140 The Department of Plant Physiology [338 



ics and chemistry can enter our physiological work. If his 

 morphological or physical knowledge is inadequate this may 

 be corrected as his work goes on. In short, an interest in, 

 and a serious desire to become proficient in, plant physiology 

 are the only prerequisites for the training that is here offered. 



The work of this department has thus far been exclusively 

 graduate work, so that all of our students are intellectually 

 rather mature. The scarcity of opportunities for carrying on 

 advanced work in plant physiology, together with the fact that 

 numerous educational institutions offer opportunity for ele- 

 mentary academic courses in this and the related subjects, 

 have made it appear undesirable to institute undergraduate 

 courses here. Experience seems to show, furthermore, that 

 the intellectual power of graduate students is greater among 

 those who have migrated from one institution to another, than 

 it is among those who have performed their undergraduate 

 work in the same institution as that in which graduate work 

 is undertaken. Whether a causal relation is mainly involved 

 here is questionable, for the very fact of student migration 

 generally bespeaks a serious purpose and a definite aim; but 

 it is also undoubtedly true that student migration tends 

 strongly to prevent and to obliterate provincial traits of men- 

 tal character, and to give to the student who has thus 

 migrated one or more times a more extensive series of in- 

 terests and a deeper appreciation of relative values. 



The general purpose in the training of our students may 

 be expressed as the inculcation of scholarly habits and of 

 personal judgment in the carrying out of research. To this 

 end, the work of the department is carried on as though 

 research itself productive scientific study were the main 

 aim. The student thus becomes, as it were, an apprentice in 

 what is planned to be creative physiological endeavor, and he 

 develops through striving to solve physiological problems 

 and to interpret and present the results obtained. He is 

 thus led to read the literature because he seeks the knowl- 

 edge that it contains, rather than because such reading has 



