406 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 



(6) Dr. Lilian J. Clarke. — The Teaching of Botany in Laboratories and 

 School Gardens. 



It is now generally agreed that the study of living things should form part of the 

 education of every child. 



The problem is how best can biology be taught so, that in addition to developing 

 interest in living things, there may be real training in scientific method. 



At the James Allen's Girls' School, Dulwich, plants are studied as living things 

 by means of the pupils' own observations and experiments in laboratory and garden. 



Work in the Laboratory. Lantern Slides. 



No textbooks are used up to the Matriculation stage, no set lessons or dictated 

 notes are given. A well-lighted laboratory, in which pupils have adequate space 

 and opportunity for individual work, has been of great help in enabling them to 

 learn by means of the experiments they make. It is useful to have benches below 

 the windows fitted with sinks, and with water and gas laid on. 



If possible there should be a dark room. 



Many experiments can be made by every member of a class, such as those showing 

 the influence of gravity and light on the direction of growth of roots and stems, the 

 presence of pores in leaves, the conditions necessary for germination, the processes of 

 photosynthesis, respiration and transpiration. 



An interesting piece of work is finding out which elements are necessary to the 

 life of a plant. At Dulwich girls have grown the same perennials for many years in 

 food solution, and have succeeded in growing fifteen generations of plants that have 

 never been in the soil. 



If each girl makes her own experiments, or two girls working together, and 

 records are kept every year, reference can be made to numbers of experiments, and 

 not only to one or two, when framing a general proposition. In biology generalisation 

 should not be made on insufficient data any more than in any other science. Also 

 there should be careful examination of the conditions of the experiment, and control 

 experiments should be made. 



At the James Allen's Girls' School there are records of hundreds of experiments 

 on different plants showing the work of a green leaf in photosynthesis, of more than 

 two thousand two hundred experiments showing the function of pollen. 



Botany Gardens as Outdoor Laboratories. Lantern Slides. 



The Botany gardens at Dulwich have been most valuable in affording oppor- 

 tunities for studying the living plant by means of experiments. They have been of 

 great value also on account of the interest they have aroused in plant and animal 

 life, and from an festhetic point of view. They have always been in charge of the 

 girls themselves ; the work is voluntary and is not done in the school teaching 

 hours. 



Last year nearly 300 girls had Botany gardens. The gardens have been made 

 and developed in response to the need of the Botany teaching. 



They now consist of : — a lane, an oakwood, two ponds, freshwater marshes, a 

 heath, peat bogs. Natural Order plots, several salt marshes, a pebble beach, a sand 

 dune, a miniature cornfield, and plots for pollination experiments. 



Many things are learnt incidentally, such as the magnitude of vegetative re- 

 production in some plants in sand dune, pond and wood (one sand sedge plant was 

 put in the sand dune ; in less than eight years more than seventy-two thousand 

 plants had been removed, and yet numbers remained in the dune). 



Great facihties are afforded for experiments on climbing plants, experiments on 

 various soils, photosynthesis experiments, polhnation experiments, experiments on 

 the effect of variation of fight intensity on the ground vegetation of the wood, some 

 Mendefian experiments, and many other experiments. 



Study of Animals. Lantern Slides. 



In several classes the study of animal life is an important part of the work in 

 addition to the study of plant life. The ponds, the lane, the marshes, the wood and 

 other parts of the Botany gardens supply a wealth of material. 



Botany gardens are invaluable when hving things are studied, whether more 

 stress is laid on plant life, or more on animal life. 



