ON THE TEACHING OF BOTANY IN SCHOOLS. 427 



3. Bring leaves of three moorland ferns. Can you find one which has 

 two distinct kinds of leaves ? 



4. Find a moorland grass with fine wiry leaves. Can you find more 

 than one answering to this description 1 



5. Find a moss which is very plentiful in swampy parts of the moor. 

 Find another which is plentiful in dry places, and occurs in two distinct 

 forms. 



6. There is a low plant on the moor which is now in flower. It grows 

 in large patches, and from some of these patches we kick up dust with 

 our feet, while other patches yield no dust. Bring specimens of each 

 sort. 



7. How many years old is the biggest stem of ling which you can 

 find? 



The objects brought can be named and discussed at convenient halting- 

 places. The school excursion should have a definite aim lest it degenerate 

 into the raid upon wild flowers. It is a good plan to follow it up within 

 a very few days by a lesson on the same objects. 



Collecting. — We have a poor opinion of drying plants as an incentive 

 to the study of Botany. The dried plant is an inadequate substitute for 

 the living and growing plant, and finds its principal use in the authenti- 

 cation of botanical discoveries made in distant lands. The habit of 

 collecting plants for the herlmrium may be hostile to close study of the 

 environment, and confirm the pernicious belief that the thing of chief 

 importance is to be able to name a plant as soon as you see it. One 

 lamentable result of the rapacity of collectors is that our native flora has 

 become sensibly impoverished of late years. There is little gain to science 

 by way of compensation. Amateur herbarium botanists have not, in our 

 own time and country, done much to solve important questions of any 

 kind, and they often propagate the misleading notion that rare species 

 are better worth attention than common ones. The rarity of a plant is a 

 reason, not for gathering a flower and drying it, but for letting it alone, 

 unless, indeed, you can accomplish some important and unselfish purpose 

 only by its sacrifice. 



The museum, like the herbarium, may easily be perverted from its 

 proper function and made a means of oppressing the intelligence of young 

 persons. A vast multiplicity of objects bewilders instead of stimulating 

 the observing faculty. We do not mean for a moment to disparage 

 museums. They are indispensable to the special student, who, as science 

 advances, demands that the museum shall become ever more complete and 

 more rigidly systematic. But the wants of the specialist and of the 

 schoolboy are so dissimilar that they cannot be met by the same collec- 

 tion. A school will be fortunate if it possesses a few striking objects of 

 nature or art, such as a Roman altar, two or three Greek coins, a fine 

 ichthyosaur, a mammoth's tusk, and the like ; but long series of woods, 

 seeds, moths, fossils, and minerals are simply dispiriting to the beginner. 

 Schoolboys can do nothing with them except make inferior copies of the 

 .same kind. It ought to be needless to remark that the needs and also 

 the powers of the schoolboy are altogether unlike those of the adult 

 specialist. The specialist attends to few things and seeks to master those 

 in every detail. PrecLse language and minutely accurate knowledge are 

 indispensable to him. He has chosen his walk of life, and knows that his 

 strength and usefulness largely depend upon his power of concentration. 

 The schoolboy is untrained, and his future vQcq.tion often unknown. Nq-?? 



