EDITORIAL. 
IT Is REALLY a Serious question how properly to make that combi- 
nation known as a “biological course,” a course which is becoming 
more and more common as an introduction to both botany aad zool- 
ogy. We might as well state in the outset that we do not believe in 
it, any more than in a common introductory course for chemistry and 
physics, but this has nothing to do with the present writing. Having 
a prevalent custom, however, the question is how to make the best of 
it. In the first place, we decidedly object to the continued appear- 
ance of combination laboratory guides prepared by zoologists. If 
botanists had the temerity to produce such books we should make the 
same objection. The very best of these “biological guides” lies before 
us, a book admirable in its spirit and in its presentation of late views, 
but a botanist must be well trained to keep from losing his way in the 
midst of the zoological terminology and atmosphere; and when the 
phanerogams are reached, the book breaks down entirely, and the 
denouement of the botanical story is omitted. While it may be very 
desirable to have a uniform terminology for plant and animal morph- 
ology, the fact remains that we do not yet possess it, and such “com- 
bination guides” introduce students to botanical literature with an 
uncertain and confused terminology, to say nothing of a dubious 
morphology. When at the last meeting of the “American Morpho- 
logical Society,” which, by the way, means animal morphologists, one 
of its most distinguished representatives presented a paper on a 
“Fundamental difference between animals and plants,” which con- 
sisted in the fact that “animals feed typically upon solids, and plants 
always procure their food in a gaseous or liquid form,” the idea is em- 
phasized that there is need of a botanist when plants are being dis- 
cussed. 
In the second place, even if the book which treats of zoological bot- 
any be discarded, we also object to such a course being conducted b 
a zoologist. We should make the same objection were botanists in- 
clined to undertake it. Any laboratory guide is useful to the student 
only in so far as the author has been over the ground himself and has 
kept abreast with the advance in knowledge. If botanical researches 
to-day were dealing only with the etceteras of botanical doctrine, it 
might be true that a zoologist could take time enough to make him- 
Self sufficiently proficient to present the fundamentals of botany. But 
the fact is that the researches of to-day are attacking the foundations, 
and the very body of botanical doctrine is being rapidly modified. 
