

 plants, beginning with such as have large, or tolerably 

 large, flowers. Having got thus far, the pupil might 

 then be instructed in the general principles of growth 

 and nutrition of plants, especially such facts as are 

 demonstrable or easily understood, following with the hfe- 

 history of some common and easily observed flowering 

 plants. Of course, it should be borne in mind that 

 elementary botany only is under discussion ; but however 

 deeply the student may eventually dip into the microscopic 

 mysteries of plant life, he should first of all undergo a 

 training in distinguishing objects by sight, and in tracing 

 the origin of vegetable products. 



Allusion has been made to the desirability of a know- 

 ledge of the properties of plants, especially of common 

 wild plants. Teaching in this branch of the subject should 



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