ON THE TEACHING OF BOTANY IN SCHOOLS. 423 



questions and criticised the statements made by the lecturer. The sections 

 were afterwards examined by all the members of the class, and the 

 preparations made in illustration of each piece of work were kept in a 

 separate tray until the end of the course, when each student was at 

 liberty to appropriate his slides. In an article on Botanical Teaching in 

 University Classes, published in the ' New Phytologist,' January 1901, the 

 above method is described at greater length, and several examples are 

 given in illustration of the system. Since that article was written I have 

 adopted the same plan in a course of lectures and practical work on 

 Gymnosperms. As it was impossible to give a full account in the lectures 

 of all the questions involved in a detailed treatment of this group of plants, 

 I omitted certain portions of the subject, and arranged that these should 

 be dealt with by the students themselves during the practical work. As 

 an example of this method of encouraging students to fill in gaps left by 

 the lecturer, one case may be quoted. X. was asked to make a com- 

 parative examination of the anatomy of the leaves of various types of 

 Conifers ; in the course of his work he was referred to literature on the 

 subject, and his main object was to discover to what extent anatomical 

 characters may be used in the identification of genera. The account 

 given by X., illustrated by a selected series of his sections, rendered it 

 unnecessary for me to refer to this subject in the lectures. The advantages 

 of the above method over that which I had previously employed were 

 apparent in the much keener interest taken in the laboratory work ; the 

 members of the class were in fact engaged in original research, and their 

 attitude was that of investigators who have problems to solve which 

 require thoughtful treatment and careful technique. They entered fully 

 into the spii'it of tlie work, and were stimulated to do their best, partly 

 by the interest which they derived from the work itself and partly from 

 the knowledge that they would be expected to give a clear account of 

 their i-esults to the rest of the class, who were encouraged to ask questions 

 and offer criticisms during the short and informal lecture which the 

 students gave on the completion of each piece of work. 



The practice in speaking and presenting facts, the introduction to the 

 methods of I'esearch, and the stimulus given by the feeling of rivalry, were, 

 I consider, the most striking advantages of the system. 



The Teachiny mitst be adapted to the Needs of the Ftijnl. — It is charac; 

 teristic of immature minds that they soon tire. This is a reason for 

 frequently changing the topic and for making the object-lesson the regular 

 mode of teaching Botany in junior classes. Teachei-s of Botany are not so 

 liable as teachers of chemistry or physics to make the mistake of proceed- 

 ing from the general to the particular, instead of from the known to the 

 unknown, which is a very different thing. One often recognises the inex- 

 perienced teacher by such a phrase as that he intends to begin by con- 

 sideration of the principles which underlie a particular science. Continuous 

 book and paper work is hateful to children, and their exercises in learning 

 and thinking should be varied with handiwork, their indoor work M'ith 

 outdoor woi'k. 



Object-lessons in Botany. — Object-lessons are the best way of instruct- 

 ing children in natural history, childhood being taken to include all ages 

 under twelve or thirteen. In this stage there should be no fo)'mal and 

 separate sciences, though the lessons, which are at first studiously varied, 

 may gradually become connected. Among the conditions of profitablp 

 pbject-lessor)s tjie following may be noted ; — 



